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A 50/1 tip to start your day – politicalbetting.com
A 50/1 tip to start your day – politicalbetting.com
I expect when people realise I am backing the Lib Dems to win the most seats at the next general election some of you will send me links to the Gamble Aware website but my logic is based on this being an excellent (trading) bet for the following reasons.
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And first? (Like the Lib Dems, maybe?)
No. (Like the Lib Dems, probably).
Is this a dream?
Can be WON by not being
My guess is it's more like an 8/1 shot and around about 2036, I hope, I'll have £330 trickling into my bank and feeling smug about it.
As a trading bet, this might be worthwhile. I think the Conservatives are not going to advance much, if at all, and Labour have an awful lot to lose.
Btw, I know some others here are into TTRPGs so thought it worth mentioning that Paizo have a Humble Bundle up for a limited time with a bucketload of PDFs for Pathfinder 2e. Been playing a campaign in that system and can recommend it.
Here is the scenario:
The Tories are finished as a electoral force. They'll still hang around telling anyone who will listen that they are the natural party of government, but few are listening.
Labour did the Flight of Icarus at the last election, promising CHANGE and receiving an absurd majority on an absurd vote share. What people have had instead is no change, and we can already look back at the WFA lunacy as the point where voters gave up on them.
Reform are now being billed as not just the government in waiting but the PATRIOTIC choice for right-thinking people. Despite having 5 MPs, a civil war, councillors about to do some *interesting* things and only an embryonic party machine.
Our system needs an alternative party. It isn't going to be the Tories, it can't be Labour, so that leaves the LibDems. Providing that we embody reforms but with a sensible face, we can clean up. Davey has focused on carers as the spearhead of reform - a little narrow at first glance but covers a lot of areas and is radical in that no government has actually tried to fix this issue in decades.
Again, its a scenario. But it is plausible.
Instead he has gone down the classic footballer route of getting their families to act their agents with zero experience or knowledge. And since then had countless negative PR about his behaviour.
That advantage diminishes towards zero when we are talking about 250+ constituencies.
Indeed very many of those mobile activists already now live in areas with a LibDem MP that they will have to work hard to defend against any Tory recovery and/or ongoing Reform success. So they are no longer mobile.
The trading value of the bet is if something happens to dent Reform while both Tories and Labour remain in the dog house. Perhaps MI5 is working away on a cunning plan right now?
All parties do it, but the Lib Dems have built their whole appeal on it, and even with the dire media we have, people start to notice contradictions or outright lies if they are too blatant.
Their upper limit is 20% at best. To go higher they'd need to co-opt students from the Greens, and some of the NOTA vote that Reform are getting, like they got in 2010, when they still only hit 23%.
🇬🇧
very possible that we get
⚖️ BoE rate cut today
🇺🇸 tariff mitigation deal with the US which leaves space for
🇪🇺substantive eradication of post Brexit red tape with EU
🇮🇳 all on heels of most intensive full fat trade deal with world’s fast growing most populous country
Compared with the 2000s they're far, far weaker in the deprived areas and among young voters.
Any other IT oddities out there? Apart from Co-Op and M&S.
Just like Labour they need to be bolder and come up with some strategic answers.
If they are not clearly appealing to a centrist like me, I fail to see how they become the biggest party. The weakness of the others does give them a shot at strengthening what they do have though and perhaps even breaking the 100 seat barrier.
I can look around on Google Streetview from 2008/2009 if I want to see just how far County Councils have fallen, and see the deterioration in the quality of the public realm since then. Talk to younger people and they are surprised how good it used to be.
The last "usual Tory recovery" is dated back to at least 1991, and perhaps more credibly to ~1985, because Nigel Lawson eventually generated a collapse due to his own hubris.
My politics are probably more centrist than yours are (!), depending on issue, and have moved somewhat from centre-right to a little more more centre-left, and away from the Liberal wing of the Tories, under the tutelage of Johnson, Truss, Sunak et al turning the Conservative Party into a chaotic rabble.
So I don't think that narrative will fly.
Expanding on the theme, if Nice Britain=Lib Dem, Grotty Britain=Reform, Meh Britain=Labour, where is Conservative Britain? Apart from God's Waiting Room?
As things stand, the Tories are finished and Labour is in trouble. Yes. This leaves a possible state in which LDvReform becomes the principal contest in a new two camp/party set up.
When we need an alternative party - as now - historically we look mostly to a renewal of the old names but, like Trigger's Broom, with a new handle and a new head. New names winning are rare.
The additional factor required is a uniquely gifted charismatic leader. Blair, Thatcher, Boris without the bad stuff and with more good stuff.
This, I suggest, is more likely to come from Labour than from the LDs. No names appear obvious, but Thatcher was not obviously the rising star until she was.
Finally, the Tories are so down and out that a charismatic character would have a fairly free hand once established in place, so it's unlikely but not impossible.
The problem with this as a trading bet is that if the odds fell to, say, 30/1 you still need to have a way of getting on the other end of it to close out your risk. Presumably you can do that through Betfair?
