If you enjoy scoring tiny but likely returns on your wagers, then how about putting some money down on Vladimir Putin to win today’s presidential election in Russia? William Hill are currently offering odds of 1/100, if you’re interested. Like John Simpson, writing for this week’s Spectator, they regard this as ‘Russia’s Coronation Day’. A near cert.
The rest of Simpson’s article is worth reading, but it’s his conclusion that we’ll pull out here. Putin, he says, will ‘walk it in the first round’ today, but his medium-term future
looks far less secure:
‘Russia is changing. It can’t simply be told to shut up any more. Soon — not within six years, perhaps, but probably within 12 — people who regard themselves as middle-class will outnumber the traditional, malleable masses. When a BBC programme vox-popped people in Moscow the other day about the supposed assassination plot against Putin, they couldn’t find anyone who believed it.
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