DAVID MILIBAND NEARLY CONFIRMED AS NEXT LABOUR LEADER ACCORDING TO LATEST BETTING ODDS

If you’re still following the fall-out from the 2010 UK General Election, Gordon Brown’s quick departure has opened up the door for the Labour Party leader to take them into the next generation. While the odds between David and Ed Miliband were getting shorter for quite some time, things have settled down to the point where the money doesn’t lie and you know where things are going.

As it currently stands, David Miliband is considered the odds-on favourite to be confirmed as Next Labour Leader according to Betfair. You’ll find him trading at a price hovering around 1.71 and I expect that to drop substantially over the next 48 hours.
Ed Miliband can be backed at a 4.4 price, he was quite shorter about a week ago, but has continued to trend northwards. At one point Ed Balls was very much in the running but he had trouble cracking into single digits and you’ll find him trading around 11.5 right now.
The money is continuing to pile in on David Miliband and the market itself has about $650,000 matched at this point with the volume starting to pick up again. The whispers out there are the appointment could come soon.
Personally, I think it’s a great time to announce the Next Labour Party Leader as the World Cup will be dominating attention over the next month or so with the British public. This will give David Miliband some time to get his house in order and plan out a strategy to either break the coalition or start building for the next election.
Just as an aside, Betfair punters seem to think that a Labour majority isn’t entirely out of the question, trading it at 2.48 with no majority priced at 2.18. This isn’t a very mature market though so I would adopt a wait and see approach on the next election. But get your bets in on David Miliband as this isn’t going anywhere else.