‘Gamble-gate’ will go down as Rishi Sunak’s Covid

The betting virus is killing the Tories’ hopes of avoiding a Labour supermajority, and the prime minister’s response has only served to speed up the rate of infection, writes Andrew Grice

It took Sunak almost two weeks to suspend two Tory candidates (Anthony Upton/The Daily Telegraph/PA)

The gambling scandal engulfing the Conservatives will go down as Rishi Sunak’s Covid. The betting virus is silent. It infects everyone. It is out of control. There is no cure.

Unlike many election claims and counterclaims, the controversy is easily understood by the whole population. One pollster told me the public is “more aware of this story than the Euros”. Deltapoll found that three in four people have heard about the Gambling Commission’s investigation, including 86 per cent of over-65s – a key Tory target.

It is a very untimely reminder of the government’s actions during the real pandemic: the rule-breaking of Partygate; Boris Johnson’s lies about Downing Street parties, and the VIP fast lane for people connected to ministers and officials who offered to sell personal protective equipment to the government. Keir Starmer was able to remind voters of Rishi Sunak’s fixed penalty notice for (unwittingly) attending a birthday party for Johnson.

The toxic perception that the Tories think the rules are only for “little people” returned to haunt Sunak, who wanted to run on his 18 months as prime minister but is constantly on the defensive over the Tories’ 14 years in power. Michael Gove angered some Tory candidates by admitting the truth: “It looks like one rule for them and one rule for us ... That was damaging at the time of Partygate and is damaging here.”

Lord Ashcroft, the Tories’ former deputy chair who is now a pollster, said: “It adds to a picture of a party shot through with corruption. However innocent Sunak may be in this particular case, voters still fit him into the general picture: his wife’s non-dom status and Covid contracts for top Tory contacts – regularly raised in focus groups – all add to an impression of a gang just out for themselves.”

While the potency of this virus was obvious to many in the political world, it took Sunak almost two weeks to suspend two Tory candidates. He looked weak. In the meantime, the Tories suffered a torrent of damaging headlines, and their attempt to make the election a referendum on Labour was crowded out.

Even when he finally acted, a tetchy Sunak faced awkward questions about why he had not done so earlier and whether he told his parliamentary aide Craig Williams he would call a July election before Williams bet on one.

Two weeks ago, I wrote that the Tory campaign was probably the worst I had seen by any party in the 11 elections I have covered from Westminster. Now, after the never-ending gambling saga, I can say it definitely wins that unwanted accolade. Incredibly, a spike in bets on a July election was spotted by Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s campaign director, who guessed a 4 July contest was coming and swung into action, even booking advertising space before the Tories.

There are parallels with the MPs’ expenses scandal: a PM (Gordon Brown) slow to realise the danger of politicians apparently being in it for themselves, allowing an opposition leader (David Cameron) to make the running. Sunak’s dithering was inexcusable in the heat of an election campaign.

Starmer, determined to turn the affair into a question of leadership, acted quickly when it emerged one Labour candidate had bet on himself to lose. Although his suspension of Kevin Craig set the bar low, a Labour government would likely reject calls for politicians to be banned from betting on politics.

As PM, Starmer would try to draw a line under the Tories’ rule-breaking by setting up an ethics commission. Yet he is wary about making a pledge to clean up politics a central goal.

Voters will want progress on bread-and-butter issues, and they think politicians are “all the same” – shadow ministers tell me the general lack of trust damages Labour as well as the Tories.

Starmer knows some Labour figures are bound to break the rules while he is PM. He also knows Tony Blair was hoist by his own petard for suggesting New Labour would be purer than pure in the wake of years of “Tory sleaze”, after Labour accepted a £1m donation from Bernie Ecclestone, the boss of Formula One, which was exempted from a ban on tobacco sponsorship.

The betting virus is killing the Tories’ hopes of avoiding a Labour supermajority. It’s true that Sunak has been badly let down by a small number of foolish Tories. But his woeful response to this virus made it more harmful than it needed to be.

What the Tories needed was an ounce of common sense. How fitting, then, that Philip Davies, a Tory candidate who is married to Esther McVey, the “minister for common sense”, has not denied reports that he put £8,000 on himself to lose his Shipley seat.

You couldn’t make it up. But the Tories did (again).