Rishi Sunak’s gamble was significant. Five weeks ago, the British Prime Minister bet in the House of Representatives on his belief that summer elections could give his Conservative Party a better chance of retaining power than waiting until the fall.
Calling an early election was Mr Sunak’s latest pitch. But it has since emerged that in the days before he stood desperately in the pouring rain on May 22 and told the country he was going to the polls, a number of colleagues and subordinates had placed bets of the more literal kind.
When looking at the data from the week before Mr Sunak’s announcement, bookmakers noted that a spike in betting placed on the date of the election. The sums wagered were small – just a few thousand pounds in total – but the sudden frenzy of activity was enough to warrant further investigation.
The question of whether these bets were made by political operatives using insider knowledge of Mr Sunak’s intentions to make a quick profit has come to dominate the Conservatives’ final days in power. It also sums up how some sections of the electorate see the party that has governed Britain for 14 years.
“The whole thing has reinforced the public’s previous concerns,” said Luke Tryl, executive director of More in Common, a research group. “It gets straight to the point: ‘One rule for them, and one rule for everyone.'”
Craig Williams, one of Mr Sunak’s key parliamentary advisers and a Conservative candidate running for office, was the first to emerge under the control after The Guardian reported that he had placed a bet on a July election on May 19, three days before the Prime Minister’s announcement. Now suspended from the campaign, he has admitted he made an “error of judgement” but has insisted he committed no criminal offence.
As the Gambling Commission, the regulator that oversees Britain’s rich and varied gambling industry, expanded its investigation, a number of other senior Conservative staffers were named as subjects of investigation.
Among them were Tony Lee, the party’s campaign manager, and his wife Laura Saunders, a potential Conservative candidate in the upcoming election who has since been suspended by the party.
Nick Mason, the Conservatives’ director of data, has taken leave after learning he is also under investigation. Rumours are circulating that a number of other Conservative staff could soon be identified as part of the investigation.
One of the officers who protected Mr Sunak has since been arrested on charges that he also placed bets on the timing of the election, and the Metropolitan Police have confirmed it is investigating a number of other law enforcement officers.
The scandal is yet another blow to Mr Sunak as he campaigns less to win the election, scheduled for July 4, than to cushion his party’s potential losses.
He had already caused a stir after leaving the 80th anniversary of D-Day commemorations early to give a television interview, a decision for which he later apologized profusely. He then faced widespread ridicule after claiming that he had faced hardship as a child because his parents had not allowed him satellite television.
According to pollsters, the gambling allegations have only added to the damage. They reinforce the image of a party that is out of touch with reality and considers itself above ethical issues.
What was potentially most corrosive was “the perception that we are operating outside the rules we set for others,” said Michael Gove, one of the Conservatives’ most prominent lawmakers. told The Sunday Times“That was damaging at the time of Partygate,” he said, referring to the scandal over lockdown-breaking parties held in Boris Johnson’s Downing Street during the pandemic. “And it’s damaging here.”
Political betting is a growing industry, with more than $1.5 billion wagered on the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, making it possibly the biggest gambling event of all time. But markets for when elections are called are, insiders say, inherently niche markets.
According to a veteran political betting expert, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the sector, they are essentially run as novelties, designed to attract publicity and hopefully new customers.
They are not designed, he said, to generate huge profits. Bookmakers simply aim not to lose money on them, 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 anyone can bet on the market.
The bets made in the days just before Mr. Sunak were closed, lived up to that bill. Mr. Williams, for example, is accused of betting just £100 ($125), for winnings that would have been just a few hundred pounds. “These are not life-changing amounts of money for senior figures in politics,” said Joe Twyman, director of Deltapoll, a public opinion consultancy.
Indeed, it is the small size of the market that may have alerted authorities to unusual activity in the first place: the spike would likely go unnoticed in a market like horse racing or football.
Britain has a curious relationship with betting, perhaps best illustrated by its place within sport. For example, in football, just like in baseball, players are completely prohibited from betting on their own sport.
Last year, England striker Ivan Toney was banned for six months for gambling on games. Lucas Paquetá, a Brazilian midfielder, could face a lifetime ban if found guilty of gambling on matches he took part in. He has strongly denied the charges.
However, both Mr Toney and Mr Paquetá play for clubs – Brentford and West Ham respectively – that were sponsored by betting companies last season. They play in stadiums covered in betting shop logos. And Brentford’s owner, Matthew Benham, bought the club with money he earned in his hugely successful career as a professional sports bettor.
This kind of cognitive dissonance around gambling is familiar in Britain. When gambling takes place in one of the thousands of bookmakers’ shops on the country’s high streets, it is seen as a social blight, a disturbing and pernicious addiction.
If it takes place at Royal Ascot, and you’re wearing a nice hat, then it’s the social event of the season. It was significant that Mr. Williams, the Prime Minister’s Assistant, described his bet as a “flutter” – a Britishism for a small gamble, one that is inherently trivial, harmless and fun.
According to experts, the election scandal has resonated with voters not because they disapprove of gambling, but because of the suggestions it raises about the ethics of the ruling party.
“It encapsulates what everyone already thought,” Mr Twyman said. “It reinforces an existing narrative that has been built around the historical issues of Partygate. And there is an opportunity cost to it: people are talking about this, rather than what the Conservatives want to talk about.”
The extent to which it penetrates to ordinary people is breathtaking, says Mr Tryl van More in Common. The data shows that the gambling scandal, along with Mr Sunak’s D-Day “gaffes” and his comments on cable TV, have become the defining issues of the campaign.
The allegations have not made much difference in the polls, but that should come as a small relief to the Conservatives, Mr Tryl said, because it reflected not how little the public cared, but how much of the electorate had already turned against his party. “A lot of people had already left,” he said.
At least that’s the bookmakers’ view, with the Conservatives currently at 70/1 odds to remain in power on July 4.
