What we are looking for is good value in the market. The kinds of question we should ask ourselves are of the kind "have the bookies miscalculated in any area" or "are they underestimating the chances of certain low-chance outcomes (e.g. the elevation of the likes of Macron or Truss)?"
I've looked at oddschecker for the latest odds across the various bookies. My full workings are below the break but if you just want the TLDR then my view is that the best value bets right now are (1) Badenoch for next PM, (2) Rayner for PM after the next General Election and (3) 2023 for the date of the next GE. You might also want to think about placing bets on a Lab-SNP coalition or a minority Conservative administration after the next GE.
But please remember that this is meant to be fun: none of these outcomes is at all likely! The point is to force oneself to think dispassionately about the likelihood of various different futures, not to win or lose meaningful amounts of money. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that is the way to bet if you want to win money.
Next PM After Truss
At the time of checking, the odds are as follows.
Starmer 6/4
Sunak 26/5
Johnson 10/1
Gove 18/1
Mordaunt 20/1
Wallace 20/1
Badenoch 25/1
I think Badenoch is the only one of those worth thinking about. There are two possible scenarios.
(1) Truss holds on and Starmer wins the next General Election. That seems likely and I can't fault the pricing of that option.
(2) Truss collapses and there is another Conservative leadership election before the next GE. That's not impossible. But Sunak is priced as if he were a shoo-in to win such a leadership election, and I don't think he would be - in fact, I'm not even sure he wants it now. Badenoch was a big winner (in comparative terms) of the last election by outperforming expectations, so she has a head start, and moreover she is not suffering from association with the current travails of the Government. Overall, I see a bit of value in Badenoch at anything over 15/1 and 25/1 looks tempting.
PM After Next GE
Starmer 1/2
Truss 9/4
Johnson 33/1
Sunak 41/1
Rayner 50/1
Badenoch 50/1
I think 25/1 for Badenoch for next PM is much better than 50/1 for Badenoch winning the next GE. She'd have to win two big elections in quick succession when, ex hypothesi, the Conservatives are in a mess. I'd skip that one.
Rayner at 50/1 is different. Labour are well-placed to win the next election. But what if something happens to Starmer that means he has to pull out at the last minute? Some purely personal thing that does not hurt Labour as a whole? Heaven forfend, of course, but such things do happen. In those circumstances Rayner would be odds-on favourite to be the next PM. A few quid on Rayner at 50/1 doesn't seem at all silly to me.
Next Labour leader
Burnham 49/10
Reeves 8/1
Rayner 43/5
Streeting 19/2
On this one, again, we have to think about what scenarios we are considering. There are circumstances in which the successor to a long-term PM is discernible before he starts his term of office (see: Blair, ACL) but it's not common. So we are thinking about something happening to Starmer in the next few years, either before or after the next GE (and whether or not he wins it). I think that backing Rayner as next PM at 50/1 is far more tempting than backing her as next Labour leader at worse than 9/1. On the other hand, surely the desire for a female leader - presumably a female PM - would be hard to resist. I can see a mid-term "something happens to Starmer and Reeves takes over" story. But at 8/1? No, I can't see much value in any of these odds. Starmer is 60 and doing well. His replacement is probably none of the current front-runners. If you know a young up-and-coming Labour pol who could be a front runner in a Parliament or two then perhaps go for that, but I'm not tempted by any of these four.
Date of next GE
2024 1/6
2024 or later 3/10
2023 4/1
2022 25/1
As I understand the rules, the next GE could just about take place in very early January 2025. But, realistically, it's going to be either in 2023 or 2024. 2024 is more likely, but I think 2023 is underpriced here. Essentially a 2024 GE means 'Truss is still in charge but things are going neither amazingly well nor amazingly badly for her'. That's fine, but I think the chances of that not happening are better than odds of 4/1 would suggest. We've had a couple of short Parliaments recently: why not another one? Perhaps Truss' government will collapse and a new GE is the only way to find a PM who can command a majority in Parliament. That's not impossible. There are already some rather feverish noises being made about whether Truss can command a majority for her agenda as it is: they sound to me like wishful thinking from an anti-Truss media, but I could be wrong.
