This time last year the question was not when Jeremy Corbyn would leave, but whether he would quit before he was removed in the wake of the landslide Conservative victory everyone was predicting. Fast forward a few weeks and people were saying the same thing about Theresa May after the Conservatives failed to get a majority. Now, thanks to his tone-deaf response to the anti-Semitism crisis, Jeremy Corbyn is again the favourite to be the first of the four main party leaders to depart.
Indeed, Betfair currently puts the odds on Corbyn leaving first at 2.3 (43%). Theresa May is now only second favourite at 2.52 (40%), with Vince Cable at 4 (25%) and the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon at 8 (12.5%). It’s important to point out that this isn’t a very liquid market, with only £1,279 matched so far. Still, people are willing to take a limited amount of money on Corbyn, May and Sturgeon, so it is still worth considering (not to mention its contrast with Paddy Power’s offer of 1/6 on May going first).
At the moment, May is clinging on, helped by the fact that she’s managed to delay the big Brexit decisions and Conservative reluctance to risk causing an election. However, I think that the strains of trying to keep the Tories together will lead her to stand down at some point in the next two years, possibly after we formally leave the EU. By contrast, Corbyn’s stubbornness means that he will stay on, even though a new leader would do a much better job of holding the government to account. I’d therefore take Betfair’s money on May going first (I’m going
to put £2 on her myself).