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Gove compares election betting scandal to Partygate

Mason is being investigated by betting regulators, accused of placing dozens of bets on the election date according to the Times. He is the fourth Tory figure to be implicated in the affair…reports Asian Lite News

A senior British minister compared the latest scandal involving Tory candidates accused of betting on the election date to Partygate, a series of Covid-era parties that brought down Boris Johnson.

Housing minister Michael Gove compared the betting allegations to the Partygate scandal in an interview with the Times newspaper on Saturday.

“It looks like one rule for them and one rule for us… That’s the most potentially damaging thing,” said Gove, who is standing down this election after 14 years as an MP.

“That was damaging at the time of Partygate and is damaging here,” he added.

Prime minister Johnson was forced from office in 2022 following public anger at the revelations of parties held in Downing Street when the rest of the country was under lockdown during the pandemic.

Now another senior Conservative Party figure has been caught up in the latest scandal. The party’s chief data officer, Nick Mason, has taken a leave of absence, following claims he placed bets on the timing of the election, the PA news agency reported Saturday.

Mason is being investigated by betting regulators, accused of placing dozens of bets on the election date according to the Times. He is the fourth Tory figure to be implicated in the affair.

The party’s campaign director stepped aside following reports on Thursday that he and his wife, a Tory candidate in the July 4 election, were under investigation by the Gambling Commission.

The scandal broke a week earlier, when Tory candidate and Sunak’s ministerial aide Craig Williams said he was being probed for staking a bet on the snap election date before it was called. On Wednesday, London police said one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s security detail had been arrested for allegedly placing a bet on the date.

Sunak has said he is “incredibly angry” over the revelations. “If anyone is found to have broken the rules, not only should they face the full consequences of the law, I will make sure that they are booted out of the Conservative Party,” he said earlier this week.

Political bets are allowed in the UK, including on the date of elections, but using insider knowledge to do so is against the law. The inquiries heap further misery on Sunak, whose party has trailed Labour by about 20 points in the polls for nearly two years, making it odds-on to be dumped out of office after 14 years.

Gove said that those involved in the betting scandal were “sucking the oxygen out of the campaign.” Comparing it to Partygate again, he added: “A few individuals end up creating an incredibly damaging atmosphere for the party.

“So it’s both bad in itself, but also destructive to the efforts of all of those good people who are currently fighting hard for the Conservative vote.”

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UK risks ‘descending into darkness’ of antisemitism, says Gove

In his speech, Gove will criticise the organisers of pro-Palestine marches, at which thousands of people regularly march through London and other cities, for not doing more to prevent symbols of anti-Jewish hate…reports Asian Lite News

Michael Gove is to warn that Britain risks “descending into the darkness” if it fails to tackle growing antisemitism in the wake of the 7 October attacks.

In a major speech, the communities secretary will say the safety of the Jewish community in the UK is the “canary in the mine” for the health of the whole political system.

“When Jewish people are under threat, all our freedoms are threatened,” he will say on Tuesday. “The safety of the Jewish community is the canary in the mine.

“Growing antisemitism is a fever which weakens the whole body politic. There is one thing which – increasingly – unites the organisations and individuals which give cause for extremist concern: antisemitism.

A lawn full of tents, with a handmade sign in the foreground that says Divest, and red spray paint on a wall beyond the tents that says All Zionists.

“It is the common currency of hate. It is at the dark heart of their worldview. Whether Islamist, far right or hard left.”

The Community Security Trust, a charity that provides security advice to the Jewish community, recorded the highest number of antisemitic incidents in 2023, a 147% increase on the previous year. About two-thirds of the total took place after the 7 October attacks.

“Many of those on these marches are thoughtful, gentle, compassionate people – driven by a desire for peace and an end to suffering,” he will say. “But they are side by side with those who are promoting hate. The organisers of these marches could do everything in their power to stop that. They don’t.”

The marches have been overwhelmingly peaceful, however, police made seven arrests at the latest protest in London on Saturday, including a demonstrator seen carrying a coffin with offensive language on it. The demonstration came a few days after Nakba Day, which honours the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in the 1948 war.

Gove, who is regarded as one of parliament’s most pro-Israel MPs, will urge peers to back his bill banning British public bodies from boycotting Israel, a move that some Tories have said could exacerbate British community tensions amid the Israel-Hamas war.

He makes the speech before the publication of a report by the government’s independent adviser on political violence, Lord Walney, due to be released on Tuesday, which is expected to recommend a new category for proscribing “extreme protest groups”.

At the launch of his report, he will say: “It is time for the political world to catch up with the real world and view extreme protest movements as an unacceptable threat to our democracy, not an extension of it.”

Michael Gove and Boris Johnson stand behind lecterns with the sign #TakeControl during a Vote Leave campaign visit in 2016.

Walney, the former Labour MP John Woodcock who sits as a cross-bench peer, said at the weekend that hard-left groups were seeking to “undermine” Britain’s democratic principles by refusing to comply with the law.

His recommendations could mean that protest groups such as Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action, which focuses on arms companies linked to Israel, could be banned in a similar way to terrorist organisations. The sanctions could restrict a group’s ability to fundraise and its right to assembly.

The Home Office has said ministers would consider the recommendations, but it is unclear whether the government would proceed with a ban before the election. It is due to publish its counter-extremism action plan in the coming weeks.

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