Why the next Westminster scandal is already here
All Westminster scandals are obvious in retrospect. The furore over mps and aides betting on the date of the general election is no exception. Gambling is rife in Westminster. Memoirs are stuffed with amusing anecdotes of special advisers placing wagers: in the general election in 2017, one adviser lumped £8,000 ($10,100) on a Tory victory in the hope of winning £1,000, only to lose it all when Theresa May blew her majority. Gambling permeates everyday political coverage: bookmakers offer odds on everything from election dates to future party leaders, and journalists obligingly write them up.
So it should be little surprise that, when rumours of a snap election leaked from Tory high command in May, a flock of Conservative MPs, advisers and candidates—as well as police officers who work around Downing Street—put bets on it. Craig Williams, an MP and Rishi Sunak’s parliamentary assistant, was dropped by the party for having a flutter. So was the Conservative candidate in Bristol North West, who happens to be married to the party’s director of campaigns. They, and others, gambled on politics because until this week no one thought it was a problem, never mind potentially illegal. Now that the brakes have slammed on, Mr Williams and colleagues have hurtled through the windscreen.
In Westminster scandals are not exposed. They are simply noticed. Gambling is not the first case of outrage about something happening in plain sight, and it will not be the last. Once the row over politicians betting on their own industry has passed, perhaps attention will turn to the close links between the gambling companies and British politics in general. These links are not hidden. At Labour conferences you might expect to see shadow ministers blasting out “Angels” in a karaoke session at a bash sponsored by the Betting and Gaming Council (bgc), an industry lobby group which is chaired by Michael Dugher, a former Labour MP and oft-mooted future Labour peer.
When it comes to wooing mps in this way, the gambling industry is no different from any other. Outright corruption is rare in politics. Why bother? It is perfectly legal to shovel perks at lawmakers. Freebies are another fact-of-life in Westminster just waiting to be noticed by those outside it. Every fortnight Parliament publishes a pdf filled with every perk and donation received by an mp. It ranges from donations-in-kind of extra office staff to a day out at the races or free tickets to see Madonna (in some cases courtesy of the bgc). Naturally, it is all within the rules.
Even those at the top of politics are not immune. Each mp must declare every gift. The entry for Sir Keir Starmer, the studious and diligent Labour Party leader, is lengthy. In the past few months alone Sir Keir has accepted free tickets for Coldplay, a middlebrow band, and football tickets worth nearly £20,000 in total. The mystery of why the Labour leader is more nattily dressed in recent weeks has been solved: in April Sir Keir received £16,200-worth of free clothes and £2,485-worth of trendy specs from Waheed Alli, a Labour peer and former fast-fashion executive. Practically every mp from every party accepts freebies. Sir Keir is simply the most prominent, and among the most enthusiastic. In Westminster this is all perfectly normal. But then so was gambling on politics until just a few days ago.
Once the question of freebies has been pored over, donations might become the next thing to attract scrutiny. Kevin Craig, a Labour candidate in Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, was ejected from the party on June 25th for betting on himself to lose in his seat. Before Mr Craig blew up his political career for the sake of a bet, he had earned a fortune as a lobbyist (his firm had even designed a “Responsible Gambling Week” campaign on behalf of the gambling industry). He was also a donor to Labour, handing it £100,000 in 2023. This, again, is within the rules. Mr Craig’s company can donate to whom it pleases; Labour is within its rights to hand him a no-hope-turned-surprisingly-winnable seat. (Labour has since returned the £100,000.) All this was as public as any selection in East Anglia is likely to be. But there is a difference between what the public accepts and what it has not noticed.
The media offer only a spotlight, rather than a floodlight. Whatever happens outside its glare goes unseen, and even things that are reported are not always picked up. In 2020 the fact that Boris Johnson enjoyed an illicit birthday party with colleagues during lockdown was a throwaway news story on the inside pages of the Times. In 2022 it played a big part in Mr Johnson’s fall. What was harmless one year can be fatal the next, if people take notice.
In another example, at the end of 2021 a row erupted over whether MPs should have second jobs. The trigger came when Owen Paterson, a former Conservative MP, directly lobbied ministers on behalf of a company for which he worked. Having mps with other jobs was once a feature of Parliament, until the public suddenly decided it was a bug. A frenzy broke out, in which mps were made to justify every penny of external income. Since then the spotlight has moved on again, and little has changed. The same PDF that lists those MPs who love Madonna also shows those who are still on generous outside salaries.
Betting the Houses of Parliament
The gambling scandal will probably follow the same path as its predecessors and successors. Behaviour that was once accepted and common in Westminster becomes forbidden; frenzied journalists root out any politician who has made a dodgy bet; voters tut; an inquiry is launched; a regulator is beefed up. But then people stop noticing and attention turns to a fresh outrage happening in plain sight, whether it be mps snaffling freebies or making hay in their second jobs. The next scandal will roll along and it will all be so obvious in retrospect. If only someone had noticed. ■
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