Bookies Corner: In Liz we Trust…
Less than a month in charge, is PM Liz Truss premiership over following a week of chaos? The past seven days have seen the Bank of England and IMF at loggerheads with The Treasury related to the UK’s economic strategy…
As speculation mounts of buyer remorse among Conservative peers, does PM Liz have enough support and friends to lead the Tories into a General Election, or better yet to see the end-of-year or next week’s Party Conference?
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SBC: A lacklustre response to the costs of living crisis and a mini-budget statement that has crashed the £GBP… Is Liz Truss on course to become the shortest reigning PM of all time?
Sam Rosbottom (PR @ Betfair): Following the mini-budget announcement last week, things have gone from bad to worse for Liz Truss and the Conservatives. Odds on the Prime Minister to step down in 2022 continue to tumble, and punters on the Betfair Exchange have backed a Truss exit this year into 7/1 from a massive 170/1 when she was first elected as Tory leader.
Looking at who could step in to replace her if she does indeed step down, a familiar face is popular with the punters, Boris Johnson is the 7/1 second favourite to make a sensational return to Downing Street and become next Conservative leader, while Rishi Sunak heads the market at 11/2.
As scrutiny mounts on the Conservative’s policies and Keir Starmer’s party surge to a 33-point lead in some polls, Labour are now 5/4 to win a majority in the next election – the most likely outcome according to the odds.
SBC: Rumours mount of party peers seeking a vote on no-confidence. Can the Conservative Party re-shuffle the deck once more or gamble on a General Election?
Chad Yeomans (Head of Communications & PR @ Betway):It’s been a very difficult start for Liz Truss, her honeymoon period of course totally overshadowed by the passing of Queen Elizabeth. It won’t have helped that this involved the kind of grandiose public speech-making and solemnity that would have suited both her predecessor and the leader of the opposition extremely well. Now, it seems, unsurprisingly, that Kwasi Kwarteng’s swingeing tax cuts are proving rather less popular with the wider electorate than with the Tory membership.
Labour is always at an advantage when the public mood switches towards higher spending and public services, and Keir Starmer has impressed at the party conference. Faced between heading into an election with an unpopular leader and wielding the axe yet again, Tory eyes will be cast covetously towards the previous occupant of Downing Street, election-winner extraordinaire Boris Johnson.
The old maxim is that elections are won on the future, not the past, and whichever party can convince voters that they will improve matters over the course of the next Parliament will surely win this time around. At the time of writing, the Liz Truss programme shows no sign of inspiring the electorate, and Labour must be considered strong favourites in the event of an early election.
SBC: Should punters expect a ‘PM bounce back’ at next week’s Party Conference, even though Truss has branded herself as ‘not the best public speaker…’
Matt Shaddick (Head of Smarkets Politics):Party conference speeches don’t usually make any lasting difference, but this one might be more significant than most given by a PM to party supporters.
The reaction of the financial and betting markets to Kwarteng’s mini-budget has been negative to say the least and this is a big chance for Truss to settle Tory nerves. The trouble is, some of her previous conference speeches have been pretty bad (remember the one about cheese imports to Japan?).
Still, her standard debate and hustings performances improved during the leadership campaign so I expect she’ll be able to put on a reasonable performance and no doubt we’ll hear a lot about growth, standing up to Putin and the energy price cap.
Source: SBC News
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