BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION - 4TH JULY

Watching the clips, Stephen Flynn of the SNP seemed to have an excellent night. Slated Brexit and spoke up in favour of immigration and get very big rounds of applause each time.

Nope the British public are by far the biggest losers.

At least Starmer did the right thing and returned his donation and cut ties with him the moment this came out. Compare this to Sunak who did nothing when it came out about Tory party members placing bets.

Depends.

If Sunak himself loses his seat (which is possible, but I think less than a 50% possibility) then he doesn't have to resign; the party leadership is automatically vacant. And he no longer has a seat in the Commons, or indeed any public office at all. He can run for the hills the same day, if he likes.

If he doesn't lose his seat, but his party is thrashed (which is a rusted-on certainty at this point) then he'll be expected to resign the leadership pretty well immediately, and he will. Nobody will criticise him for resigning (but they will criticise him for virtually everything else). But he will still be an MP, and I think he is on record as having said that, if elected, he will serve his term. He probably won't serve his term but, equally, he won't resign immediately; he'll be a backbench MP with a low profile. His (few) defenders will say that he's being the dignified elder statesman, serving quietly but not interfering in the affairs of a party he no longer leads, and not trying to draw the limelight from his unfortunate successor as party leader. Everyone else will say that he's an irrelevance and/or an embarrassment and that he is wise to seek no attention. He'll be a singularly inactive MP. At some point in the next parliament he'll probably resign his seat, but he'll try to do that at a time when the resultant bye-election won't be an embarrassment for the Tories — i.e. he'll wait a bit until the shine has gone off the Labour victory and people are starting to get a bit restive about the fact that a party with a massive majority hasn't used its massive majority to cure cancer, solve world hunger and put a chicken in every pot.

He'll be spending time and money trying to get elected. If he is elected, he'll see that expenditure as a sound investment. But, if he isn't, he's got nothing for all that time and money.

So he's trying to reduce his risk. By betting against himself, at least if he doesn't win the election he recovers some of what he spent trying to win it.

What he's doing will not look good to the punter on the street, who generally places a bet on the outcome he expects and/or hopes for, so will see this as bizarre. But as a risk mitigation technique, it's not wholly irrational.

(It's also not illegal, unless he has inside information, not available to the public or to bookmakers, that makes it more likely that he will lose the seat — e.g. if he knows that a sex scandal involving him and a goat is about to break. Of course, he very easily could have information of that kind, but equally he might not.)

You can argue it, certaintly. But this is a criminal offence ("cheating at gambling") and, to secure a conviction, you'd have to show not just that he could theoretically have been trying not to win but that he did in fact try not to win, which would be hard to prove. If he says "I genuinely hoped to win but I recognised that, despite my very best efforts, I might not win — the voters are a capricious shower — and I placed the bet to mitigate my financial risk in the event that I did lose", how would the prosecution disprove that?

The Jockey Club has rules that penalise a jockey for betting (either way) on a race in which he is riding. Other sporting regulatory bodies have similar rules for other professional sportsmen.

But politicians are not sportsmen, and they are not subject to the rules of any of these bodies. All they (and the Gambling Commisision) have to worry about is s. 42 of the Gambling Act, which makes it an offence to cheat, attempt to cheat, or assist another person to cheat, at gambling.

The fact that a bet creates an incentive to underperform is probably not enough to show that the person who placed the bet was cheating. (Or, at any rate, nobody has ever been convicted of cheating on this basis.) You'd need some evidence to show, beyond reasonable doubt, that the candidate did intentionally underperform, and that he placed the bet knowing that he would do this, which I think would be very difficult to establish.

Most cheating convictions involve cases where one party had undisclosed inside knowledge that the other party doesn't know he has (e.g. betting on the second favourite when you know that the favourite has suffered an injury or illness) or where one party is doing something in the game that is considered to give an unfair advantage (e.g. card-counting in a casino).

The Tory insiders who bet on the date of the election when they had inside knowledge about the PM's intentions as to the date of the election are in real trouble. But both Tory and Labour candidates who bet on their own races are probably in the clear, unless investigation shows that they had undisclosed inside knowledge of something that was likely to have a material effect on the race.

The "bookie" was no doubt an employee behind a counter who wouldn't have known him from peter or paul, or , it was done online which would be automatically placed.

Now, i'm not saying it won't be paid. But technically, they can refuse to pay out if they feel there are any gregerious factors at play

Why would a person have to give their name when placing a bet?

Exactly this, if it is done online it is place to see.

If you walk in to a shop, no details have to be provided. Only the docket and the cash.

For referance purposes, the only way he could stake anything of significance(i don't know the value of his bet) would be on the exchanges.

I went in to PP online just now and max stake on a party to win a seat in a constituency is max'd to a stake of anything between 30 to 210 depending on odds for each party,

Bookies in the UK are required to "know their customers" - money laundering legislation. And they're also required to know if their customer is a "politically exposed person" - anti-corruption legislation.

This whole betting-on-the-election business came to light when Sunaks' personal protection officer — a police officer — placed bet on the date of the election. Knowing who he was, and knowing that he was a politically exposed person, and knowing that the bet was on a political matter, the bookie included this in a report to the Gambling Commission. The Gambling Commission then asked all bookmakers to report all bets (or, possibly, all bets of more than some very low figure) placed on the election and the bookies duly sent them lists of all the bets placed, and who had placed them. The names of various Tory officials and various MPs were on those lists, and those are the names we now know about. There may be more names to come out.

The point is, the bookies always know who you are. They are required to.

(There may be an exception for bets of below some fairly trivial sum. And their may be an exception for on-track bets — if you attend a race meeting, and bet on the races being run at that meeting, you may not have to prove your identity. I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some exemption of this kind. Obviously, if there is, it would be no use to someone wishing to bet discreetly on an election.)

Interesting to read the "grey area" "not illegal" views here. In my naivety I assumed it is illegal to bet on something you can directly influence. We're talking about public office here. Surely the ins and and outs of why the bet is placed shouldn't come into it. So an election candidate can bet against themselves but at most its a risk to their political future and reputation? Would that be a fair assessment?

Kevin Craig has fvcked up good and proper. That seems to be in no doubt. Who would take this guy seriously now as a future election candidate / lobbyist firm CEO? Deary me.