Who will be PM in ten years?

Punters at William Hill reckon that the most likely person to be Prime Minister in ten years' time will be our very own David Cameron (DC has been captioned as a Labour MP by the BBC today btw).  The prospect of not having another leadership election for a decade won't be good for ConservativeHome's traffic!

Gordon Brown is the second favourite.  Ten years of Gordon Brown will produce an eye-wateringly large tax burden.  It must not be allowed to happen.

George Osborne is the Conservative most reckoned to be PM if David Cameron has departed.  My money would go on someone like Ed Vaizey but I'm not a betting man.

Comments

[Umbrella man]

The war on terror will be all around us by then.

Whoever it will be, he or she will need to be a warleader.

[Andrew]

I would also put my money on Ed Vaizey too. Personally, I think Ed will be the next Conservative PM.

[Ben Surtees]

Vaizey for me as well, then again in ten years time who knows [shruggs shoulders]... but of those current in parliament somone like Vaizey, I'm trying to think of a credible potential Labour PM for ten years time but I'm at a loss frankly!

[Jennifer Wells]

Definitely Ed Vaizey if he overcomes his Lazy Vaizey reputation.

[Andrew Woodman]

Thank goodness your not a betting man Tim. In 10 years the real value of the money you bet will have halved. Can't see Vaizey as a Pm myself. Bit too much of a chat show Charlie. The idea of Brown being PM for ten years is truly horrifying.

These markets are only put up to give William Hill free publicity of course.

[Londoner]

"The prospect of not having another leadership election for a decade won't be good for ConservativeHome's traffic!"

Don't worry, I'm sure there'll be lots of things for your posters to carp about during the ten years! Including no doubt that his Government's majority is pathetically small considering how awful Brown was as PM, that he's still got at least one other Old Etonian in the Government and, crikey, no Government has been as far behind in the polls since..well... Gordon Brown thumped Charles Clarke in front of Mrs Thatcher's statue in the Members' Lobby...

All would agree though that Cameron had been magnificent at the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations last year - almost as sure a touch as Blair in his early days. Amazing really when he has already been PM for 7 years and so far only a couple of posters on ConHome have demanded his departure date. Possibly because that Dukedom to Baroness Thatcher in his first Honours list, with entail down the female line, was such a popular move...

[Chris Baylor]

If Ed Vaizey is going to be the next Conservative Prime Minister, then we may as well just give up now. The man is lazy, arrogant and incompetent. Apparently it is a pre-requisite these days to lead the party or rise to a position of influence that one have attended Oxford, be born of Upper Class stock and have a Yummy Mummy of a wife.

When will the chattering classes in London and the Home Counties recognise that the Conservative Party needs to reach out beyond its geographical myopia? Just because evangelical environmentalism plays well in Witney or in Wimbledon, does not mean that the voters in Walsall or in Warrington will share that belief. The Conservative Party is destined to failure if it cannot reach out to the aspirant working class and the struggling middle class outside of London and the South East.

For all of the fanfare directed towards a prospective Conservative resurgence in local elections in the Midlands and the North, as well as predicted gains in Wales, personal experience in those regions and my interactions with activists tells another story. The Conservative Party is still regarded as a party of privilege and Cameron, Vaizey, Osborne et al are the worst possible advertisement for that perception.

Despite what we may believe, British society is still class ridden and Labour has not yet played the 'class card' to any significant effect against Cameron. While solicitors and bankers in London may be able to laugh off pictures of Cameron in the Bullingdon or stories of Osborne's alleged activities at Oxford, voters up North may tack a slightly different attitude.

The city bonuses season and the rapid economic growth of the South East are meaningless to people living in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle or even Bristol or Southampton. While newly-qualified solicitors in Magic Circle firms in London may now earn 65,000 pounds a year, in Manchester 20,000 pounds is more realistic. Graduates are faced with few truly lucrative career opportunities outside of London. The agglomeration of wealth in London and South East, as well as the vast disparity in salaries, means that we are headed towards a two-tier country.

