For Rishi Sunak , The Sun ’s Never Mind the Ballots interview was the closest the Prime Minister has to a home crowd. And even they weren’t happy. The opening salvo on the betting scandal engulfing the Conservatives made clear the PM was facing an uncomfortable evening.
A story which could have been stopped in its tracks by Sunak if he had immediately suspended those involved. But the PM has failed to stop this runaway train. Over the weekend the party shunted responsibility to the Gambling Commission watchdog.
By Monday he’d pulled on the train’s brakes by asking the Tory party to conduct its own investigation. “I’m incredibly angry about this and the right thing to do..
. is to get to the bottom of what happened, to investigate things thoroughly,” an exasperated Sunak said. How long it will take this particular story to grind to a halt is not clear.
Some Conservative candidates report that it took around five days for “Normandy to sink in” with voters , referring to Sunak’s decision to come back early from the D-Day commemorations in northern France. They estimate a similar lag time before gambling comes up on the doorstep. On the top floor of London’s News UK building in the so-called spin room where party aides and politicians come to tell assembled hacks what they should really be thinking, The Sun relayed the interviews on to a giant screen.
As the feed buffered, hacks managed to hear one word in three. An engineer came in to fix it, switched on You.
