Break out the comedy air quotes, because Tony Lee, the Conservative party’s director of campaigning, has taken a “leave of absence”. A development to which one’s immediate response is: wait, this Conservative campaign has a director??? Does he work in the snuff genre? If not, this is surely the Heaven’s Gate of general election campaigns – and you have to remember that fabled cinematic flop collapsed not simply an entire genre (the western), nor simply an entire legacy movie studio (United Artists), but the entire promise-filled era of film-making known as the New Hollywood. Righto: metaphors. In the weeks leading up to Rishi Sunak’s general election announcement, you would think the one thing the party who’d been in charge for the past 14 years wasn’t short of was metaphors. Britain was now a country whose own excrement was literally lapping at its shores. Britain was now a country whose prime minister travelled from central London to Manchester to announce that the government’s flagship central-London-to-Manchester rail project would no longer be going to Manchester – or indeed to central London. The list went on.
Say what you will about recent administrations, but you absolutely could not question the commitment to creating their own metaphors. It was quite possibly our last manufacturing success story. Which brings us to the revelation that two Tory parliamentary candidates are under investigation by the Gambling Commission for placing bets on the election date before it was formally announced by Sunak. Last week the Guardian revealed that Sunak’s closest parliamentary aide, Craig Williams, had placed a £100 bet on the date. Yesterday evening, the BBC revealed that a police officer in Sunak’s protection detail had been arrested and suspended over an election timing bet. Hours later, the BBC revealed that a second Conservative candidate, named as Bristol North West hopeful Laura Saunders, was also being probed for allegedly placing a bet on the election date. Then this morning, the Beeb revealed that someone else – oh do look, it’s campaigns director Tony Lee himself! – was being looked into over an alleged bet related to the timing of the election. Please take a moment to create a fantasy scenario as to how on earth this hugely unfortunate series of events occurred. Did someone – perhaps the director of Conservative campaigns – take a look at the party’s prospects and spot a gap in the metaphor market? Did Tony Lee issue some form of APB, perhaps along the lines of: “Guys, we can see that Labour is just short of one metaphor – specifically something to illustrate the idea that we gambled with the country to enrich ourselves. For the love of God, can anyone help them out?” I want to say: look, if you want a job doing, etc. But I think that legally, I am required to say: if allegedly you want an alleged job allegedly doing, etc. As for what precisely we’re dealing with – you always see the bookies’ publicists press-releasing odds on things like the next election date, or who killed a Coronation Street character or something. When I worked on this paper’s Diary column, we’d sometimes ring those PRs and claim we wanted to place a bet on these supposed markets, in the interests of seeing if they actually existed in the real world, or were just a publicity trick. There would always be an incredible amount of waffle in reply. The fact is, the bookmakers watch these novelty markets incredibly closely, as they are so vulnerable to punters with inside information. So what is being alleged here is not just irregular betting, but intense stupidity. How many stupids are there? By lunch, the Conservative campaign HQ had issued a statement saying “it wouldn’t be proper to comment”, adding that they had been contacted about “a small number of individuals”. Why not say three? Oh man – it’s not more than three … is it? This was not a question answered by the various Conservatives on the campaign trail today. Touring the breakfast studios was Michael Gove, who regretted being unable to discuss an ongoing investigation, before waltzing onwards and breezing of the party’s electoral prospects: “We’re not in Fergie time yet!” Once again, we can only salute a senior politician’s unique understanding of football terminology. But in the interests of accuracy: Michael, it would be good for the Conservatives if you were in Fergie time, because it would mean you might be about to pull off an astonishing late-stage winner with the clock arguably running on till you did. An alternative analogy for this particular general election campaign might be the infamous Nigerian match in which Akurba FC lost 79-0 to Plateau United Feeders, with the Feeders scoring a goal every 37 seconds in the second half. The Nigerian Football Association called it “a mind-boggling show of shame”. And lifetime bans ensued. Elsewhere, Jeremy Hunt already seemed to be on the memoir circuit. This morning the guy who is still actually chancellor of the exchequer told a story to something called the Times CEO Summit – big campaigning stop, apparently – about how he got his job. “I got that rather unexpected call from Liz Truss asking me to be chancellor,” reflected Hunt. “Which I thought was a hoax and refused to take the call and could not imagine any situation ever where Liz Truss would actually ask me to be chancellor, so that was a bit surreal, and then in that first week literally I’m picking the entire mini-budget!” Sorry – is it not still the election? Why is he reminding people of this lunacy? Is there a point at which play becomes so remarkably atrocious that it could even amount to alleged election-throwing? Perhaps the Nigerian Football Federation could investigate.