Farrukh Dhondy | With the election just days away, all of Britain is talking about bets

“All stories have their endings

--Yes, that’s true!

Morality has its bending

--What can we do?

In every love there is offending

--Equally for me and you

The past is gone, the future’s pending

--The devil will have his due.”

From The Ballad of Joe Hoga, by Bachchoo

The British general election is just a few days away. In the context of what I am about to write, I’d better be exact -- it’s on the Fourth of July. So what, gentle readers, preoccupies the UK media and the nation? The economy? Er... no. The National Health Service? Umm… up to a point. The prospect of raised or lower taxes? Well… sort of. Stopping immigration? A constant but today unproduced nag. What then does dominate the headlines today?

A bet.

Not even one for millions of pounds -- just a hundred or a hundred and fifty.

And no, not on a horse, my dears -- but, placed before Hedgie Soongone stood in the pouring rain outside 10 Downing Street behind a lectern and soakingly announced the date he had set for the election, a bet on just this July election date.

For the past year, commentators have been speculating on the election date. Most opted for November. Others, vaguely, speculated that a late election could give the Tories enough time to cut taxes and thus appeal to wider sections of the electorate.

Perhaps the main threat to the Tory vote is not the divisions in the party or its failure through four prime ministerships on most fronts in government, but the rise of a far-right party called Reform, led now by one Nigel Farage. Farage was and is Britain’s Chief Mr Brexit, insisting that it hasn’t yet “got done!”. He is also a friend of and campaigner for Donald Trump and crosses the pond to help Donald Wigwarm campaign. Some commentators therefore assumed that Hedgie would call the election in November when Farage would be away in the United States helping his hero win the US election and wouldn’t be here as a thorn in his flesh.

Wrong.

Hedgie inevitably consulted several people in ultra-confidence about the best date to call the election. All sorts of factors must have been brought to the equation. Victory was the pretence. Holding back the resurgent tsunami of Labour was the aim. The announced date, carefully assessed behind the closed doors and secret closets of Number Ten, came as a surprise to some. But not apparently to two Tory election candidates who were privy to the discussions which determined this precise date.

So, what did these Tory candidates, one for a constituency in Wales and the other for North Bristol, do? Why, they used their inside information to go to the bookies and place bets on the precise day of the election before it was announced.

The media has now gone wild with the allegation and the fact that an internal 10 Downing Street inquiry has determined that these two and several others, including security policemen who might have heard whispers of the specific date, went out and “had a flutter” (placed a bet) on it, as the Brits say.

I don’t know what odds were offered, but I bet (oh dear!) they must have been substantial if the exact date was specified.

The two candidates have been expelled from the Tory party and will either withdraw or stand as exposed, cheating Independents. Rule Britannia!

I confess, I didn’t think bookies would accept bets on the election date. I occasionally go down to the local bookies and place £3.60 on a special horse-racing bet in which you pick three horses to come first and second in six possible combinations. I mostly lose the £3.60, but must here record the fact that I once won £46 on this bet -- err... three years ago. I’ve only taken to this form of idleness in my later years.

As a teenager in Pune, I was aware that at the corner of our Sachapir Street was a busy crossroads called Sarbatwalla Chowk, where bookies would hang about taking bets on horse races, but mostly on what were known as “cotton figures”.

The bet consisted of predicting the last two digits of the closing price of a bale of cotton on the New York commodities market. I suppose the odds were 100 to one.

One of our friends had been sent by his parents to Commerce College in Poona (as it was then) from Bombay in disgrace after he had sold his mother’s Indian musical instruments and smashed a window in their flat to pretend that they had been taken by burglars. He used that money to place bets on horses.

He did the same with the college fees his father sent and was consequently suspended from college. In desperation, he borrowed money from friends, put the sum together and took a final chance on a horse called “Rose de Bahama”. It won with spectacular odds, and our friend came into enough money to pay his college fees and treat us to tea and “muska-slice” -- thick buttered bread.

Forever after that he would remember his triumph and, flicking his wrists before him as though he were the jockey loosening the reins on the race horse, he would pronounce the name of his redeemer: “Rose de Bahama”.