Voters Switch Off When They Hear the Word ‘Corruption’

Dodgy backdoor contracts? Yawn.

by Moya Lothian-McLean

26 June 2024

Ex-Labour candidate Kevin Craig. Kevin Craig/Twitter

Not to be outdone by the Tories, Labour has now registered a runaway case of betting fever within its own ranks, leading to the suspension of Kevin Craig, the party’s candidate for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich. It transpires that while several Tory insiders were busy placing oddly accurate wagers on the date of the general election, Craig took a different approach, choosing instead to bet against himself. 

Standing in a formerly safe Conservative seat, Craig placed a bet that his campaign would fail to upend this state of affairs. In his defence, Craig took to social media, explaining that a few weeks ago, when he “thought [he] would never win this seat”, he put a bet on the Tories triumphing, with a view to giving the money to local charities. 

Why Craig couldn’t have just handed over some of his own cash is unclear; the businessman has donated at least £100,000 to the Labour party, which has confirmed it will be returning his financial gifts. Craig’s line of work is pretty interesting too: he’s apparently an “expert” in political communications and crisis management. Time to put that knowledge to the test then, chief. 

What’s fascinating is that Craig probably still would be Labour’s candidate for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich if he’d chosen a slightly different type of corrupt activity to pursue, like being given some dodgy backdoor contracts or breaking electoral law by failing to declare hundreds of thousands of pounds in campaign donations. This is because, unlike misconduct of the scale of, say, giving out millions in public money to your mates in exchange for unused, faulty medical supplies, gambling cuts through to the general public. Indeed, polling from More In Common found that of the campaign missteps that people are aware of, it’s the unfolding gambling scandal and Rishi Sunak’s swift D-Day exit that really registered with voters. 

Let’s be honest: Craig’s transgression, on the scale of sleaze we’re witnessing from the Conservatives and Labour, was pretty minor (if lacking in self-belief). But punishment for improper behaviour in public office is about optics – something Mr Communications Expert should have envisaged from the jump. ‘Labour candidate gambles amid a Conservative betting scandal.’ It doesn’t matter the details or differences in the situations. He had to go.

Other individuals hiding whole war chests of skeletons, offshore accounts and skullduggery live to fight another day. Because the really big stuff – the massive fraud or policy changing deals agreed in the dark – are often too big, too complicated and simply too dry for the public to comprehend or care about for a sustained period. It’s why David Cameron can have emerged from the Greensill Capital scandal to become the Baron of Chipping Norton and the last Tory foreign secretary for hopefully a very long time. 

But while the details pass us by, the miasma of sleaze leaves a stain in the minds of the electorate. And that stain is one Keir Starmer’s Labour is going to have to scrub at much harder if it seriously wants to make good on its promise to clean up this dirty business.

Moya Lothian-McLean is a contributing editor at Novara Media.

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