Conference season ends with Hung Parliament still betting favourite
Above is the chart showing the changes on the betting markets for the next general election over the past year and as can be seen a hung Parliament remains the favourite with things having not really changed that much during the conferences.
As I have stated before I think the betting number that is wrong here is on a Labour majority because the sheer scale of the task facing Starmer’s party is so great that it is very difficult seeing 125 seat gains. This is especially so because Labour continues to trail the Tories in the voting intention polls. Sure the current gap of 3-5% is well down on the Tory 12% vote margin at GE2019 but Labour continues to find it difficult to get into the lead.
One thought that has betting applications to come out of the conferences is on the timing of the next general election. Given how successful Johnson’s party was in December 2019 I wonder whether the PM might be attracted to another pre-Christmas vote say in December 2023. There were reported to be some suggestions at the Conservative conference that Labour struggles more to get its vote out in the winter than the Tories. Whether that is the case or not I don’t know. My view of GE2019 was that LAB struggled because the party leader at the time was a huge negative.
It is also true to say that that the two major Labour figures Johnson has defeated, Livingstone and Corbyn, are now totally discredited figures. Starmer might be different