Article

Belief

Creed

General Election 24

Politics

21 June 2024

3 min read

The one thing we won’t bet on

The election gambling row highlights an odd outlier.

James Sampson-Foster

James is training to be a priest in the Church of England.

A cartoon depicts a slot machine opposite the Houses of Parliament

Nick Jones/Midjourney.ai.

I’m not a betting man, but I’ll wager you’ve seen a gambling ad recently.

In fact, I’d put good money on it – or at least somebody has.

If you’ve been watching football you’ll see ads for betting companies in the ad breaks, on billboards – sometimes on the kit itself.

And then there are the grinning celebrity endorsers, each advertising a wonderful world of chance-based amusements.

That’s a lot of money on billboards and sponsorships.

And on our high streets up and down the country, you’re never very far from a betting shop, each of them with windows guaranteeing the best odds and offering free bets on well, almost anything, really.

If you can think of it, you can probably bet on it.

Sports fixtures? The results of reality TV shows? The date of the next general election?

Can you bet on it? You betcha!

Betting is everywhere, though it’s fair to say there’s a bit more of it in some places than others.

Betting shops are 10 times more likely to be found in the most deprived areas of the UK than its most wealthy ones.

Still – even if you happen to find yourself without a betting shop in walking distance, with smartphone betting now there’s no need to even pop into a bookies.

The fun needs never stop.

All this proves is that gambling is everywhere and that people will put a bet on almost anything.

With such universal access, I shouldn’t have been surprised that people have been betting on the date of the next general election.

I have heard many people say that a little flutter brings a bit of excitement to things – and if anything is in need of a bit of excitement, it’s a general election.

Perhaps it was this need to alleviate the tedium which has led to the seemingly improbable number of people from the Conservative Party now under investigation by the Gambling Commission. At current count, there are two candidates, as well as the Tory director of campaigning and his wife. Oh, and one of the Prime Minister’s police protection officers.

By the time you read this – there may be more. And no, please don’t place a bet on that.

Am I disappointed that public officials may have been using insider information to gain an advantage at the bookies? I suppose so. But that’s not what I find interesting.

All this proves is that gambling is everywhere and that people will put a bet on almost anything.

And well, I already knew that.

No – what is interesting is that in our society people will bet on almost anything. Or more specifically – everything, except one thing.

When it comes to betting on whether England will score, or who will win at Strictly, a hunch is enough. A gut feeling is enough to separate us from our hard earned cash.

But when it comes to whether or not there is a God, nope.

We’re going to need hard evidence for that one.

We’re going to need absolute certainty, incontrovertible proof.

No margin for error.

We’ll bet on anything else – everything else. But not that.

Which, I have to say, strikes me as odd.

Why won’t we take out a bet that costs us nothing?

Most of us in Church are there because of a hunch. A gut feeling. We call it faith, and it’s a free gift.

Do you care for a wager?

Article

Comment

Economics

Morality

Politics

27 September 2024

4 min read

The Conservative Party needs a moral reset

A party member recalls that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher as well as an economist.

Jean Kabasomi

Jean Kabasomi works in financial services in London. She also writes and broadcasts.

A statue of a Georgian man looks to the left.

Adam Smith, looking right to left.

Glasgow University.

The election of a new government in the United Kingdom has felt like an opportunity to fix some of the daily challenges faced by the people of these isles. As a member of the Conservative Party, it also presents the chance for those of us who are Conservatives to take stock of what it means to be conservative and how best that definition can serve the people of the UK in a way that benefits the whole and not just specific parts.

Those who follow the internal machinations of the Conservative Party will know that the battle for a new leader has already begun. For the most part, it has focused on whether the Party needs to move to the right to combat the offering by the new kids on the block – Reform, or to the centre in order to block the leaking Shire vote that shifted to the Liberal Democrats. I want to propose a different approach.

For years as I was growing up, probably influenced by the media and how it presents politics, I assumed that the idea of a minimum wage was a socialist idea or what we might today describe as progressive politics. Things changed, when I studied the history and influence of Christian thought on Western economics, as part of a Masters in Biblical Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Adam Smith is the father of modern capitalism and hero to many conservatives. His foundational text, The Wealth of Nations, was on the reading list. Prior to these studies, I had heard and seen many conservative commentators use that text to support their claims around small government. I had also seen liberal commentators vilify his work for being the source of our broken Western systems. Many claimed that it was the basis for the economic thought and principles of Hayek and Friedman, the prominent economists who influenced the policies of the Thatcher government in the UK and the Reagan government in the US.

It tells us that our dogmatic positions should not prevent us from focusing on what is in the best interest of the people that politics and economics are supposed to serve.

When I read The Wealth of Nations for myself, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe how much of what he had actually said was ignored or had been misrepresented. Reading it for myself changed my assumptions and my learned narrative on capitalism. One of my greatest surprises was that Smith held what I had known to be a socialist policy, the idea of a minimum wage. To him it was such a fundamental truth that it was only briefly mentioned. Perhaps, that’s the reason so many people miss it.

Another shock was discovering that Adam Smith wrote about the place of government in regulating large corporations. For Smith, the wealth of large corporations was to be invested back into the areas from which the company was built. Jobs were to be kept local so that as many people as possible in society benefited from the wealth generated. Smith outlined that government regulation should prevent large corporations from moving their manufacturing operations to cheaper international locations to reduce costs and sidestep local communities.

Adam Smith, the father of capitalism – a protectionist and believer in the rights of workers! But what has this got to do with a discussion about the Conservative Party? It tells us that policies that do not always favour corporations but help workers or local communities are not unnecessarily anti-capitalist and by extension unconservative. It also tells us that our dogmatic positions should not prevent us from focusing on what is in the best interest of the people that politics and economics are supposed to serve.

My party needs to move away from policies that are focused on ideological battles and economics rooted in abstract ideals. And, instead, look to policies that will tangibly help everyday people. Or put differently, the party needs to move away from Oxford Union politics (I have nothing against the Union, I am a lifelong member!) and focus on real-world grown-up politics that improve the lives of the ‘many not the few’!

Lord Cameron tried to move the party to a position often dubbed Compassionate Conservativism. In fact, the origins of capitalism have long been connected to moral principles. Adam Smith not only wrote The Wealth of Nations but also considered issues around morality in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments. For a government to govern effectively and an opposition to oppose properly, morality and the interests of the many must be reflected in policy. And in my humble opinion, it is not unconservative to do so.