IN the search for clues as to who will win the unpredictable Hampstead and Kilburn seat at next week’s general election, we’ve been grasping at what people who put their hard cash on the outcome think. Yup, the bookmakers.

The usual ‘what the fudge do they know’ rules apply to betting markets, but the Conservatives were quoted at 1/10F – i.e. bet £100 to win just a tenner – to take the constituency at the start of the campaign. Paddy Power meanwhile had Tulip Siddiq as an outsider, 5-1 shot. But this evening the market was levelling up with hardly anything between the two frontrunners in the bookies’ minds. They are struggling to call it. Tulip is now odds-on herself with the same bookmaker at 10/11, even if Claire-Louise remains the favourite at 4-5.

Has the market been artificially moved by the placing of big bets on Tulip? Maybe, but the trend is similar in neighbouring Westminster North where the odds on Labour’s Karen Buck surviving are down from 5/2 to even – and the price on Lindsey Hall drifting.