General Election date

I'm going to risk making myself look like an idiot in my first Tory Radio column (A view which I'll probably come to confirm in later weeks), but I at the time of writing (the evening of the 24th), my gut instincts are telling me that we won't be getting an autumn election, and May 2009 will be the date. Apart from my gut instinct, I also draw that conclusion from my reading of the betting markets.

Political Betting is a pretty small fish in the overall gambling pool, but thanks to sites like www.politicalbetting.com (it does what it says on the tin), there is an increasing interest in this type of betting genre and liquidity is slowly building up.

The most influential market is the Betfair date of the General Election market. It is split in 6 month timeframes for the date of the general election. The biggest price movement in this market has been for a date between Jul-Dec 07. We all know why that is!, but as a daily reader of market moves on Betfair, the money doesn't look like it's coming from people in the know, just punters following the news agenda and believing the hype. One of my main reasoning's for this not being inside money is the lack of movement in the Jan-Jun 08 and 09 markets. If this Autumn election was a cert, the prices of these would be lengthening, but there has been no significant movement at all, indeed the 6 months of 2009 remains a resolute favourite. And why is that?

Well it's simple. In my very humble opinion, Brown's favoured date is the spring of 2009. He will try and fight the County Council elections and the General Election on the one ticket. This is due to my belief that the proposal to destroy the mainly Tory District Councils will resurface next year as Gordon Brown Stalinist tendencies take over. The Autumn election idea is a wind up to the Tories and a stick to keep his party and the unions on message during his first 100 days. This has snowballed out of control which could rebound on him massively if it doesn't happen.

Anyway May 7th 2009 is the election date I would be betting on. I just hope I'm not wrong!!