UK Election Unchained: When The Fun Stops, Stop
Week Four highlights of election season. All bets are on, the economy has a weird growth on it
It’s getting hard to distinguish Downing Street from Las Vegas these days. Both are filled with a vapid, transitory population not long for the place and determined to gamble away all their money before they leave. We have now reached a total of FOUR people, all potentially privy to election details, that have been found to be under investigation by the Gambling Commission for placing bets on the election date just days before the election date was announced. Maybe more, it’s been a few hours since I last checked.
Odds are that you have heard the case of the first one. Rishi Sunak’s private secretary, an MP, decided to place a bet online under his own name. He thought it sensible to risk his esteemed career for the grand total of £500. Proof, if ever it were needed, that we are in a cost of living crisis, the poor chap probably can’t even pay his energy bills. This was followed a few days later by a police officer in protection of Rishi Sunak. He was arrested, suspended, and investigated for doing the same. Subsequently, this morning, a candidate, who happens to be married to the Tory campaign director, was revealed to be under investigation as well. When the Gambling Commission came for her, her husband must have been shitting himself, because he was reported to have done the exact same thing an hour later and has now taken a leave of absence (must be nice to have a break from work in the middle of the busy season). All the other people who used insider information to place bets must be shitting themselves as well. If any more come out of the woodwork I’ll start to think that Rishi Sunak was just posting the election date in all his groupchats followed by links to create a BetFair account.
Increasingly, it appears that only an act of God could prevent Labour from winning the election, such as the entire nation falling into the sea. Labour could be promising the world right now and it still wouldn’t break through the unending cavalcade of Tory embarrassments clogging up the headlines. As it happens, there’s no danger of them pledging to do anything so we are at liberty to watch Jacob Rees-Mogg with bated breath every time he walks past a high street Paddy Power. Labour continue to promise to grow the economy, only rotating the person they nominate to say it. However, they launched their manifesto towards the end of last week so now they can let that do the talking, or lack thereof, going forward. This frees up Keir Starmer to go on football podcasts, talking about how he hates the non-existent Super League, but loves everything else about football, including all the investment from despotic nations with sportswashing interests. The economy isn’t gonna grow itself, I guess!
Finally, rounding out the manifesto completion for the major parties, the SNP launched theirs. Their number one priority remains Scottish independence, which Labour have ruled out so would be a waste of column inches. Other issues on which they differ from Labour are their commitment to abolishing the house of lords, ending nuclear weapon development, and scrapping the two child benefit cap. Which gives Scottish voters an interesting alternative to Labour’s apparent commitment to peerages, nuclear war, and child poverty.
Reform UK also launched their “Contract With The People”, which is definitely not a manifesto. A contract does seem more appropriate for a party that is actually a limited company, but, being real, it is a manifesto and I have not read it. The more relevant Reform news for this piece is that they are second only to the Tories in the race for most embarrassing candidate scandals. Approximately 1 in 10 Reform candidates are Facebook friends with the leader of a major UK fascist group, which I honestly have to say I find surprising; I wouldn’t have expected Nigel Farage to be that active on Facebook.
Moving to this week’s PINTWATCH update, Farage is pulling well ahead of the other leaders with not one, but two pints sank in the public eye since last week, unless he’s just been nursing the same one for a few days. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, it gives me no pleasure to announce the PINTWATCH score as:
Farage: 3
Starmer: At least 1
Sunak: 0
Starmer must be feeling confident and thinking he doesn’t need to show how much he loves beer. He thinks that, just because his England-watching photo looks marginally more human than Ed Davey’s, we’ll accept he has British values. He thinks just because he is aghast at Stonehenge getting orange on it for a few hours that the country will apathetically get on board with him for five years. He’s right, but it would still be nice to see him drink more lager.
Finally, The Worker’s Party launched its manifesto as well this week, but because George Galloway refuses to be seen in public without his stupid butcher-esque hat I won’t be talking about that. If he doesn’t take himself seriously, why should I?
Thanks for reading! UK Election Unchained will be back next week.
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