Unless the Conservative Party can truly speak to the whole of the country, including Scotland and Wales and the North, as well as the metropolitan elites of London and the South-East, then we will never be back in government. We will likely make gains at the expense of the Liberal Democrats in the South-East and London at the next election, as well as in Labour marginals in the South. However, in order to form a majority, we need to take seats like Bury North and Wolverhampton South West. It is difficult to see, despite what current opinion polls state, that this will be possible under a Conservative Party led by David Cameron and his ilk.

The current opinion poll lead, while encouraging, is sustained during a period when the Labour Party has been in power for ten years, is prosecuting a deeply unpopular war and has a departing leader. While Brown may not appear popular in opinion polls, we only need look at opinion polls in France to see that a leader (Sarkozy) can be unlikable but still perceived as strong and effective. Gordon Brown does not need to be as cuddly or as cute as Cameron in order to win.

If the Labour Party are able to convey an image of Brown as a consumnate professional and commanding leader, then we are in deep trouble. The economic stability of the past ten years and the continual rise in incomes, as well as house prices, combined with a popular perception that taxation, despite the increase in indirect taxation, has not increased markedly, means that Brown will claim the credit for economic success.

If the Conservative Party is to win, Cameron needs to radically alter his approach or we need to be looking to the next leader after Cameron. Hopefully the Notting Hill Tories will find a home in the Liberal Democrats and a populist Centre-Right party which speaks for the whole nation, rather than merely the wealthy and privileged, can be built. A party built on Thatcher's values or even Major's soapbox heritage, as opposed to the privilege of MacMillan, is the only viable route to power.

I sincerely hope that Ed Vaizey or anyone of a similar vein, does not become Prime Minister.

[comstock]

Thank goodness your not a betting man Tim. In 10 years the real value of the money you bet will have halved.

Thats a good point, Andrew. On that basis 5/2 doesn't look that good. You'd be better sticking the money in the bank.

There is also the question of whether Cameron will get a second shot if he loses (even narrowly) in 2009.

Brown's odds are even dafter- they assume three further Labour election wins. I'm a Labour supporter. I'm also not stupid.

[TomTom]

Mohammed Iqbal of the Muslim People's Party in coalition with the New Liberals

[Og]

These odds are mostly laughable. Anyone who has ever heard Ed Balls speak publicly and is prepared to go for skinny odds of 12/1 needs therapy, quickly. Yvette who? Lembit Op.... ha ha hee hee, stop, stop, you're killing me!

BTW, long-term bets like this make sense only if the odds are huge or you have an account with the bookie; otherwise Andrew's warning is necessary to the novice punter.

[PW]

Given "Labour has not yet played the 'class card' to any significant effect against Cameron" and "Apparently it is a pre-requisite these days to lead the party or rise to a position of influence that one have attended Oxford, be born of Upper Class stock and have a Yummy Mummy of a wife" it sounds like Chris "chip on shoulder" Baylor thinks such a crass characterisation of Cameron is appropriate...

"If the Labour Party are able to convey an image of Brown as a consumnate professional and commanding leader, then we are in deep trouble." Can't really see how they can. The Blair legacy is the Brown legacy too, as Brown has recently admitted.

Cameron, like Blair before him, has captured the "zeitgeist" of the nation and win...

[601]

Someone from outside the south east next time please.

[stodge]

How about Brooks Newmark ?

[Cranmer]

His Grace finds this most amusing, but half suspects that the PM a decade hence will be a complete irrelevance...

In ten years' time the President of Europe will be one Anthony Blair, and the wheel will have come full circle.

[Bill]

For they sow the wind And they reap the whirlwind.

[Richard]

"Someone from outside the south east next time please."

What's wrong with the south east?

[houndtang]

Gauleiter Horst Von Nancyboy, of the European Imperium.

