Britain is a nation of gamblers

Napoleon Bonaparte famously called Britain a nation of shopkeepers. Britain seemed more like a nation of gamblers after the betting scandal last week.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gambled on an early election on July 4, surprising the country and irritating some in his party who preferred an autumn election.

There was, however, an element of poetic justice when members of his own police protection unit also gambled on the election date too. Being in close proximity to the prime minister gave some of them access to inside information which they abused to place sure bets on the date of the general election.

As their bets were traceable to them it looks as though they did not know it was cheating – a criminal offence – and even more worrying, it did not even occur to them that it was unethical to use inside information for personal gain.

Members of Parliament and civil servants are also being investigated although it is not clear whether they had inside information or whether they guessed that an early general election was imminent from gossip in political circles.

One aide to the prime minister admitted that he placed a £100 bet on a July election, but it is not clear if other MPs and civil servants relied on inside information which is cheating, or were able to guess the date because of their privileged position, which is unethical.

The law on gambling in the UK was changed in 2005 when gambling contracts were made enforceable and when a gambling commission was set up to oversee gambling in the public interest. The commission has the power to declare a gambling contract unfair and if it does that the contract is void and cannot be enforced. Importantly, one of the grounds on which a gambling contract can be declared unfair is if a contracting party cheats.

Cheating is not defined in the law as it is regarded as an elephant point – you know it when you see it, and it is both a civil wrong and a criminal offence. Cheating in gambling can take many forms so its ambit was left for case-law to develop incrementally. But there can be little doubt that if you place a bet on the happening of a particular event at a certain time like a general election and you have inside information about the date, you are committing the criminal offence of cheating – it is as if the prime minister who decides the date places a bet on the date of the general election himself.

The prime minister was not to know that his own carefully vetted police protection unit would abuse inside information, but it is symptomatic of the lowering of standards in public life that even carefully vetted police officers cannot be trusted to do the right thing these days. As the well-known barrister the late George Carman QC put it to a jury in a similar context in the 1990s: they are all “on the make and on the take”.

Sunak was a hedge fund manager before he entered politics in 2015. It is a different kind of gambling based on skill and expertise as well as speculation. Hedge fund managers make a lot of money by hedging speculative investments with secure alternatives so that if the speculative investments go wrong the losses are offset by the alternative investments.

In going for a general election early it would not be surprising if Sunak’s mind-set was that of a hedge fund manager hedging against losing. He gambled on an early election as a damage limitation exercise in an election the Conservatives are unlikely to win on their own whatever its date. But it was odd that he called the election before his Rwanda policy of removing illegal immigrants took off. It seems Sunak decided to put the Rwanda policy on hold and call a general election so as to offer the electorate a choice between the Conservatives who would remove illegals to Rwanda and Labour who would abandon the Rwanda policy – an election master move or supreme blunder!

And here’s what seems like the hedge: Sunak is on the same wavelength on the Rwanda policy with the new right-wing party Reform led by Nigel Farage, which is supported by the anti-immigrant right wing in England. Sunak hopes the Conservative Party would avoid a catastrophic defeat by preserving the support of the anti-immigrant extreme right. But if that does not happen, he may retain power in association with Reform (the hedge) if it manages to gain the seats the Conservatives lose – it is a long shot as Reform might only gain few if any seats and help Labour by diverting votes that would otherwise go to the Conservatives.

When he was prime minister David Cameron chose to neutralise Farage’s appeal. He promised an EU in-out referendum in the 2015 general election. He succeeded in the election but was defeated in the referendum of 2016 and Farage became the darling of the extreme anti-immigrant right.

Farage is now an important factor in British politics by force of personality in a contest in which the main protagonists Sunak and Kier Starmer lack personality. As a questioner put to them in a debate last week “are you two really the best we’ve got?”

Nigel Farage is the UK’s answer to America’s Donald Trump, who is likely to win against President Biden after the latter’s disastrous performance last Thursday in a debate in which he mumbled and stumbled and looked a loser against Trump who despite being a convicted felon came out miles on top. The same question could be asked of Biden and Trump: are they really the best America can offer its people?

It is extraordinary that while the world is drifting inexorably towards big power conflict there is a poverty of leadership in Britain and America.

Alper Ali Riza is a king’s counsel in the UK and a retired part time judge