On Thursday the British electorate heads to the polls to decide the outcome of the general election following a six-week campaign that has seen political wagering dragged into the shenanigans and sheer stupidity of the Conservative Party’s GambleGate fiasco. 

On the latest episode of iGaming Daily, supported by Optimove, host Martyn Elliott, SBC’s Media Project Director, is joined by Ted Orme-Claye, Editor of Insider Sport and Payment Expert, and Ted Menmuir, Content Director at SBC, to discuss the “uninspiring” options available to the British public and the potential fallout of GambleGate for the Uk’s betting industry.

To begin the trio try to decide what has been more depressing out of England’s faltering Euro 2024 campaign or the run-up to Thursday’s general election.

Orme-Claye thinks that the football has been worse as England were favourites before the tournament whereas the British public is used to “uninspiring” election campaigns.

Orme-Claye added: “I think over the years we’ve just kind of got used to British politics being quite uninspiring. We’re used to almost every election being not necessarily a vote for, let’s say if there’s a change of government, it’s very rarely a vote for the party that’s coming in, it’s a vote against the party that’s going out.”

Menmuir agrees and compares the slog of watching England to his experience of being in Tbilisi when the Georgian national team beat Portugal.

Staying on the topic of Georgia, Menmuir recounts an unforgettable week at the SBC Summit Tbilisi and he encourages everyone in the gaming industry to visit the region to experience how Eurasian cultures are adjusting to gaming.

A major story that has run throughout the election campaign has been the GambleGate scandal. Several Conservative candidates and former MPs are under investigation for using insider information to bet on the timing of the general election. 

The trio consider what the fallout of the scandal could be for the gambling industry in the UK following the election.

Menmuir said: “That fallout is lots of kind of shrieking articles about ‘what does Gamblegate mean’ and ‘what does it reflect about the body politic of British politics’. It has been a very tedious affair. It’s one that has shown an epic kind of level of stupidity for what has been just a shocking and just dreary six weeks of campaigning.”

Staying on the theme of betting, Martyn asks the two Teds what their next political bet would be on the future of politics.

Orme-Claye predicts that the Democrats may replace Joe Biden as their presidential candidate following his poor performance in the first US presidential debate while Menmuir predicts that Nigel Farage and his Reform Party could emerge as the main opposition to the incumbent Labour Party if the Conservatives perform as badly as expected based on polling data.