Lots of people like a little flutter from time-to-time. In Britain, it’s almost a national tradition to wager £10 on which horse will win the Grand National, the highlight of the racing calendar. The more ambitious (and optimistic) may put money on England to win the Euro 24 football tournament. And the distinctly obsessive will place higher-odds bet on the exact score when Arsenal plays Spurs, that sort of thing.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
The betting market is now so advanced and so hugely profitable – for the firms taking the bets not the punters placing them – that you can gamble on just about anything: whether London will have a ‘white’ Christmas this year – meaning that it snows on Christmas Day – the odds are 8 to 1 (or an 11% chance); or whether India will win the 2026 football World Cup (you can get odds of 4,500 to 1, pointing to a 0.02% probability); or the much greater likelihood that NASA will confirm alien life on earth before the end of the year (900 to 1, or a 0.1% chance, so what are you waiting for!)
This betting mania now extends from sport to another great competitive arena: electoral politics. If you want to back the Labour Party to win next week’s UK general election, you’ve left it a bit late – that’s a betting certainty, with odds of 25 to 1 on (a 96% chance of it happening); or if you think Boris Johnson will return from the cold to again lead the Conservative Party you can get odds of 40 to 1, which suggests a 2% probability.
There are limits to this gambling free-for-all. Professional footballers can’t bet on the result of games, whether they are playing or not. It just feels wrong – and gives the impression that they are prepared to throw games or encourage their friends to do so. Any footballer found breaking these rules faces stern sanction. And we all know about the shadow that has fallen over international cricket from time-to-time because of the actions of illegal betting syndicates and the players they bribe.
In politics too, placing bets based on ‘inside’ information – that is using confidential information to gain an unfair advantage – is certainly unethical. Let me put it more strongly: it stinks! And it’s probably illegal as well.
Yet several prominent Conservatives appear to have placed bets on the timing of the general election, which suggests they may have benefitted from being political insiders. Rishi Sunak’s announcement last month that a general election would be held several months early, on 4th July, took his party and most informed observers by surprise. But of course, a small inner coterie were party to the secret.
We now know that the day before the announcement of the election date, there was a flurry of bets on a July election. The odds were not terribly lucrative, about 5 to 1 (so if you wager £100 you get £600 back). But the Gambling Commission, the industry regulator, was sufficiently concerned to launch an investigation.
And what has turned up in the wash? Well, even those with a low opinion of the integrity of our politicians have been shocked.
A Conservative MP who is a close aide of the prime minister appears to have placed a sizeable bet on a July election date. When confronted, he confessed to a “huge error of judgment”. Then it transpired that a second Conservative candidate may also have placed a rogue bet. Her husband, who happens to be the Conservative party’s head of campaigns, has been placed on special leave. The party’s data head is also surrounded by allegations that someone placed a large number of small bets on a July election date, to avoid attention and still scoop winnings of perhaps thousands of pounds.
It doesn’t stop there. The London police announced that one of its protection officers, who accompanies the prime minister, has been arrested for allegedly betting on a July election. A gaggle of other police officers are also suspected of placing bets. It seems that the prime minister’s office, for logistical reasons, may have told the police about the planned election date a day or two before it was made public. That was of course for administrative reasons – not to give police officers the opportunity to make a few pounds from a dodgy bet.
The Gambling Commission has not completed its investigation and none of those under scrutiny have admitted to a criminal offence. For more than a week, Sunak used this as his excuse for not taking sanctions against the two candidates. The prime minister declared he was ‘incredibly angry’ about the alleged bets and that anyone found to be implicated would be booted out of the party. But for the time being, he said, let’s let the investigation take its course.
So great was the uproar that Sunak has now taken a U-turn. Without waiting for the inquiry’s outcome, he has said the two candidates no longer have the support of the Conservative Party – though it’s too late to stop them standing. The whole poorly-handled scandal has further corroded trust in a party that was already sinking below the water line.
There is one saving grace for Sunak. The country had already set its face against him and his party, so the betting scandal will not determine the outcome of next week’s election but simply the scale of his defeat.
Andrew Whitehead is a former BBC India correspondent.
London Calling: How does India look from afar? Looming world power or dysfunctional democracy? And what’s happening in Britain, and the West, that India needs to know about and perhaps learn from? This fortnightly column helps forge the connections so essential in our globalising world.
