"The gang goes to jail for betting on calling their own ill-advised election" is a coda to all this beyond the imaginations of our greatest political satirists.
Chapter 100 in Sunak not politicking. Met officer suspended but no punishment of torys. "why is a police officer who works for a force in special measures held to a higher standard than your candidate MPs"
When I was Investor Relations Manager in a FTSE100 company I had to sign an undertaking that I wouldn't trade the company's shares within one month before company results.
Surely something similar should apply to public officials.
I think this is exactly right. But it feels like this lot are even less professional/even more shambolic than the LOTO in 2018 when everyone was either busking it or freelancing their own thing. I’d love to know how the Tory campaign office became so terrible.
if them skimming a little off the top is the price the country needs to pay for an earlier election than otherwise, it's a price I'm willing for a few bookmakers to pay
This is the argument I always make when someone does a piece about how much we're paying Liz Truss as an ex-PM. If you see it as the cost of getting rid of her it'd be cheap at ten times the price!
I think actually the spike two days earlier (rather than the day prior when it had started to leak) is, if anything actually untoward happened striking. But it's just funny and we know already that some in the inner circle did place bets, whether innocently or not.
The people in the PPE scandal turned their access at the heart of government into serious money. At any odds this is peanuts. It makes no sense, even if you set the ethics aside.
A dysfunctional team around him: no trust, no discipline. No one feels any loyalty to him, so all inside informatioh has a price. Usually paid by his enemies - but they weren't offering enough. Hence, the bookies. But stupidly.
Hard to get very excited by this. How many lobbyists, hacks and civil servants were beginning to get the idea that maybe an election was about to be called?
Rather than an indication of corruption (it's not actually illegal to use inside information to bet) it just shows how leaky the Tory party is
Bad wording on my part, sorry. Meaning to say that the lobbyists and hacks who saw Westminster gearing up for announcements ("inside information") were not acting illegally if they placed a bet. By all accounts hard confirmation of the snap election was not widely spread...
...so whilst comms director certainly has to answer some very serious questions the wider increase in bets on a forthcoming election based on visible activity would not be illegal and doesn't appear to be party wide corruption - especially given how chronically broken party comms are for the Tories.
