Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Rishi Sunak has withdrawn Conservative support for two candidates linked to allegations related to betting on the election date, after days of intensifying pressure on the prime minister to act.
After standing by Craig Williams and Laura Saunders for several days, Sunak pulled the plug on the candidates on Tuesday morning, in another sign of disarray in the Tory election campaign.
The Conservative party said: “As a result of ongoing internal inquiries, we have concluded that we can no longer support Craig Williams or Laura Saunders as parliamentary candidates at the forthcoming general election.
“We have checked with the Gambling Commission that this decision does not compromise the investigation that they are conducting, which is rightly independent and ongoing.”
Saunders, a Tory staffer and wife of the party’s campaign director, is standing in Bristol North West while Williams, a former parliamentary aide to Sunak, is standing in Montgomeryshire.
Because nominations have closed, both will appear on ballot papers as Conservative candidates but they no longer enjoy the party’s official endorsement.
Sunak has said he is “extremely angry” over the allegations against Tories over the betting affair but until now he said he wanted to let official investigations run their course before taking any disciplinary action.
Asked why Sunak had changed his mind, one Tory official said simply: “Further inquiries.” Asked if other Tories might be linked to the affair in the coming days, the official said: “I don’t know. We find out names from the press.”
Sunak had faced strong pressure to suspend the two candidates and a third Tory — Saunders’ husband Tony Lee, who has taken leave of absence from the party’s campaign.
Jonathan Ashworth, Labour shadow cabinet office minister, said: “It is yet another example of Rishi Sunak’s staggeringly weak leadership that it has taken him nearly two weeks to see what was obvious to everyone else.
“Rishi Sunak now needs to come clean with voters across the country and tell them exactly how many of his Conservatives are implicated and who they are.”
The drip-feed of revelations about people being investigated by the Gambling Commission for betting on the July 4 election date has had a corrosive effect on Sunak’s already-floundering campaign.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said last week that the candidates had “got to be suspended”. “I don’t know why he [Sunak] hasn’t done that. I think it’s a real measure of his leadership or lack of leadership.”
Former Tory minister Tobias Ellwood said on Monday that Sunak should have suspended the two candidates as “the public wants to see clearer, robust action”.
Michael Gove, levelling up secretary, warned that the scandal was as bad as “partygate”, in which Boris Johnson and Sunak received criminal penalties over their attendance at lockdown rule-breaking gatherings
The betting row was “sucking the oxygen out of the campaign”, Gove told The Sunday Times, adding that it risked “damaging” the party by entrenching the idea that there is “one rule for them and one rule for us”.
Credit: Source link
