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is The Guardian. From

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The Guardian's today in focus, this

0:41

is election extra with me, Lucy

0:43

Hoff. This evening, The Guardian's political

0:46

editor, Pippa Creira, on her betting

0:48

scandal, Scoop, that's defined the election

0:50

campaign. I don't think that

0:53

we should be lured into thinking this is

0:55

a problem with the rules. It's a problem

0:57

with politicians, you can see from the reaction

0:59

of the public, that they know straight

1:02

away that what's been going

1:04

on in the Tory party, this sort of

1:06

insider dealing, is wrong. There are more

1:08

allegations and now Labour has withdrawn support from

1:10

one of its candidates too. And

1:12

with the election threatening to turn into

1:14

the grand national, both Stalmer and Sunak

1:16

take time out to prepare for tonight's

1:19

final TV debate. Well,

1:22

with me is The Guardian's political editor, Pippa

1:25

Creira. Hi, Pippa. Hi, Lucy. Can

1:27

we start with the latest developments

1:29

on this very ballooning scandal? First

1:31

of all, from the Tory side.

1:33

Well, we revealed at The Guardian

1:35

last night that a fifth conservative

1:37

had become embroiled in this row.

1:40

He's a member of the Senate, a

1:42

Welsh member of the Senate, who

1:45

represents the same constituency as Craig

1:47

Williams, who of course was the

1:49

first, was the first individual

1:51

that we identified in that very first story

1:53

two weeks ago now. He's a

1:55

guy called Russell George and the allegation is

1:57

that he put down a suspicious bet. that

4:00

he was also being looked at

4:02

by the gambling commission, by the

4:04

watchdog. But as you rightly say,

4:06

this wasn't for any alleged insider

4:08

betting, it was because he bet

4:11

against himself. So basically, in

4:13

a very safe Tory seat, or it should be a very safe Tory

4:15

seat, he decided he wasn't going to win and he thought, well, you

4:17

know what, if I'm not going to win, I may as well make

4:19

a few quid out of it. Small compensation. Small

4:21

compensation and he put down a bet.

4:23

But then, of course, he was almost

4:25

immediately suspended and the party with

4:28

Jewish support for him. And actually, I

4:30

think it's quite telling the way that

4:32

the Conservative Party and the Labour Party

4:34

have responded so differently to these different

4:36

allegations. It took Rishi Sunak

4:38

till yesterday, so two weeks after our first

4:41

story before the party withdrew its support

4:43

from its two parliamentary candidates. Kirsstammer, it

4:46

was a matter of minutes before we

4:48

heard that not only were they suspending

4:50

their support, they were also returning over

4:52

£100,000 worth of donations that

4:56

he'd given to the party under Kirsstammer. But

4:58

Labour felt they wanted to be on the front foot with

5:00

it and to be able to say, and we've heard Kirsstammer

5:02

say this on his travels around the country

5:05

this morning, that he

5:07

wants to highlight the contrast between the two responses

5:10

and basically say, look, I'm a strong leader,

5:12

I wanted to take decisive action in contrast

5:15

in his view to Rishi Sunak who was

5:17

weak and slow. And notably a very long

5:19

and detailed apology from Kevin Craig on X.

5:22

Yeah, I mean, Craig Williams did eventually,

5:24

once we'd found him, apologise

5:27

and said that he recognised that it looked really

5:29

bad, whereas Kevin Craig

5:32

was not just remorseful but appeared

5:34

to accept that whatever punishment was

5:36

dealt out would be appropriate and

5:38

he'd been foolish and he just

5:41

had to suck it up. His

5:44

candidacy was slightly controversial anyway, that £100,000 that

5:46

you just mentioned. Well,

5:49

and he also donated money to where

5:51

streeting of staffing in his office, the

5:54

Chado Health Secretary, yeah, and he was

5:56

a pretty sort of

5:58

high-profile and successful lobbyist. describes

6:01

himself on his website as an expert

6:03

in political communications and political

6:07

crisis communications I should say

6:10

and yeah absolutely he'll need it now. There

6:12

has been lots of questions about the

6:14

selection of some of the candidates for the Labour

6:16

Party. Obviously we've seen sort of

6:19

you know allies of Keir Starmer jetted into

6:21

seats at the last minute, we had the

6:23

row around Diane Abbott and then of course

6:25

has been also questions about party donors and

6:27

getting seats and in this case Kevin Craig

6:29

of course was one of them. So going

6:31

back a couple of weeks to when you

6:33

had this extraordinary first scoop about Craig Williams

6:35

putting a flutter in his words on the

6:37

date of the election, did you

6:39

at that time have a sense of quite how big

6:42

this was going to get? I mean it really has

6:44

defined the campaign in this second half. Well I don't

6:46

think you ever really do when you first write a

6:48

story like that I mean it definitely got my sort

6:50

of antennae going and over the years I've become quite

6:52

good at judging what type

6:54

of stories will cut through beyond

6:57

the political bubble. You know Dominic

6:59

Cummings going to Barnard Castle, the

7:01

partygate saga and this

7:04

as well and well of course this is on

7:06

a different magnitude. It

7:08

is something you know half the country bets

7:10

on on sporting sporting

7:12

events so it is something which

7:15

goes way beyond Westminster and as

7:17

such probably has you know cut

7:19

through in those terms but also

7:22

because unfortunately there's huge disaffection with

7:24

politics and our political system across the board

7:27

and this unfortunately kind of I

7:29

think plays into the narrative that

7:31

politicians or in this case conservative

7:34

politicians are in it for themselves

7:36

and I think the idea that that people

7:38

were sort of whether it was for fun

7:40

or whether it was for you know cheating

7:42

politics is a game or whether it's actually

7:45

trying to make profit from their their knowledge

7:47

their inside knowledge. I did

7:49

recognise that those things would probably go

7:51

down very badly with the public but

7:53

of course at that point I didn't

7:55

know whether it went much further than

7:57

Craig Williams. I had had indications that

8:00

there could be others involved, but not the

8:02

scale that we've now seen two weeks on.

