Rishi Sunak rocked by another election betting scandal as Tory campaign chief steps back

The Conservative election campaign has hit the buffers this morning after the ongoing election betting row ramped up a number of gears. Last night the BBC revealed that both a member of Rishi Sunak’s close police protection team, and a Tory candidate, were the second and third individuals being investigated over suspicious bets placed on the timing of the general election.

This morning the row became even more serious, as it emerged that the Tory candidate in question, Laura Saunders, is married to the Conservative Party’s Director of Campaigning.

Tony Lee, the campaign chief, was confirmed by a party spokesman this morning to have taken a step back from the campaign amid the row.

However in yet another shock development just minutes ago, the BBC’s Chris Mason and Laura Kuenssberg dropped a further bombshell, revealing that Mr Lee himself is also being looked into by the Gambling Commission over an alleged bet relating to the timing of the general election.

The farcical row was further heightened by the fact that just yesterday afternoon, the official Conservative Party Twitter account shared a Labour attack ad based around a roulette wheel.

It was captioned: “If you bet on Labour, you can never win."

This morning, Michael Gove told reporters he is "concerned" about the news emerging and said that using "privileged inside information" to make money from political bets "is wrong".

He added: "I don’t want to be puritan or censorious but it is concerning if people are using inside information".

Sir Keir Starmer told reporters that if one of his candidates were embroiled in a similar row "they would be out their feet wouldn't even touch the floor".

In addition to this morning’s explosive gambling row, Bloomberg revealed that Tory HQ told candidates yesterday that it has decided to redirect its campaign resources and finances away from dozens of Tory-held seats toward ultra-safe seats.

The panicked change in strategy came after three separate mega MRP polls, published yesterday, suggested the Tories are on course for a wipeout on July 4.

Conservative Central Headquarters (CCHQ) told candidates in a number of constituencies with majorities as high as 10,000 votes that their funds and favourable access to party activists is being withdrawn. These resources will now instead be directed to seats with even larger majorities.

Mr Sunak himself is receiving more activists and funding in his super safe seat of Richmond (Yorks), despite him having a majority of 27,210.

A poll by the Telegraph yesterday said that Mr Sunak is course to become the first Prime Minister in history to lose his seat at the election.

A Conservative HQ source this morning told the Express that the Bloomberg report is correct, but they are becoming increasingly tired of finding out about major campaign decisions at the same time as the media.

The source added: “People have accepted what's going to happen and are happy with trying to save the MPs who we can make the difference for”.

They added that the news about Laura Saunders and Tony Lee was “very disappointing”, adding that the row is now “out of control”.