John O'Neill

The betting markets are all-but-ready to crown Boris Johnson as the next Conservative leader. After it became clear that Leave had won, the implied chance of Johnson succeeding David Cameron spiked to over 50 per cent – while the chance of George Osborne taking over plummeted. But these are the same betting markets that predicted a 14 per cent chance of Leave yesterday – so while this market is fun to watch, you might prefer to leave your money in your pocket.

Two polls putting Leave well clear of Remain – five points according to yesterday's Guardian/ICM poll, seven points  according to a Times/YouGov poll  – have seen bookies slash their odds on Brexit, implying that it's more likely than ever before – as shown by the chart above. A few weeks ago, the betting markets thought there was an 18 per cent chance of Leave: now it's 41 per cent. This does mean the markets think Remain is the more likely outcome, due to the status quo effect: Whatever people tell pollsters, they tend to stick to the devil they know in referenda. The above chart is calculated by taking an average of all bookies’ odds, which (at time of writing) imply a 41 per cent chance of a vote to Leave.

The knives have been out for David Cameron today. The Sunday Telegraph splashed on Priti Patel saying that he is too rich to care about immigration; the Sunday Times on a letter to the PM, signed by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, calling his failure on the migration target ‘corrosive of public trust in politics’. And the Sunday Times quoted a Tory MP saying ‘I don’t want to stab the prime minister in the back — I want to stab him in the front so I can see the expression on his face... You’d have to twist the knife, though, because we want it back for [George] Osborne’. Yikes! The morning's papers were just the start.

Today’s migration figures (net migration was 333,000 in 2015, up by 20,000 on the previous year) are bad news for the Remain campaign – but there’s a crumb of comfort for them in today’s GDP and business investment figures. This second estimate of GDP growth is unchanged from last month’s, still saying that the economy grew by 0.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2016. But business investment unexpectedly fell by 0.5 per cent. Whatever the reasons for it, Remain can say it’s due to uncertainty over the outcome of the referendum – and dish up more Brexit fearmongering: if businesses are putting off investment because we might leave, what terrible things might happen if we do go?

There must be an element of masochism in Theresa May that leads her to promise the electorate something she cannot give them: net migration in the tens of thousands. Figures released today show that the balance of people coming into the county rose to 330,000 in the year to March 2015, putting the Home Secretary further than ever—further than any Home Secretary in history—from the target. [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/6xuHX/index.html"] An increase of 84,000 in the number of people coming the UK, and a fall of 9,000 in the number of people leaving the country made up the 94,000 increase in net migration on the previous year. The balance of migrants from within the EU increased by 53,000 to 183,000.

David Cameron and George Osborne's campaigning is focused on seats the Tory party wants to hold onto, while Ed Miliband is taking the fight to seats Labour wants to win from them. That's the view in Labour HQ, and they've got figures to back it up: Since 30 March, when the ‘short campaign’ began, Cameron and Osborne have made 61 campaign visits between them, Labour says. More than half have been to Tory-held seats, many of them on the ‘40/40’ list of seats that the Tories need to keep and win in order to end up with a majority. Here's where they've been: Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, Labour says, are campaigning to take seats from the Tories, with three-quarters of their 67 campaign visits to Tory held seats. [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.

Nobody's perfect, are they? The IFS found something to criticise today for all the parties — the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems and SNP — whose tax and spending plans it has examined. The main charges are of leaving questions about spending and borrowing unanswered: The Conservatives ‘have not been completely explicit about exactly what level of borrowing they would want to achieve’ and nor have the SNP, Labour has ‘provided disappointingly little information on what they would borrow’.

Here's what to expect 52p top rate of tax Ed Balls won’t be looking for money when he says the ‘additional’ top rate of tax will go back up — there’s no evidence it will raise any. Top-band income tax will be 50p, which added to the extra 2p National Insurance would give Britain an effective top tax rate of 52 per cent. If it’s a temporary measure, as Balls has hinted, one-percenters will defer bonuses and disappear from the statistics (a problem, when they pay £1 in every £4 of income tax). If it’s permanent, they may scarper. If Balls really wanted to raise money from the rich he’d cut the 45p rate. But what he’s really after is banking public support by banker-bashing.

Academics gathered in London today to discuss how they predict the outcome of the most unpredictable election in living memory (© everyone), and they gave their current forecasts. They vary quite a bit with the predictions for the number of seats the Tories will get between 233 and 296 and for Labour from 261 seats to 312. Like the Political Studies Association's survey of several hundred academics, pollsters and journalists which was released last month, when you take the average of the predictions (to exploit the ‘wisdom of crowds’ and hopefully end up with a more accurate forecast), Labour is ahead but there's barely room for a cigarette paper between them and the Tories.

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