We Brits have been betting on politics for well over 100 years
4 min read
It was nearly 25 years ago when Labour MP Frank Roy said he couldn't give up the money he made betting on the next House of Commons Speaker because his wife had spent it all. We're not sure that excuse will wash now.
“They was betting, wasn’t they? Not only on who’d win the election but when it’d be. Right?”
That’s not from this week, but from 1966. The very first episode of Till Death Us Do Part had Alf Garnett explaining to his daughter and son-in-law how Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, had made a “packet” on the calling of the election.
“Before he makes it official he goes up to see Her Majesty at the Palace which is his prerogative, I’ll grant you that. He goes into see her, right, and he says to her, can I absolve the parliament, right, and she says to him so be it, and afore she’s even got her crown orf, he’s out the back door, down the betting shop bunging his money on. And he ain’t even got the grace to bung a few quid on for her and all… If that had been Sir Alec Home at least he would have been gentlemanly enough to bung a bet on for her and all”.
There is no evidence that this was anything other than the product of writer Johnny Speight’s imagination – but you get bonus points for knowing that the son-in-law was played by Tony Booth, who was Cherie Blair’s father.
Ladbrokes were the leaders in political betting in Britain, offering markets as early as 1935, but it really took off in this country after the legalisation of off-course betting shops in 1961.
Not everyone was a fan.
Initial objections focussed on the extent to which betting markets could influence voters. William Hill, for example, worried that “it could become an evil if sensational reports of the odds were published. It could sway public opinion and make people vote according to their stake instead of according to their conviction”. Or as an Economics Professor from Cambridge University put it in a letter to the Times in 1966, “the polls affect the bets and the bets prejudice the actual votes. When money is involved, everyone climbs on the bandwagon”.
Life and Work, the official magazine of the Church of Scotland, proposed a ban on political gambling, claiming that gambling on election results “is a most pernicious thing and is a sign of the cynicism of the age. It could affect the outcome in scores of marginal seats and the bookie shapes the Government of the future”.
Even then, it should have been clear that the numbers involved made this extremely unlikely – not least because people don’t just bet on their preferred outcome.
One of the most-high profile early public bets came when the hotel owner Max Joseph put £50,000 on Labour to win the 1966 election, despite not supporting them. “If the Tories get back one’s shares will appreciate”, he said. “This bet was laid to offset the opposite happening”.
Just because it went mainstream from the 1960s onwards doesn’t mean there weren’t political bets before then. The London Stock Exchange used to allow trading on imaginary securities called “majorities” – an early form of spread betting. In 1928, Lloyds of London allowed people to insure against a Labour victory; a £50,000 policy for a premium of £10,000, effectively a 4/1 bet.
And it’s long been getting politicians into trouble.
From the Lord Provost of Edinburgh who in 1905 was accused of betting on election results – one bet for five shillings, and another for a new hat – to Charles Kennedy, then Lib Dem president, who in 1994 bet against his own party in the European Elections, staking £50 on them winning fewer seats than the opinion polls were indicating. He was said to have got odds of 50/1 and donated the money to party funds.
In 2000, Labour MP Frank Roy made around £3400 betting on Michael Martin to become the new Speaker and was rapped on the knuckles by the Standards and Privileges committee. Roy apologised and claimed that he didn’t actually have the money, because “Mrs Roy has taken it and spent it”. Maybe some of those currently in hot water could try that excuse?
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