Alister Jack’s stumble onto centre stage in the great betting scandal is the stuff of comedy. By common consent, Mr Jack only finds himself in the spotlight because he told a BBC reporter, after the election was called, that he had made a tidy sum out of betting on it to take place in July.

Now, if one thinks that one has done something wrong and doesn’t want anyone to know about it, sharing such a jolly anecdote with a BBC reporter does not seem the most likely way to secure that outcome. When Mr Jack protests that he didn’t have a clue about when the election would be held, it is not difficult to believe him.

There is a quaint other-wordliness about it – a Cabinet Minister who doesn’t think it remotely odd, far less potentially illegal, that he should be placing bets about when his Prime Minister will call a General Election and obviously regarding himself as the last person in London expected to have inside knowledge. I’m sure he is looking forward to the Lords.

Rishi Sunak failed to put gambling controversy to bedRishi Sunak failed to put gambling controversy to bed (Image: free)

All this makes Mr Jack’s case somewhat different from the others involving Tory politicians and members of Mr Sunak’s high command though public perceptions are unlikely to differentiate. What the public see is an almost unbelievably convenient metaphor for the last 14 years – a circle of privileged people with an eye for the main chance and the lure of easy money.

The first to emerge, Craig Williams, obligingly resembled Little Britain’s idea of what a Tory MP, caught with his hand in the sweetie jar, should look like. It was hard to believe that this guy had been Rishi Sunak’s Parliamentary Private Secretary (or “closest aide” in shorthand), far less to understand how he could conceivably have thought it OK to both hold that position and bet £100 at 5-1 on the month of the General Election. Easy money, unless you get caught!

I suppose the only reason Sunak did not act sooner to suspend Mr Williams and the woman candidate in Bristol was that he thought there might be more to follow, though I doubt if he expected Alister Jack to appear out of the panelled walls clutching his bookie’s slip. There still might be. It would always be dangerous to under-estimate avarice among those for whom wealth is never enough when they are surrounded by people who are even richer.

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Of course, I must also refer to the Labour candidate suspended for placing a bet though it’s difficult to know what to file this one under. Stupidity seems a reasonable option. This curious individual bet against himself winning in a constituency where there was a Tory majority of 23,391 in 2019. Even in current circumstances, the odds of him not winning must have been at least 200-1 on. (i.e. risk £200 to win £1). Whatever he was guilty of, it was not gambling acumen though his bet is even safer now.

The reason two weeks of a General Election campaign have been dominated by a story about betting is certainly not due to the sums of money involved. Sunak could have more or less killed it off if he had acted more promptly. Who, by now, remembers what was dominating the headlines three weeks ago? Oh dear, I’ve forgotten. But he didn’t act, probably for the reason I have suggested and so on it has dragged, until desperate Tory candidates persuaded him it was coming up on these legendary doorsteps and further reducing their prospects.

I’m sure the betting story has indeed made an impression both as metaphor and an easily understood abuse of position for personal gain. However, there are far bigger fraudulent fish to fry which have done infinitely more damage to the Tories. Voters have not forgotten the crooks and charlatans – no names, no law suits – who saw Covid not as a human tragedy but an opportunity to push their way to the top of a VIP queue in order to add to their fortunes by ripping off the National Health Service for eye-watering sums.

That has barely been mentioned during the campaign but is a far more deeply embedded memory from the past few years than hundred quid bets at the Westminster bookie will prove to be. It was around that time, reinforced by the age of Truss, that judgments were formed which would prove irreversible. The General Election campaign has been a confirmatory exercise for swathes of former Tory voters who needed no further persuasion and were just waiting to take revenge.

Alister Jack told a journalist about the betAlister Jack told a journalist about the bet (Image: free)

To that extent, Keir Starmer’s job was not to inspire but to avoid frightening them away. Anyone who does not understand why Labour had to be cautious in what it promised if it was to climb its own electoral mountain, in Scotland as elsewhere, need only have listened to the prognostications this week of Mr Paul Johnson from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, who appears to be granted without question the status of Nostradamus.

The annoyingly smug Mr Johnson’s mission in life is to demonstrate how awful things will be no matter who is in government. So what’s the point? If Labour had given Mr Johnson and his colleagues enough fiscal rope to hang them with, they would have revelled in the task. As it is, Starmer has set out to reassure without raising unrealistic expectations. The opportunities to go beyond that will only arise if and when Labour has won, so just get there first. There is nothing dishonest in that – just common sense.

It is a mistake to think these calculations exist only within leafy suburbs or red walls of England. I am sitting in a constituency where the Tories used to lose their deposit but polled nearly a quarter of the votes in 2019. It’s the same in many Scottish seats which Labour aims to recover and needs these votes. That will depend on trust which, as the Tories have discovered, is a lot easier to lose than to win back.