There is something inevitably British about the temptation to bet on the date of your burial, taking advantage of the confidential medical information at your disposal. At the same time that polls are accumulating that predict a historic debacle for the Conservative Party in the July 4 elections, a betting scandal has further muddied – if that is even possible – the campaign of the prime minister, the conservative Rishi Sunak. The National Gaming Commission is investigating, according to the BBC, at least three people close to the party for betting on the date on which the head of Government would finally call the polls, presumably using the internal information they had at their disposal.
The first to admit this was candidate Craig Williams, who for the last two years worked as Sunak’s private parliamentary secretary. It is a position of trust, unpaid, through which a deputy acts as the eyes and ears of a minister – in this case, much more relevant, of a prime minister – to inform him of everything that is going on in the Chamber of Deputies. the Commons.
Williams admitted the clumsiness on his X (formerly Twitter) account, when he began receiving calls from some journalists. “I made a bet on the general elections [la fecha en la que iban a ser convocadas] a few weeks ago. As a result, a routine investigation has been initiated, and I confirm that I will cooperate fully. I don’t want to be a distraction in this campaign. I should have thought before about the image that my actions were going to give,” admitted the deputy.
Sunak surprised on May 23 by bringing forward the elections, which everyone expected to take place next autumn, to July 4.
Both the Gambling Commission and the Conservative Party itself have so far avoided commenting on an ongoing investigation, although the newspaper Guardianhas already reported that Williams bet 100 pounds (about 120 euros) that the elections would be in July. He did it just three days before Sunak’s announcement and his earnings, the newspaper estimates, would have been about 600 euros.
Two more cases
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The Conservative Party was still hoping that Williams’ clumsiness was an isolated case, when days later one of Sunak’s bodyguards was arrested and suspended from his position, also accused of placing substantial bets on the election date. A member of the Metropolitan Police’s Royal and Special Protection Command, the officer is also the subject of an investigation by Scotland Yard’s Internal Affairs department.
Finally, this week a third case jumped. Laura Saunders, Conservative candidate in the Bristol North West constituency, was also part of the commission’s investigations, for alleged cheating, under the Gambling Act. She, too, married to the Conservative Party campaign director, Tony Lee, and who has belonged to the party since 2016, had bet money on the election date.
At least a couple of dozen people had information, both in Downing Street and in the Conservative Party, of Sunak’s decision. Among them, the prime minister’s advisors, the party’s campaign team or the police and senior officials who had to begin planning the operation. All of them are the focus of ongoing research.
“If some people have used inside information to place bets, it is completely condemnable. I cannot comment much further on an ongoing investigation, but from a general ethical point of view it is reprehensible,” said Minister Michael Gove, one of the few voices to show firmness in the face of the scandal.
Bad omens for conservatives
Throughout the week, at least three macro-surveys have agreed in predicting a defeat for the tories of historic proportions. The companies YouGov, IPSOS and Savanta grant the Labor Party and its candidate, Keir Starmer, a number of seats in the House of Commons even greater than the record of 418 that Tony Blair obtained in 1997, and place the Conservative Party below the 100 deputies. The Savanta poll barely gives 53 representatives to the tories, and ventures that Prime Minister Sunak could even lose his Richmond constituency and be left out of Parliament, something that has never happened before. Three out of four of the current ministers, according to the survey, would suffer the same fate.
This latest survey, carried out for the newspaper The Telegraph, It was carried out between June 7 and 18 and consulted about 18,000 citizens, a figure notably higher than what other surveys usually involve. In a majority system like the British one, in which the winner of the constituency wins the seat – 650 at stake – it is difficult to predict the allocation of deputies, when a handful of votes can tip the balance in each case. The survey uses the method called Multilevel Regression with Post-stratification (MRP), a system of allocation and calculation to forecast results – the so-called kitchen, in survey jargon—which allows more precise figures to be offered. The company itself admits, however, that a handful of constituencies have such tight competitions that the result could vary significantly, up to 100 seats apart.
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