As betting scandal widens, the big picture stays the same

Good morning. The UK’s betting scandal has crossed the species barrier: Kevin Craig, Labour’s candidate in Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, has been suspended after he wagered he would lose his bid to become an MP for the seat.

Alister Jack, the secretary of state for Scotland, has admitted that he placed three bets between March and April on when the date of the election would be, but said he was not being investigated by the gambling regulator. Russell George, the Welsh Conservative who sits for the Senedd constituency that mirrors Craig Williams’ Westminster seat, became the fifth Tory to face a probe by the Gambling Commission for allegedly placing bets on the timing of the general election.

Some thoughts on how the expanded scope of the scandal does and doesn’t change its political impact.

Got an election question I haven’t covered yet in Inside Politics? I’ll be on Reddit at 1-2pm today, where you can ask me anything. I look forward to reading your questions! (Thank you for all your messages so far).

You don’t know Jack

To the extent that the UK’s betting scandal could be said to matter, it’s not about whether Alister Jack won a payout betting on something that everyone knew — that at some point this year or in January 2025 there would be an election — or if a Labour candidate in an ultra-safe Conservative seat bet that it would continue to be a safe seat. Nor is it about whether some people bet on a July election after rumours had started to appear in the press. They are all ill-advised but not, in my view, wrong.

It’s about whether members of the prime minister’s inner circle, at a time when no one else knew that Rishi Sunak had decided to go for an election in July, bet on a July vote. That’s the difference between whether they were doing something unwise or something unethical.

As I wrote last week, only Sunak can tell us whether his former PPS Craig Williams was doing something daft and ill-advised when he bet on a July election, or if he was doing something corrupt and sleazy. He does not need an independent inquiry to tell him. Sunak should have either defended Williams as a bit of a wally or cut him loose as a cheat, instead of prevaricating for a bit and in the end doing neither.

Labour will hope that the widening scope of the story allows them to draw a favourable contrast between Keir Starmer, who immediately suspended Kevin Craig, and Sunak, who took the best part of a fortnight to suspend Williams and Laura Saunders. But I think most people will simply register it as a “they’re all at it” story, one in which neither Sunak nor Starmer come out of it well.

As far as the general election goes, wherever people land it doesn’t really matter. As it stands, Labour are miles ahead of the Conservative party, so anything that reflects badly on both parties is a win for them, and anything where they emerge ahead is a still bigger one.

Now try this

We rewatched Decision to Leave over the weekend: it really is a terrific thriller that is even better on a second viewing. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it on Amazon Prime, via Curzon Home Cinema or via Mubi’s BluRay release.

Top stories today

• Vote share slump | Labour and the Conservatives are on course to register their lowest combined vote share in a century, according to pre-election polls. The Financial Times’ tracker of 46 polls (see chart below) indicates that both of the UK’s two biggest parties have lost support since Rishi Sunak called the election.

• GB energy ‘could lead a new technology’, says Labour donor | Labour donor Dale Vince has said the party’s planned state-owned energy company has the potential to lead the development of new technologies, but also stressed he was not seeking support for his own projects. 

• Construction shortfall hammers home | Britain’s housing crisis has become so acute that the next government will need to build the equivalent of another city the size of London to make up for five decades of below-target construction, Bloomberg’s analysis of official data shows.

Below is the Financial Times’ live-updating UK poll-of-polls, which combines voting intention surveys published by major British pollsters. Visit the FT poll-tracker page to discover our methodology and explore polling data by demographic including age, gender, region and more.