When Will Theresa May 'Dead Woman Walking' Resign? Forecast

By: Nadeem_Walayat

George Osborne the architect of the Conservative surprise general election victory of 2015 that no one saw coming as every polls based forecaster had been expecting a hung parliament with the most probable outcome being that for a Labour led coalition government. Instead David Cameron's Tories in 2015 eeked out a small outright majority government that gave the Conservatives the false confidence to go ahead with the EU referendum again based on the opinion polls that REMAIN just could not lose, but they did and so did Cameron and Osborne, replaced by May and Hammond.

Georgge Osborne states:

"Theresa May is a dead woman walking. It’s just how long she’s going to remain on death row. I think we will know very shortly. We could get to the middle of next week and it all collapses.”

“Or if it doesn’t, and I agree that a lot of Tory MP's don’t want a leadership campaign now, it will be delayed, but be in no doubt there would be a change. You’ve got the Prime Minister who’s supposed to have won the election in hiding.”

So it is pretty clear that George Osborne does not think Theresa May can cling on to her premiership for much longer. What's clear is that the election result has thrown the Tory party into a state of chaos, and so the very last thing the Tories and nation need right now is even more chaos by triggering a leadership election. So in my opinion the time to resign has come and gone i.e. on the morning of the election result.

Therefore despite being a 'dead woman walking' she is likely to continue as a crippled Prime Minister at least until Octobers Tory party conference as her resigning now could even trigger another general election probably before the end of August which is the very last thing a crippled Tory party will be seeking given the momentum that Jeremy Corbyn has built up that highly likely could see Labour at least as the largest party in another hung parliament or even win an outright election victory!

So the Tories fearing another imminent general election resulting in the loss of more seats have probably decided to solider on with a crippled Theresa May, hoping that once the chaos of the election result storm has passed that in a few months time they will then be able to replace Theresa May with likely candidates amongst those who stood before with Boris Johnson topping the list and the Home Secretary Amber Rudd not far behind, and again with 'little finger' Michael Gove expected to play his game of tory thrones role.

Meanwhile here collegues have been exacting their pounds of flesh, for gone are her two key advisors, and in comes 'little finger' Michael Gove as Theresa May attempts to write a Queens Speech that is palatable to the DUP.

And whomever the Tories choose as their next leader and Prime Minister, one things for certain is that person cannot be as bad as Theresa May! We took her silences when compared to the froth of Bliar and Cameron as signs of strength and intelligence when in reality there was nothing there! The best word that describes Theresa May is AVERAGE! The election campaign revealed that she does not have a clue what she she is doing!

The bottom line is the Tories fear triggering another election so at this early stage my best guessimate is that Theresa May is mostly likely to resign by or at the October 2017 Conservative party conference. Though should political chaos contineu to reign then the dead woman walkign may shuffle into early 2018.

UK General Election 2017 Result

The following table illustrates the unexpected nature of the 2017 general election result that no one saw coming, as the pollsters once more were not just wrong but floating off into a fantasy land of a Conservative Landslide election victory where early on the consensus was for Theresa May's government winning over 400 seats! Similarly expectations were widespread for a Labour bloodbath loss resulting in an error of 87 seats against that which subsequently transpired.

	GE 2017	GE 2015		*Pollsters Av	error
Conservatives	318	331	-13	394	+76
Labour	262	232	+30	175	-87
SNP	35	56	-21	51	+16
Lib Dem	12	8	+4	10	-2
Other	24	23	+1

*Polls based early to mid May 2017 seats forecasts

Worthless Opinion Polls Fooled Theresa May into Calling a Snap General Election

The 2017 General Election proved to be one of the most volatile elections in terms of the opinion polls for many years, which has seen the opinion polls based forecasters literally playing pin the tail on the donkey that convinced Theresa May to call a BrExit snap general election. The pollsters forecasting a Tory landslide election victory of over 400 seats mostly persisted until barely to 2 weeks before polling day as the following table illustrates:

UK General Election Forecasts - May 2017

Whilst I repeatedly warned that the pollsters had been consistently wrong for every major election since 2010 and that it was highly probable that they were very wrong again as illustrated by my following video:

And where subsequently the pollsters did exhibit extreme volatility in their poll numbers that translated into a forecast of seats range for the Tories from 302 to 420. Whilst here are the final seat forecasts just prior to Thursdays vote, including my own based on the sum of my analysis of the preceding 6 weeks and separately based on my house prices based forecast which proved by far the most reliable forecaster for the outcome of the 2015 General Election, and once turned out to be the closest to the actual outcome.

UK General Election Final Forecasts

*YouGov forecast two opposite outcomes so that they could claim to have called the election outcome correctly whatever the result.

Ensure you are subscribed to my always free newsletter for my forthcoming in-depth analysis that Deconstructs the UK General Election 2017 result in lessons learned for forecasting future elections. And to my youtube channel for video analysis and forecasts.

By Nadeem Walayat

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free.

Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication that presents in-depth analysis from over 1000 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets, thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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