Dr Matthew Wall
Associate Professor of Politics at Swansea University and is a Co-Director of the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD).
Email: m.t.wall@swansea.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 1: Democracy and representation
1. Public anxiety and the electoral process (Prof Barry Richards)
2. How Nigel Farage opened the door to No. 10 for Keir Starmer (Prof Pippa Norris)
3. The performance of the electoral system (Prof Alan Renwick)
4. Tory downfall is democracy rectifying its mistakes (Prof Stephen Barber)
5. Votes at 16 and decent citizenship education could create a politically aware generation (Dr Ben Kisby, Dr Lee Jerome)
6. “An election about us but not for us”: the lack of communication for young people during GE2024 (Dr James Dennis)
7. Election timing: masterstroke or risky gamble? (Prof Sarah Birch)
8. The dog that didn’t bark? Electoral integrity and administration from voter ID to postal votes (Prof Alistair Clark)
9. A political gamble? How licit and illicit betting permeated the campaign (Dr Matthew Wall)
10. Ethnic diversity in politics is the new normal in Britain (Prof Maria Sobolewska)
11. Bullshit and Lies on the campaign trail: do party campaigns reflect the post-truth age? (Prof Darren Lilleker)
12. Stoking the culture wars: the risks of a more hostile form of polarised politics (Dr Jen Birks)
Rishi Sunak’s decision to call a summer election was a failed political gamble. The old saying that “hindsight is 20:20” applies aptly to disastrous election campaigns. However, Sunak’s surprise decision made little sense to electoral analysts in real-time. If the snap election call was the act of a political gambler – it seemed to the psephological community to be a punt that ran contrary to their understanding of the odds.
The Economist estimated the Conservatives’ chances of winning a majority at less than 1% when Sunak took the plunge, asserting that the decision “makes no sense, but is good news” – in the sense that it was a clear tactical mistake for the Conservatives but had the potential to unblock UK politics. Indeed, this sentiment was widespread beyond those who study public opinion, with polling indicating that 49% of voters thought the early election was “Good for the country”, but only 13% agreed that the decision was “Good for the Conservatives”.
If the surprise decision was designed to wrongfoot political opponents, any such discomfiture was offset by the chaos that followed in the heart of the Conservative Party. Politico reported on a party that was unprepared for its own snap election, with one candidate saying, upon hearing the news, “I was thinking to myself, ‘what the f*** are we going to do?’ because we just weren’t ready for it”.
The lack of a coherent political, economic, tactical or strategic rationale for an early election created a tempting gambling opportunity for individuals who, either as political insiders or as members of their police security details, knew which way the political wind was about to blow.
The election date betting market had become stagnant by early May. There was a general consensus that the date would be between October and December, with July seen as an unlikely outcome. Odds available on a July election expressed implied probabilities of between 8-16%. However, in the days before the formal announcement, these prices shortened considerably – with gambling website Oddschecker observing that the market surged in terms of activity on the evening of Tuesday, May 21st and morning of Wednesday, May 22nd, with the implied probability of a July election jumping to 56% by midday on the 22nd. Political logic be damned – the news was out, and the formal announcement in the pouring rain just after 5pm that day.
On 12th June news broke that Craig Williams, a Conservative candidate in Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr and the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, admitted to betting £100 on a July election date (at odds of 5/1) 3 days before the election was called. Cheating on a bet with ‘inside information’ is a criminal offence in UK law. The UK’s Gambling Commission launched an inquiry (still ongoing at the time of writing) that would unfurl across the middle weeks of the campaign to encompass and sideline more Conservative candidates and key members of the Conservative campaign team, including the Campaign Director and Chief Data Officer. It should be noted that all politicians publicly identified as being under investigation deny any illegal behaviour.
The cavalcade of gaffes, tactical blunders and strategic miscalculations that followed (and, indeed, included) the launch of the 2024 UK General Election campaign is well documented. Not for nothing did Rishi Sunak spend his final day as Prime Minister apologising to all and sundry. But the spectacle of the betting investigation went beyond mere political incompetence. The affair resonated with the ‘Partygate’ scandal of the Johnson regime, cementing a widely held image of a Conservative party elite suffused by entitlement and avarice. Sunak’s personal judgement was undermined by the fact that those accused were among his close inner circle and by his agonisingly slow realisation that the Party would have to withhold support from candidates under investigation.
As we have seen, this campaign was uniquely and grotesquely intertwined with illicit political gambling. We will likely see a tightening of norms and rules surrounding political gambling by politicians following the 2024 campaign. However, legitimate political gambling is very popular and a source of insight into the probabilities of various results and their dynamics as campaigns unfold. Indeed, the long odds initially available on a July election illustrate the insanity of the decision to call an election so early. The Conservatives were never seen by the markets as serious contenders to win a majority (or even the most seats) at any point in the campaign. As the polls were closing, prices of more than 500/1 (an implied probability of about a fifth of one percent) could be found on a Tory majority. Viewed through this lens, licit and legitimate political gambling sums up this election as a campaign where the clear favourites won easily. That members of the public can access and participate in such markets is, in this writer’s opinion at least, no bad thing for political transparency and even engagement – after all, it matters more when there’s money on it.
