Britain is headed for a makeover: after a gambling scandal, no one is putting money on Sunak

A week before the British elections, the same dynamic is getting stronger: the Conservative Party is doing everything it can to lose them, while Labor only has to stand by and scoop up more and more seats in Parliament. A political betting scandal involving senior Conservative Party officials, police stationed at Downing 10 and even a minister in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s cabinet has hit the headlines, just days before the Conservatives face what could be their biggest defeat in a century.

The reports started already two weeks ago. The betting agency Edbrooks, whose branches can be found on every main street in British cities, and which allows betting on politics, sports, horses and what not, reported that it had handed over to the police the details of a political figure who bet that the elections would be held in July. Before that, rumors swirled for months when Sunak – who was not elected to the position by the British but was appointed head of the party after Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – would address the people and announce an election. Within days it became clear that Sunak’s personal parliamentary secretary was the one who raked in several hundred pounds for the successful bet.

The damage is deepening: even the minister raked in the cash

But the affair did not end there. In recent days, it has been revealed that senior members of the Conservative Party, including the person in charge of information in the party, the person in charge of the political campaign and his wife (who is a candidate on behalf of the Conservatives in a constituency in Bristol) and another “number of figures connected to the party”, according to the authorities, are being investigated on suspicion of having placed bets of thousands of pounds on a date The intended election. They weren’t the only ones caught with their hand in the cookie jar: at least five officers stationed at Downing 10 are also being investigated for successful betting that the election would be brought forward to early July Money with the help of “insider information”, which is a criminal offense.

The political damage caused by the affair only increased, after it became clear at the beginning of the week that no less than a minister in Sonak’s cabinet, Alistair Jack, had boasted to colleagues in recent days that he had made at least £2,100 from betting that the country’s general election would be held in July. The minister said in his defense that He did so based on “political sense”, and that he placed the bet long before the certain date was known, but the fact that this was being done by senior politicians in the party that aspires to continue to rule in Britain aroused public disgust.

Even so, the conservatives began their blitz campaign at a low point, but the affair continued to hurt them. This while the Labor leader Keir Starmer has managed, so far at least, to walk between the drops and stay away from media scandals. When it was revealed this week that a Labor candidate named Kevin Craig, who is running for a seat on behalf of the party in Suffolk County, had also placed a bet (against himself), he was immediately suspended and the donations made to him returned. So far, the affair is mainly attributed to conservatives. Two-thirds of respondents in a recent UK poll said political gambling was “unacceptable”. Support for the conservatives dropped by three percent to only 20%, according to a weighted survey, in the last month.

Tried to reduce the damage only after calls from the outside

Sunak himself tried to minimize the political damage, withdrawing support from two conservative politicians suspected in the current case, but only days after the opposition called on him to do so. He said that he was “very angry” with those involved and that he would do everything to “remove them from the ranks of the party”. The party tried to convey to the public a message according to which “it is sad that the issue of gambling is being dealt with days before a crucial election”, but an investigation by non-governmental organizations found that two issues have so far received unusual attention from the public in the current campaign: the gambling affair, known as GambleGate, and Sunak’s early departure From the commemoration of the invasion of Normandy.

In Normandy’s case, Sunak has no one to blame but himself. He participated in the international ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the invasion, but had to leave early in favor of a television interview, in which he sought to respond to allegations that he was slandering Labor with false data. The decision ignited a lot of anger towards Sunak, and conservative party officials said that had it not been for the election, it could have led to an attempt to oust him from the leadership of the party.

Sunak apologized and admitted that in retrospect it was a mistake, but when the interview was broadcast it turned out that he actually apologized to the interviewer Paul Brand for the delay, since the ceremony delayed his return from France. According to a survey, this was a serious blow to Sunak’s image, even more serious than the gambling affair.

Meanwhile, the one who is also garnering headlines and media attention is Nigel Farage, candidate of the populist “Reform” party on the right. The politician, who announced that he entered the race to “inject some interest into the most boring campaign in modern British history”, had a milkshake thrown in his face on the first day of the campaign. Since then, he managed to promise the British tax breaks in the billions, an immediate improvement in the health care system, and this week he also called for a peace conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which would put an end to the war in Ukraine.

The extreme rhetoric is good for the Reform Party

It seems that the extreme rhetoric and frequent appearances in the media do the party good in terms of public support, and it stands at 17% support, not far from the conservatives. In practice, because of the regional election system in the UK, the party is not expected to get many representatives into parliament (between zero and ten according to the polls), but will definitely hurt Sunak and the conservatives by splitting the right-wing vote.

These incidents and the competition from Farage do not bode well for the conservatives in the elections, which will be held on July 4. Labor’s victory, according to the latest polls, is almost impossible.

For those who still have an appetite for political betting, £100 in Ladbrokes on a Labor victory will yield just £1. Whoever bets that they will win a majority in the next parliament will only get four. On the other hand, someone who bet on Sunak and the Conservatives winning the same amount would rake in £3,400. In the current state of affairs, it’s hard to see who would take such a bet, even within the party.