Or perhaps Truss' government will be a roaring success: we'll win the World Cup, have a mild winter, see stunning economic growth, Starmer will get hit by scandal and Truss will seize the chance to lock in an upswing in the polls. Again, not impossible: big shifts in the polls are reasonably common in recent years. So much happens in British politics nowadays - and so quickly - that you might have forgotten some of the events of a few years back, so here are graphs of the polls leading up to the last two GEs:
Corbyn and Johnson each went from 25% to 40% in weeks. Nothing is certain. Starmer will certainly not be counting his chickens, but if Truss sees some promising looking eggs then she might want to try counting hers.
Either of those kinds of developments - the very good for Truss and the very bad for Truss - could mean a 2023 GE. Worth a punt.
Next GE Most Seats
Lab 3/4
Con 2/1
You see how bookies make their money here. It's going to be one or other of those two and neither option is tempting for the punter.
Result of the next GE
Lab majority 20/13
Con majority 7/2
Lab minority govt 4/1
Lab-Lib Dem coalition 12/1
Con minority govt 16/1
Lab-LD-SNP coalition 20/1
Lab-SNP coalition 21/1
Con-LD coalition 25/1
Con-Lab coalition 66/1
The way to do this one properly is to write down what chances you would give for each of these outcomes blind and then compare what you have written with what the bookies are offering. But if you've got this far then it's too late for that, so here are some questions instead. Is a three-party coalition really more likely than a two-party one (Lab-LD-SNP vs Lab-SNP)? If Labour failed to win outright, would it really be more likely to try to run a minority administration than to form a coalition with the Lib Dems? Are the chances really 66/1 against having the kind of government that ran Germany until recently? (Answer to the last one: at least!)
I don't see much value in the shorter odds: it's too far out from the next GE to be able to form a very good idea of whether the chance of, say, a Conservative majority is more like 1 in 5 or more like 1 in 3. As I've indicated above, polls can shift around quite a lot.
I'm more tempted by some of the longer-odds ones. Lab-SNP at 21/1 is probably the best one of those. The SNP is a hedgehog and it wants just one thing from any coalition, whereas the Lib Dems are foxes who want many things. That means that if Labour is just short of a majority then doing a deal with the SNP could be easier than doing a deal with the Lib Dems.
The other longer-odds bet worth considering is a Con minority government at 16/1. This is the 'it's all a bit of a mess' scenario in which Truss (or her replacement) overperforms and Starmer (or his replacement) underperforms, no doubt for reasons as yet unknown, and there will need to be another election before too long. Some kind of short-term caretaker administration does not seem impossible in those circumstances and although I suspect a Lab one is more likely than a Con one, I don't think the 4/1 vs 16/1 comparison in odds quite makes sense: the scenario we have in mind is one in which events have taken us very far from the current situation in which Starmer enjoys huge leads in every opinion poll and if things have changed that much then they are (surely?) only slightly more likely to result in Labour being just short of a majority than the Conservatives being just short. Again, at 16/1 that might tempt you.
Others
There are various odds and ends on offer but the one that caught my eye was 'Date of the next Scottish independence referendum', which includes 2024 at 14/1. A GE in 2023 or even perhaps in 2024 could result in a 2024 referendum, so that's not impossible. At 20/1 or above I would say it's worth considering, but 14/1 is perhaps not tempting enough. The odds on 2025 or later are 1/4 or 1/5, so not worth your money.
Overall
As I said above, my recommended bets are ones that are not likely to make you money. On the other hand, they could pay off in a big way. Imagine that someone told you that they came from the year 2025. "Prove it!" you say. "What will happen next?" "Well," the putative time traveller replies, "Badenoch takes over from Truss in early 2023 and she calls a snap autumn general election based on a promising (but deceptive) bounce in the polls when she took office, but then Labour wins the election despite Starmer having to stand down during the election campaign following a freak campaigning accident, leaving Rayner as PM. But the loss of Starmer hits Labour hard and it only just wins, needing to form a coalition with the SNP in order to obtain a stable majority and the price of that coalition was a 2024 independence referendum." It's not an unconvincing story. Indeed, it's much more convincing than the story you would be telling people if you were sent back in time to 2015 and tried to explain how Boris Johnson won an election by persuading people in Red Wall seats to vote Conservative but was then brought down by a surfeit of cake - oh and all that was after the UK left the EU. I'd ask the time traveller who wins the World Cup and bet accordingly.
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