Another official from Sunak’s Conservative Party probed over election bets: Report

LONDON - An official from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is being investigated by Britain’s gambling regulator over allegations he placed bets on the date of the general election before it was announced, British daily Sunday Times reported.

Britain’s Gambling Commission is reportedly already investigating two Conservative election candidates and the party’s director of campaigning over bets on the date of the July 4 election.

The widening scandal has further damaged

Mr Sunak’s attempts to catch up with the opposition Labour Party,

which is far ahead in opinion polls in the run-up to the election.

The official was named by the paper as Mr Nick Mason, chief data officer at the Conservative Party. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The newspaper cited a spokesperson for Mr Mason as saying he denied any wrongdoing. It also cited a statement from the Conservative Party as saying that Mr Mason had taken a leave of absence.

The party did not confirm this when contacted by Reuters.

“As instructed by the Gambling Commission, we are not permitted to discuss any matters related to any investigation with the subject or any other persons,” a Conservative Party spokesman said.

In a response to a request for comment on the Sunday Times report, a Gambling Commission spokesperson said it would not provide details of its probe, including the identities of any individuals it is investigating.

In an interview with The Times newspaper on June 22, Mr Michael Gove, the levelling up, housing and communities secretary, compared the betting allegations to the Partygate scandal.

In 2022, former prime minister Boris Johnson was forced from office following public anger at the revelations that parties had been held in Downing Street when the rest of the country was under lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It looks like one rule for them and one rule for us… That’s the most potentially damaging thing,” said Mr Gove, who is standing down this election after 14 years as a Member of Parliament. “That was damaging at the time of Partygate, and is damaging here.”

‘Incredibly damaging’

The scandal broke a week earlier, when Tory candidate and Mr Sunak’s ministerial aide Craig Williams said he was being probed for staking a bet on the snap election date before it was called.

On June 19, London police said one of Mr Sunak’s security detail had been arrested for allegedly placing a bet on the date.

The next day, Mr Sunak said he was “incredibly angry” to hear about the allegations against his party colleagues, calling them a “really serious matter”.

Mr Williams has already apologised for an error of judgment, and the party’s director of campaigning Tony Lee has taken a leave of absence.

Political bets are allowed in Britain, including on the date of elections, but using insider knowledge to do so is against the law.

The inquiries heap further misery on Mr Sunak, whose party has trailed Labour by about 20 points in the polls for nearly two years, making it odds-on to be dumped out of office after 14 years.

Mr Gove said that those involved in the betting scandal were “sucking the oxygen out of the campaign”.

Comparing it to Partygate again, he added: “A few individuals end up creating an incredibly damaging atmosphere for the party.

“So it’s both bad in itself, but also destructive to the efforts of all of those good people who are currently fighting hard for the Conservative vote.” REUTERS, AFP