8:05

You know, we've revealed obviously some of those

8:07

other incidents, but of course there's also police

8:09

involved as well. It's not just a Conservative

8:11

Party. So do you think that this is

8:14

likely to tip over to the sort of

8:16

post-election period? Is there going

8:18

to be continued calls for change, for

8:20

reform? I think almost certainly.

8:22

I mean, like I say, this is cut

8:24

through. And I was very struck by Keir Starmer,

8:27

who we all expect him to be Prime Minister come

8:29

next week, the end of next week, saying

8:32

that actually the problem wasn't with the

8:34

system, the problem was with the politicians.

8:36

But as this scandal has ballooned, I

8:39

think that they will find themselves,

8:41

the incoming government, whichever party it

8:43

is, but probably Labour, under

8:46

pressure to reform those rules, at

8:49

least to clarify them, because now what's

8:51

happening is that every politician who faces

8:54

a journalist is getting asked, have you,

8:56

if not placed a bet on the

8:58

election date, have you ever placed a

9:00

political bet? I mean, the Prime Minister himself

9:02

did with Piers Morgan, didn't he? And

9:05

Keir Starmer has said that he's only ever placed bets

9:07

on the horses. Ed Davie, the Liberal

9:09

Democrat leader, has admitted that he's placed political

9:11

bets in recent years as well. Crucially,

9:14

none of them against the law,

9:16

because there was no sort of

9:18

evidence of inside information. But it

9:21

does sound like it's quite widespread. And

9:23

the UK is different from other countries

9:26

in this regard. I mean, Europe is

9:28

sort of a political

9:30

betting desert by comparison, continental Europe. And

9:32

there's very strict rules in the United

9:34

States around this. So I think as

9:37

with things like the expenses scandal,

9:39

even though the rules weren't necessarily

9:41

broken, it didn't go down well for the

9:43

public. And there was a feeling of that whole sort of one

9:45

set of rules for them, one set for everybody else, that

9:48

ultimately might push the

9:50

next government to go down the route of reform.

9:54

So really serious questions for both party leaders

9:56

tonight. They're preparing for the very final TV

9:58

debate tonight in a campaign. that feels like

10:00

it's included millions of TV

10:02

debates, but how do you expect them both

10:04

to be preparing today? Well, I

10:07

think that they will be anticipating what the other

10:09

is likely to do. I mean, the most comparable

10:11

debate was the first one of the campaign, actually,

10:13

the head-to-head on ITV, which I thought was really

10:15

scrappy, and neither of them came out of it

10:17

particularly well. So I think Starmer

10:19

will continue to be cautious because, you

10:21

know, the whole Ming-Vah strategy that Roy

10:24

Jenkins accused Tony Blair of, he's adopted

10:26

a similar strategy, don't say anything that

10:28

could, you know, that could

10:31

push us off course when it looks like

10:33

we're heading towards victory. And he'll be very

10:35

cautious not to sort of go further than

10:37

he has already on any policy issues. But

10:39

I do wonder as well whether he'll recognise,

10:41

I hope he recognises that this is the

10:43

last opportunity for him to reach a mass

10:45

audience with a message of hope, and

10:48

for us to hear something of him from him

10:50

on a sort of, you know, more ambitious vision for

10:52

the country. And I think SINAC

10:55

almost inevitably will recognise that this is the

10:57

endgame, and that he's on course to not

10:59

just losing, but to leading the party

11:01

to a bad loss, a

11:04

historic loss even. Plus he'll

11:06

also be wanting to deflect from the gambling route.

11:08

So, you know, this is the one opportunity, the

11:11

biggest final opportunity he gets to try and shift

11:13

the dial a little bit, not to the Conservatives

11:15

win, but so they lose less badly. So it's

11:17

going to be really interesting to see what, you

11:19

know, what that is, that final message they end

11:22

on as they go into the home street towards

11:24

polling day next week. Well, we'll be watching and

11:26

thank you so much, Pippa, that was fascinating. Thanks

11:28

for having me. Thanks

11:31

for listening. If you want to hear

11:34

more from Pippa, listen to tomorrow's episode

11:36

of Guardian Podcast Politics Weekly UK, where

11:38

Pippa and Guardian political correspondent Kieran Stacey

11:40

will be analysing tonight's debate. Today in

11:42

focus, we'll be back again tomorrow morning.

11:44

Helen Pitt will be on the campaign

11:46

trail in the Redwall swing seat of

11:48

Lee. And finally, if you appreciate

11:50

the kind of reporting Pippa Correira has been

11:52

doing, then please consider supporting our journalism. The

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