Scandal

Betting scandal engulfs UK election

Conservative figures are accused of betting on the timing of the snap election. The scandal couldn’t come at a worse moment for Rishi Sunak.

By Andrew McDonald and Rosa Prince

At least some Tories are winning from Rishi Sunak’s snap election gamble.

Multiple Conservative candidates and figures close to the British prime minister are being investigated over alleged bets on the timing of the U.K.’s general election, in the most jaw-dropping moment of the race for No. 10 Downing Street so far.

It’s a huge headache for a Conservative Party that is already facing electoral annihilation — and an open goal for the opposition Labour Party that hopes to replace them.

British rules mean the date of an election is largely in the prime minister’s gift. Sunak took the country by surprise when he announced a snap poll for July 4.

But it has since been revealed that two separate Conservative candidates and — in the latest bombshell — the party’s own director of campaigning, Tony Lee, are being probed by Britain’s Gambling Commission over bets placed on the timing of the vote.

Craig Williams, a Tory candidate and parliamentary aide to the prime minister, was the first to come under scrutiny. He is alleged to have placed a £100 bet on the timing of the poll just days before Sunak went public and called the vote. He’s apologized for a “huge error of judgment” and admitted he had a “flutter” on the election.

The BBC revealed Wednesday night that Tory candidate Laura Sanders, who recently worked in Conservative HQ, was also being looked into by the watchdog. Labour are calling for her head.

Saunders is the wife of Lee, the Conservatives’ director of campaigning. Lee himself is also, the BBC reported, under investigation for a bet on the timing of the election. The party confirmed Lee, meant to be steering the Conservative ship, has taken a leave of absence with two weeks still to run on the campaign trail.

“We have been contacted by the Gambling Commission about a small number of individuals. As the Gambling Commission is an independent body, it wouldn’t be proper to comment further, until any process is concluded,” a Conservative Party spokesperson said.

It’s not just political players under the microscope, either.

On Wednesday night, the Metropolitan Police confirmed that an officer in Sunak’s police protection team had been suspended and later arrested as the gambling watchdog probes alleged bets “related to the timing of the general election.”

Capping the election campaign’s descent into farce, the Conservatives’ official X account had tweeted only on Wednesday night: “If you bet on Labour, you can never win” — alongside a video of a roulette wheel.

Awful timing

The scandal has gone nuclear at the worst possible time for Sunak.

His party is staring down the barrel of its worst-ever election result, on current polling, and he faces a grilling from members of the public later Thursday in a BBC Question Time special.

Labour — who are pitching themselves as the “change” option after 14 years of Conservative government — are swiftly seizing on it. “If it was one of my candidates, they’d be gone and their feet would not have touched the floor,” leader Keir Starmer said Thursday.

Sunak’s survival prospects weren’t exactly rosy before the scandal.

But the affair has much potential for what campaign experts call “cut through,” a moment that resonates profoundly with a public that may not usually pay much attention to politics.

One of the dominant features of British politics in the two decades is profound mistrust of politicians — and a sense that those who set the rules do not themselves abide by them.

Britain’s 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal saw revelation after revelation of lawmakers helping themselves to taxpayer cash.

That mistrust that was amplified by the recent “Partygate” scandal, when Boris Johnson’s Downing Street carried on partying through the Covid lockdown even as the rest of the public were ordered to stay home.

Investigations into the latest affair are still underway and the full picture is yet to emerge.

But the accusation that campaign figures used privileged information about something as sacred as the date of an election — when millions get to exercise their democratic right — to make a quick buck already looks hugely damaging to the governing party.

It’s difficult to see how the public won’t now use that democratic privilege to hit the Conservatives even harder where it hurts most: the ballot box.