Big Rish and the gang were a bunch of flag wankers responsible for and glorying in a braindead brexit yet the LibDems only improved 0.6% on their 2019 vote share. They would have to improve greatly on that score to have any pretensions of being the largest party.
Our firewalls in China and Chile picked it up yesterday morning and it hasn't abated
Somewhat agree on symptoms, and not on solutions !
For years the Lib Dems vote has been the most demographically consistent, ie its share of each age group was within a tight band within 2-3% of its total vote share. Once a Lib Dem always a Lib Dem, or vice versa.
Last week was different. There was a noticeably higher share in the 64+ age range, while younger age groups were not far off the general election score around the 10-12% mark. A very un-Lib Dem pattern. More Tory. That to me suggests a possible pick up in Tory switchers.
Either that or it’s a split in Labour switchers, with the young going Green and the older going LD. Equally plausible.
In most seats, their vote share is minuscule (which is a good thing, as it means their support is concentrated), but it makes it difficult to break out of the M3, M4 corridors.
The Lib Dems and Liberals before them have always had a mixture of impressive and mediocre politicians, like any other party.
That said, there are some pretty strong MPs now, and many more of them, with a lot of real life experience. They just still struggle to get air time.
The gap is 50. How many of those will the Tories lose to Reform? It would probably only take the Lib Dems winning another 20 or so to overtake.
VD day? Or for the Anzacs, VB day.
Unlike Labour (big brand and in power) and Reform (one man band and protest vote), the LDs need it to break through to win most seats. Note I don't think it a particular impediment to making a more modest improvement on their strong performance at the last GE.
On the topic, the election of Jenrick next year should also drive a few more Justine Greening types into the welcoming arms of the Liberals.
- 189 seats with 10% or more
- 119 seats with 15% or more
- 99 seats with 20% or more
- 72 wins
This is not a position where they can make large additional gains unless their polling position shifts dramatically.
Otherwise look at the map and it’s the same: West-biased, commuter belt, rural bocage and orchard / viticultural regions, places that the Industrial Revolution passed by but which still grew moderately affluent from it but without the huge class inequalities it created, and the wealthy SW Paris suburbs.
If I look at 2 areas I know well, the district of rolling hills and quaint pubs of South Canterbury, and the golden limestone hamlets of Saint Vincent des Pres in the Mâconnais, it’s no coincidence both were comfortably won by the Lib Dems and Renaissance respectively in the most recent elections.
The per party maps and graphs in the 2024 GE briefing doc from Parliament are pretty good at showing this:
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10009/CBP-10009.pdf
It's a very loose coalition.
The split between the Conservatives and Reform on the right could certainly lead to the Lib Dems coming through the middle.
Priorities?
Let's hope the L izar D's get booted at the next opportunity.
As dishonest as the Lib Dems with all their local/national contradictions, but I'm afraid it reflects the mood of much of the electorate, who can't seem to grasp that an improvement in living standards is unthinkable while housing is in such short supply, because any improvement in real incomes is absorbed by higher rents and house prices.
Of all the things Rachel Reeves could have cut, this was possibly the worst target she might have chosen.
Axing the winter fuel allowance was precisely the sort of penny-wise, pound-foolish measure that Treasury officials like to sneak through while the Chancellor’s guard is down and the hunt is on for quick, emblematic fixes.
Telegraph
I'm on.
Labour: popular in pockets but have done themselves a mischief recently - no longer remotely favourites to win the election
Tories: well established in pockets (up here in the NE as a prime example) but clearly already under threat from Reform. The 4 Tory byelection wins last november could be their zenith
SNP: Hard to read. There is a war raging inside the Yes voter camp, though Swinney has done a lot to calm things down. Their big issue is that the next elections are all about change and they are the status quo presiding over a mess. The "everything is great, have pride if you're a patriot, anything wrong is the fault of the English" message at the GE was catastrophic - and they're going to repeat that because they truly believe its true
Greens - not the same party as the one in England. Not remotely the same.
I've now had two leaflets to that effect. They should now pivot to business energy costs rather than household bills to appeal to those outside their base.
I'll get my coat
For one crazy day during the Cleggasm, I could have cashed out for a small gain, but I let it ride and lost it.
I've been very impressed with Labour's ex Cabinet Minister Louise Haigh. They could do worse than get her back on board
All the young ladies in the group were crowding round him in a rather blatant fashion.
I suppose you could get a proper snob to customise them for you, to up the bling.
So there was some base in place. Not that much, but more than a standing start. And I think the selection of counties up for election this time, and the smaller number, was probably in their favour. We are already seeing some loose cannon Councillors who got through the sanity / respectability / judgement / klutz (choose your word) filter - if they had been trying to stand 50% more that would be worse, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Nottinghamshire_County_Council_election
Officials demand device registration, location locking, logs of user activity
https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/india_satellite_internet_regs_starlink/
Anyway odds of 50/1 still seem ridiculously generous and, yes, it's a good trading bet.