The Tory betting scandal confirms what voters already know – it’s time for change

Editorial: Candidates caught up in the betting scandal deserve to be expelled from the party – and must stand aside in the event that they are elected, for the sake of parliament

(Dave Brown)

Unsurprisingly, given the circumstances, Conservative Central Headquarters (CCHQ) has deleted a social media attack ad that featured a roulette wheel and the slogan: “If you bet on Labour, you can never win.” A peculiarly unlucky coincidence, it could be argued; yet if two Conservative parliamentary candidates hadn’t decided to place wagers on the date of the general election, then this particular scandal would have been avoided.

Although the Gambling Commission and the Cabinet Office continue to look into the people allegedly involved, the fact that one of the reported punters, Laura Saunders, is married to the party’s director of campaigns, Tony Lee, hasn’t helped matters. Indeed, the fact that Mr Lee has taken a leave of absence, particularly at this late stage in the election campaign, is both symptom and cause of the accelerated meltdown of the party’s re-election efforts.

The Gambling Commission says it is aware of a “small number” of suspicious late bets on the election date, which may mean there are other people close to CCHQ and Downing Street who are onto this nice little earner. A police officer in the prime minister’s protection team has been arrested and charged with misconduct in public office.

Regrettably, it is entirely appropriate that this sleaze-ridden administration should have been given its final shove out of the door by a fairly pathetic scandal. These people are not poor and desperate, and so they had no great need – if it is indeed what happened – to use insider information to gain advantage, breaking the law in the process.

The candidates allegedly involved – Ms Saunders in Bristol North West, and Craig Williams in Montgomeryshire (who was also Rishi Sunak’s aide) – may have risked their reputations in this imbroglio through what Mr Williams admits was a “huge error of judgement”. Mr Williams stood to win some £500. He may well ask himself if it was worth it.

The damage this has all done to the party could hardly have come at a worse moment. Though it hardly makes a difference now, both candidates should be disowned by their party. They should also agree to stand down even if elected, as it is too late to remove their names from the ballot papers in their respective constituencies.

To the voters, this odd affair surely highlights a few things they already knew. The first is that the Conservative Party is an organisation in which the double standards displayed most shamefully during Partygate appear to persist. When Michael Gove, who bailed out a few weeks ago, says that the public are gazing upon these developments with a mixture of “surprise and consternation”, he is wrong. There is nothing remotely surprising about this. We’re used to it from this lot.

“One rule for us, another rule for you” is an informal motto that seems to have confused whatever moral compass was attempting to guide the party in the past few years. Maybe the woeful example set by Boris Johnson was copied too readily, and a casual, hypocritical approach to standards in public life is now accepted as the norm. Perhaps the end of Tory rule simply demonstrates conformity to a pattern, as the inevitable fate that befalls any party that has enjoyed unchallenged power for too long. But either way, it does confirm the mood that it is “time for change”.

Thus, this betting scandal vindicates the current verdict of public opinion. The polls – more plentiful than ever in 2024 – vary somewhat in their estimates of voting intention, and even more so in the capricious way that this translates into seats in the House of Commons. But Labour’s lead looks unassailable, the trend is worsening for the Tories, and the coming disaster for the governing party looks set to be of historic proportions.

Mr Sunak, though it is not entirely his fault, will lead his party to a terrible reckoning. It could easily record its smallest parliamentary representation and lowest share of the popular vote since the dawn of modern democracy and the Great Reform Act of 1832. Indeed, some say Mr Sunak might even lose his own seat in Richmond, North Yorkshire – making him the first sitting prime minister to do so.

That such a denouement would relieve Mr Sunak of the prospect of facing the Commons again will be of small comfort to him. It is he, and he alone, who played roulette when he called his surprise election, and he who gambled and lost. He might have lost in any case – in the spring or the autumn – but it is difficult to believe he’d have done worse at a different time.

Contrary to some of the propaganda, Mr Sunak, rash as he was in opting to call an election in July, does care about his country and his party. Unfashionable as it is to say so, it is not in the national interest for the Conservatives to be reduced to a rump group that is permanently at war with itself and threatened with replacement by Nigel Farage and his band of fruitcakes.

If Labour is to be gifted an earthquake majority on 4 July, then the country needs a strong, fully functioning Conservative Party to provide scrutiny, mount an effective opposition to any excesses, hold the new ministers to account, and present itself, at least formally, as a credible alternative government. At the rate the Tories are disintegrating, no one should bet on that.