[Sasha]

Whilst I can see Cameron winning the next general election, I cannot see him having more than one term. Only if the Labour party tears itself apart will Cameron do any better, as for a government to last for more than one term, the opposition has to be unattractive to the majority of voters. We have to hope that after dumping Brown, Labour will implode, but to automatically presume that would be naive.

[Sasha]

Whilst I can see Cameron winning the next general election, I cannot see him having more than one term. Only if the Labour party tears itself apart will Cameron do any better, as for a government to last for more than one term, the opposition has to be unattractive to the majority of voters. We have to hope that after dumping Brown, Labour will implode, but to automatically presume that would be naive.

[Paul D]

Milliband for me

Brown will be PM for 3 years, calling the election in 2010
Cameron will win a slender majority and be PM for one term, until 2015
This will be followed by a Lib/Lab coalition with Milliband as PM until 2020 when the LDs are all but wiped out as the UK swings Conservative again

[Yet Another Anon]

I think Gordon Brown will be retiring as PM in 10 years time having won the 2009 & 2014 General Elections, David Cameron by then will be a Shadow Cabinet minister in Priti Patel's frontbench. Ed Balls will succeed Gordon Brown and Labour will win a narrow majority in 2019 although probably with fewer votes than the Conservatives. UKIP and the Conservative Party will by then have united with the Conservative mission being to withdraw from the EU and bring back Capital Punishment among other things. Priti Patel will then be PM from 2024 to 2044 and David Cameron will have a career as a cabinet minister, George Osborne might even be Chancellor of the Exchequer, maybe Nigel Farage as well?

Charles Kennedy, George Galloway and Robert Kilroy Silk will be merely footnotes in history.

[Robson]

Ed Vaizey as PM?!!! Surely you're jesting there? Justine Greening - Britain's second woman PM? Just a thought...

Cameron's got a lot of inner steel - I reckon he could well last two terms.

www.myspace.com/liberalconservative

[Yet Another Anon]

Brown's odds are even dafter- they assume three further Labour election wins. I'm a Labour supporter.
You are assuming that he would retire if Labour were to lose a General Election, especially if the Conservatives were to scrape in with a small majority or no majority at all either at the next General Election or the one following that then Gordon Brown might hang on and aim to get Labour back into power at the election following - William Gladstone, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath all refused to give up on losing a General Election and 5 of those made it back again at some point; Francoise Mitterand and Jacques Chirac both lost the Presidential race twice before winning twice; Richard Nixon lost in 1960 and made a comeback in 1968 winning twice.

Gordon Brown could have resigned the leadership and been re-elected as Labour leader in that time, Tony Blair indeed come have made a comeback at some point - all kinds of things can happen!

[Lord Cashcroft]

The way the Tories are heading the next PM will be Greg Dyke with Polly as home secretary.

[Andy]

Nick Clegg.

[CDM]

Cameron will scrape a majority in 2009, which will then be strengthened in 2013 (as defeat will plunge labour into years of factional in-fighting, as they try and remember what the party's for). Cameron will then quit in 2015, at which point a new leader will have to be selected to fight the Progressives (who will result from the merger of the Liberals and Labour).

[anon]

Nigel Farage :-)

[adam]

If you think Labour can bounce back in 10 years:

David Miliband
Yvette Cooper
Andy Burnham

If you think the Conservatives will hold sway:

Nick Hurd
Greg Clark
Sayeeda Warsi
Greg Hands

If you think the Lib Dems will somehow make it:

Nick Clegg

[Matt Davis]

PM in 10 years? It'll be somebody largely unknown right now, certainly won't be any of the current crop of supposed leaders. But as various other posters have said it won't really matter anyway because by then we in the UK will be merely an administrative unit of the Federal European Superstate and so will be being ruled by unelected Euro Officials with all of the power but none of the responsibility of the current PM.

