FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
LONDON — The prime minister’s decision was known Rishi Sunak calling early elections for July 4th had been a risky bet: but no one imagined that it was the conservatives themselves who were betting bundles of pounds on the date of their defeat.
The UK Gambling Supervisory Commission is investigating hundreds of suspicious betsafter bets on the possible date of the vote had multiplied on the eve of Sunak’s announcement: four conservative leaders have ended up under investigation and a policeman from the prime minister’s security service was even arrested. It would essentially be a sensational case of insider trading, in which confidential information held by a small circle of people was used to make profits by placing bets with bookies.
The English, as we know, bet on practically everything: in the eighteenth century Lord Brummel had gambled a fortune on which drop of rain would slide first along the glass window of his club in St James’s, the famous White’s. And so it should not be surprising that in London there was even betting on the date of the elections.
Unfortunately for the conservatives, however, it turned out that Craig Williams, one of Sunak’s closest collaborators and candidate for the next consultation, had bet 100 pounds on the voting taking place in July: this was the starting point for the investigation which led to the involvement of Nick Mason, the party’s data manager, Tony Lee, campaign director, as well as of his wife Laura Saunders, also a candidate, as well as of the anonymous policeman who was arrested.
Now the Supervisory Commission is also sifting through any bets made by relatives and friends of the conservatives: and there were rumors that a minister could also be involved. It must be said that in all cases these are small bets: however Mason, for example, had placed dozens of bets, which would have netted him several thousand pounds overall.
This scandal is the final blow for the Conservatives, who were already trailing by more than twenty points behind Labour. Sunak is under pressure from the opposition but also from party colleagues to suspend the people involved: but so far he hasn’t lifted a finger. The only reaction was the announcement of an internal Tory investigation: a move condemned by Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, as an attempt to buy time.
Pressed by journalists, the prime minister said he was not aware of any other members of his party involved in the scandal, much less members of the government: but it is a defense that sounds a bit weak. The only thing he firmly ruled out was that he himself had made political bets (and not even his wife).
It is a truly inglorious end to the reign for the party that has governed Great Britain for the last 14 years, embroiled in a scandal that for many brought back memories of Partygate, the party affair in Downing Street during the lockdown that overwhelmed the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
But now there are only ten days until the change of season.
