Betfred is predicting an historic by-election defeat for Boris Johnson.
The Liberal Democrats are odds-on for a stunning victory at Tiverton and Honiton on Thursday, overturning the biggest majority ever in a by-election in British political history.
The seat is up for grabs after Tory MP Neil Parish resigned after admitting to watching pornography in the House of Commons.
He won the seat in the 2019 General Election with a thumping 24,239 majority – and defeat on Thursday will send shockwaves all the way to Downing Street.
Hundreds of politically-savvy Betfred punters, who cashed in on Donald Trump’s against-the-odds election as US president and again with the Brexit vote, have made the Devon vote the busiest by-election market in Betfred’s 55-year history.
Of more than 500 punters who have put their money where their mouths are, betting between £2 and £10,000 on the outcome, 47% reckon a win for the Liberal Democrats’ Richard Foord is on the cards and 43% reckon it’ll be Conservative candidate Helen Hurford – while the remaining 10% predicting success for Labour or the Green Party.
Betfred organised £1 free bets in our shop on Bampton Street in Tiverton town centre, where the majority of our canny customers thought the Tories were best value to triumph at 11/4.
However, the Lib Dems are as short as 1/4 to win the seat, with Labour and the Greens as big as 150/1 while the other four parties – namely Heritage, Reform UK, For Britain and UKIP – are all 500/1.
Tiverton shop manager Darren Newberry (pictured, main image) said: “Normally all the banter as you would expect is about the football, horse racing and greyhounds, but this week the shop has been buzzing with everyone talking about the by-election. The interest levels have been phenomenal.”
One Betfred customer, Roger Hart – a 69-year-old grandad – said that the sitting MP had made a “silly mistake” and that the Prime Minister had endured a tough two years coping with Covid, the war in Ukraine, cost of living crisis and most recently the rail strikes – not to mention Partygate.
The retired brewery worker added that he’d previously voted Labour, although this time he’d be backing Boris partly because “there is no one else to be Prime Minister.”
He reckons the farming community in the constituency will hold sway, and that the Conservatives have never let the farmers down.
Meanwhile supermarket cleaner Anthony Winslet, 43, is planning to vote Lib-Dem. He said: “They deserve a chance and I prefer them to the Conservatives. It’s not a protest vote but the odds show that this time there is a great chance of a change here.”
