Several Conservative party candidates and officials are in trouble for, perhaps in a desperate measure to get rich before they lose their jobs on July 4th, by betting on the date of the general election using their insider knowledge before the public announcement was made. This is of course illegal, potentially something you could even go to prison for.
Right now there are at least 6 named Conservative candidates and officials being investigated:
- Craig Williams, the Prime Minister’s parliamentary aide.
- Laura Saunders, Conservative candidate (who is married to the Conservative’s directory of campaigning).
- Tony Lee, Conservative Party director of campaigning
- Nick Mason, the Conservative Party’s chief data officer.
- Russell George, the Welsh Conservative member of the Senedd
Up to 6 police officers are apparently also being looked on for the same matter.
Showing their ability to never totally come out of someone else’s scandal unscathed, there’s also a Labour candidate, Kevin Craig, who is being investigated for better on the Conservatives to win his constituency. I suppose he might have gotten reasonable odds on that given the landslide in the other direction that’s currently expected (at least at a nationwide level, I haven’t checked out his area in particular).
So another day, another (mostly) Tory scandal. It’s not like it was even for serious money. We’re generally talking about bets in the order of £100. Apparently bookies will typically only take fairly small bets on this sort of thing as it’s a fairly small market that they’re less confident that they have an edge over punters than in the case of sports.
It’s very possible more names might come out soon. Newsnight reported that up to 15 Conservative candidates and officials are being looked into by the Gambling Commission. George Osborne has said that around 40 people in total would have been aware of the election date in advance