Rishi Sunak’s gamble was considerable. Five weeks ago, the British prime minister bet on his belief that a summer election might offer his Conservative Party a better chance of retaining power than waiting until the fall.
Call a instant election It was Mr Sunak’s final throw of the dice. But it has since emerged that, in the days before his desperate announcement in the pouring rain on 22 May, a number of colleagues and subordinates had made more literal bets.
Looking at data from the week before Mr Sunak’s announcement, bookmakers noticed an increase in betting The sums involved were modest (only a few thousand pounds), but the sudden flurry of activity was enough to warrant further investigation.
The question of whether these bets were made by politicians, using inside knowledge of Mr Sunak’s intentions to make a quick profit, has come to dominate what could be the Tories’ final days in power. It also sums up how some parts of the electorate view the party that has governed Britain for 14 years.
“All of this has heightened public concern,” said Luke Tryl, executive director of More in Common, a research group. “It gets right to the point: one rule for them, one rule for everyone else.”
Craig Williams, one of Mr Sunak’s top parliamentary aides and a Conservative candidate in the election, was the first to come forward. under surveillance after The Guardian reported that he had bet on a July election on May 19, three days before the prime minister’s announcement. Now suspended from the campaign, he admitted an “error of judgment” but insisted he had not committed a criminal offence.
As the Gambling Commission, the regulator which oversees Britain’s rich and varied betting sector, has extended its investigation, a number of other senior conservative officials have been designated as under investigation.
They included Tony Lee, the party’s campaigns director, and his wife, Laura Saunders, a potential Conservative candidate in the next election, who has since been suspended by the party.
Nick Mason, the Conservatives’ data director, has taken a sabbatical after being told he too is under investigation. Rumours are circulating that several other Conservative staffers could soon be named in the probe.
One of the officers protecting Mr Sunak was meanwhile arrested following allegations he also placed bets on the election timing, and the Metropolitan Police have confirmed She is investigating a number of other law enforcement officials.
This scandal is a new blow for Mr. Sunak, who is campaigning less to win the elections, scheduled for July 4, than to stem his party’s potential losses.
He already had caused an uproar after leaving the 80th anniversary of D-Day commemorations early to give a television interview, a decision for which he later apologized profusely. He was later the target of widespread ridicule after claiming that he had struggled as a child because his parents had not allowed him to have satellite television.
The gambling allegations have compounded the damage, pollsters said, adding to the sense of a party out of touch with reality that appears to consider itself above ethical concerns.
What was potentially most corrosive was “the perception that we operate outside the rules we set for others,” said Michael Gove, one of the most high-profile Conservative lawmakers. told the Sunday Times. “It was damaging in the Partygate era,” he said, referring to the lockdown-breaking party scandal in Boris Johnson’s Downing Street during the pandemic, “and it’s damaging here.”
Political betting is a growing industry – more than $1.5 billion was wagered on the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, making it likely the largest gaming event of all time – but Markets on when elections might be called are, insiders say, inherently niche.
They are effectively run as novelties, designed to attract publicity and, hopefully, new customers, according to a longtime political betting expert, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the industry.
They are not designed, he says, to generate huge returns. Bookmakers simply aim not to lose money on these stocks, assuming that there will be people – not just lawmakers but various party apparatchiks – who have access to better information than they do. To limit their losses, they limit the amount of money anyone can wager on the market.
Bets made in the days leading up to Mr Sunak’s announcement matched those expectations. Mr Williams, for example, is accused of betting just £100 ($125), for winnings that are said to have amounted to just a few hundred pounds. “These are not life-changing sums for senior politicians,” said Joe Twyman, director of Deltapoll, a public opinion consultancy.
Indeed, it was the small size of the market that may have alerted authorities to unusual activity in the first place: this surge would likely not be noticed in a market like horse racing or football.
Britain has a curious relationship with betting, perhaps best illustrated by its place in sport. In football, for example, as in baseball, players are completely forbidden from betting on their own sport.
Last year, England striker Ivan Toney was banned for six months for gambling on games. Brazilian midfielder Lucas Paquetá could be banned for life if found guilty of gambling on games he played in. He has vigorously denied the allegations.
But both Mr Toney and Mr Paquetá play for clubs, Brentford and West Ham respectively, that were sponsored last season by betting companies. They play in stadiums that bear the logos of the betting shops. And Brentford’s owner, Matthew Benham, bought the club with money he earned during his career as a professional sports bettor.
This kind of cognitive dissonance around gambling is familiar in Britain. If gambling takes place in one of the thousands of bookmakers’ shops on the country’s high streets, it is seen as a social scourge, a worrying and pernicious addiction.
If this takes place at Royal Ascotand you wear a nice hat, it’s the social event of the season. It was telling that Mr Williams, the Prime Minister’s aide, described his bet as a “beat” — a British term for a small bet, a bet that is inherently trivial, harmless and fun.
The election scandal resonated with voters not because they disapprove of all gambling, experts said, but because of what it suggests about the ethics of the ruling party.
“That sums up what everyone was already thinking,” Mr. Twyman said. “This reinforces an existing narrative built around the historical issues of Partygate. And that has an opportunity cost: people are talking about that, rather than what conservatives want them to talk about. »
According to More in Common’s Mr. Tryl, the extent to which this has affected ordinary people is staggering. Its data suggests that the betting scandal, along with Mr Sunak’s “gaffes” around D-Day and his comments about cable TV, have become defining themes of the campaign.
The allegations haven’t made much difference in the polls, but that should be of little relief to conservatives, Mr. Tryl said, because it reflects not how little the public cares, but how much l The electorate cares. already shot against his party. “A lot of people had already left,” he said.
This is certainly the opinion of the bookmakers: the Conservatives are currently 70/1 to retain power on July 4.
