UK election: Betting scandal on election date ruins Rishi Sunak’s campaign | International

Inevitably some Britons are succumbing to the temptation to bet on the date of your burial, taking advantage of the confidential medical information available to them. At the same time that referendums are taking place, which are predicting a historic defeat for the Conservative Party in the July 4 elections, a betting scandal has made the campaign of the prime minister, Conservative Rishi Sunak, even dirtier – if that’s even possible. According to the BBC, the National Gaming Commission is investigating whether at least three people close to the party have been betting on the date on which the head of government will eventually call an election, possibly using inside information available to them.

The first candidate to accept it was Craig Williams, who had served as Sunak’s private parliamentary secretary for the past two years. It is an unpaid position of trust, through which a deputy acts as the eyes and ears of a minister – in this case, even more relevantly, of a prime minister – to inform him of everything that happens in the Chamber of Deputies. Lok Sabha.

Williams admitted this clumsiness on his X (formerly Twitter) account, when he started receiving calls from some journalists. “I placed a bet on the general election (the date on which the elections were to be held) a few weeks ago. As a result, a routine investigation has been launched, and I confirm that I will cooperate fully. I do not want to be a distraction in this campaign. I should have thought beforehand what image my actions would create for me,” the deputy admitted.

Sunak surprised everyone by bringing forward the election, which everyone had expected would take place on 4 July, to 23 May.

Both the Gambling Commission and the Conservative Party have so far refrained from commenting on the ongoing investigation, although the newspaper reported Guardian As already reported, Williams had bet £100 (around €120) that the election would be held in July. He did so just three days before Sunak’s announcement and the newspaper estimates his winnings to be around €600.

Two more cases

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The Conservative Party was still hoping that Williams’s clumsiness was an isolated case when a few days later one of Sunak’s bodyguards was arrested and suspended from his post, also accused of placing substantial bets on the date of the election. The officer, a member of the Metropolitan Police’s Royal and Special Protection Command, is also the subject of an investigation by Scotland Yard’s internal affairs department.

Finally, a third case came to light this week. Laura Saunders, the Conservative candidate for the Bristol North West constituency, was also part of the Commission’s investigation for alleged fraud under the Gambling Act. She, too, is married to Tony Lee, the Conservative Party’s campaign director, and who has been with the party since 2016, and had placed money on bets on the date of the election.

At least two dozen people in both Downing Street and the Conservative Party were aware of Sunak’s decision. These included advisers to the Prime Minister, the party’s campaign team or the police and senior officials who were to begin planning the operation. All of these are the focus of ongoing research.

“If some people have used insider information to place bets, that is completely reprehensible. I cannot comment further on the 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 omen for conservatives

Throughout the week, at least three macro-surveys have agreed in predicting defeat Tory Of historic proportions. The YouGov, IPSOS and Savanta polls give the Labour Party and its candidate Keir Starmer more seats in the House of Commons than the record 418 achieved by Tony Blair in 1997, and put the Conservative Party below 100 representatives. The Savanta poll gives it barely 53 representatives Toryand ventures that Prime Minister Sunak may even lose his Richmond constituency and be kicked out of Parliament, something that has never happened before. According to the survey, three out of four of the current ministers will face the same fate.

This latest survey has been done for the newspaper Wire, It was carried out between 7 and 18 June and consulted about 18,000 citizens, far more than is usually done in other surveys. In a majority system such as the British one, in which the winner of a constituency wins the seat – with 650 at stake – the allocation of delegates is difficult to predict, when a handful of votes can tip the balance in each case. The survey uses a method called multilevel regression with post-stratification (MRP), a system of allocations and calculations to forecast results – the so-called kitchenin survey jargon – which allows it to produce more accurate figures. However, the company itself admits that some constituencies are so fiercely contested that results can vary considerably by a margin of 100 seats.

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