There’s no doubt
that the little scandal about betting on the date of the election has provided
a significant boost for Sunak’s Project Oblivion. Whilst many – including some
in his own party – criticised him for dragging things out before taking any
action, that’s because they don’t understand the objective. Delaying action, leading
to repeated headlines over two weeks, can only have assisted in the fulfilment
of his project. He claims to have been incredibly angry about the whole saga,
but chances are that the part which upset him most was a Labour candidate
getting in on the act. After all, the Tory majority in that seat last time
round was a little over 20,000, so in the context of the 2024 election it wasn’t
even a marginal. It was a racing certainty that Labour would win, further
reducing the total in the Tory column. In a blow to his project, Sunak now has
to face the probability that the Tories might even hold the seat. Worse,
tarring Labour with the same brush runs the risk that the Tories might hold on
to a few other seats as well.
It wasn’t quite the
same scandal as that besetting the Tories; rather than using insider knowledge,
this Labour candidate was betting on the outcome of an event in which he had at
least a degree of agency. The extent to which he chose to campaign or not
campaign could, in theory, affect the chances of him winning, even if victory
looked inevitable to everyone else regardless of what he did. It’s not easy for
a Labour candidate in 2024 to lose an election in which he starts only 20,000
votes behind. Paradoxically, Starmer’s quick action against him has probably
helped him to lose the election – and win the bet. In electoral terms, it’s a
sort of lose-lose outcome: neither Sunak nor Starmer gets the result they
wanted in the constituency.
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