[comstock]

You are assuming that he would retire if Labour were to lose a General Election,

Yes, although I think that is not an unreasonable assumption. Gordon Brown will have been in high office for 12 years in 2009, by 2017 he will be 66.

It's not out of the question he would stay on, but I think it is more likely than not he will go if Labour lose in 2009 or 2013.

Coupled with Andrew's point about money losing half its real value in 10 years it certainly makes those 7-2 odds look extremely ungenerous.

[comstock]

Just to show what rubbish these odds are....

I could be calculating these wrong, as I'm not a gambler (honest!) but if you compare them with leaving your money in (as an example) an ING ISA at 6% the 'real' Brown odds work out worse than evens and with Cameron you only make 40% over the ISA-even if you win

If you want to have a flutter for a laugh, great, but don't prented it is anything other than a rip-off moneywise.

[simon]

I have to agree with all the anti- 'vaizeylene' comments. PM in 10 years? Too soon to say.

[TheArtist]

I don't think Brown will win the next general election, but I also don't think he's going to stand down after sulking, vengfully in the waiting room for 10 years. What a coo that would be for Tony, sniggering quietly with Cherie whilst they down another magnum of champagne on a celeb yacht.

As for 10 years from now. It's a tricky one. I have a sneeky feeling Milliband is playing his cards very carefully, predicting Brown's defeat and planning to step into his shoes and win after Cameron.

Watch that chip on the shoulder Chris Baylor. It's your class prejudice, not that of David Cameron's which is the inhibiting factor. Remember that the fact that he was born into a family with a big house and some money doesn't make him incompetent as a leader, or prejudiced against people who weren't. Perhaps, unlike you, his outlook isn't blinkered by class.

[Yet Another Anon]

It's not out of the question he would stay on, but I think it is more likely than not he will go if Labour lose in 2009 or 2013.
If he were to lose the leadership election he would go immediately I think, but this is a man who spends almost all his time on policy issues, he has little life outside politics and has spent all his life since his teens on either academic or political pursuits, I'm sure he would find his own nature militating for him to continue and he would probably see a General Election loss with him as PM as something he had to rectify.

[malcolm]

A couple of rising stars from the new intake Grant Schapps and Greg Hands might be worth a long odds punt. For Chancellor you might want to look at a very capable fellow called Brooks Newmark.
Can't really bear to think about the prospect of a new Labour PM. Hain? Hoon? er Prescott? Their talent pool is endless.Not.

[Londoner]

Who would ever have predicted 10 years ago that the Prime Minister on 2 May 2007 would be Tony Blair? Not Gordon Brown presumably.

Or 10 years in advance: Major in 1980 or Thatcher in 1969. Or, in 1987 that Hague would be leader ten years' later or IDS in 1991.

As Harold Wilson might have said, 10 years is a long time in politics.

The PM on 1 May 2017 will in fact be...a joint Premiership of Zac Goldsmith, Lord Lawson and Prince William - as a result of the constitutional settlement of 2015 that the premiership must contain elements of Commons, Lords and Monarchy. Its policy on global warming is to determined by qualified majority voting.

[Yet Another Anon]

Who would ever have predicted 10 years ago that the Prime Minister on 2 May 2007 would be Tony Blair? Not Gordon Brown presumably.

Or 10 years in advance: Major in 1980 or Thatcher in 1969. Or, in 1987 that Hague would be leader ten years' later or IDS in 1991.
Many people in 1997 seemed to think Tony Blair would probably still be PM in 2017 let alone 2007, think it would depend what part of 1997 - have to admit that in the final weeks of the 1997 General Election I wondered if maybe the Conservative Party would pull off a narrow victory with a small majority simply because it seemed so eerily quiet, however it turned out that that was because most people didn't seem much dismayed by a Labour victory.

After the 1997 General Election with further defections and Labour in government nearly taking seats in parliamentary by-elections off the Conservatives it did start to seem as if Labour might even increase it's majority at the following General Election.