Is the message here supposed to be, both men did photoshoots at potteries, therefore they are politically aligned? Because if so I think you need a few more steps to actually make this case.

That’s about one tenth of the annual MP’s salary. So, he has a far greater financial motive to remain an MP than he does to lose and collect the bet.

Even if his only incentives were financial, he will make more money by winning than by losing, because an MP’s salary and expenses are pretty good. So, even taking into account the innumeracy of your average MP, he does not have a financial incentive to lose.

“In the 2005 election, I busted a gut to win. I expected to lose. I had a bet on myself to lose in the 2005 election, and my bet went down the pan.”

He didn’t throw the '05 election, even when he bet against himself.

Right, but they weren’t doing that. There’s no evidence they were and no motive for them to do so. The comparison with athletes is not apt. A pro footballer who bets on himself and manipulates the outcome is still a pro-footballer afterwards. A politician who bets on themselves and deliberately loses is not a politician afterwards. It does not make sense to do it.

In Britain, being nominated as a local election candidate simply involves signing some forms

They’re not local election candidates.

It requires huge amounts of work to be a candidate. I know people who’ve run for parliament. One of them had previously run as a total no-hoper on multiple occasions, in order to prove he knew how to campaign well enough to get selected for a seat where he had a chance. He was so burned out by the selection process that having won the selection, he actually turned down the nomination, then quit politics altogether. The idea that he’d have deliberatey thrown any of those elections is ridiculous.

The idea that anyone would put in all the work to get selected as a candidate, then decide it was a smart move to place a bet against themselves and throw the election to make a quick buck is ridiculous. There’s no way you could make enough money from the bet to make it worthwhile.

There is no indication that any of the politicians who bet against themselves intended to throw the election. Politics is not sport.

This idiot might well be the difference between Sunak holding his seat and losing it.

See, I don’t care about this at all. There’s no suggestion he was going to deliberately throw the election. He didn’t have any inside information. He’s allowed to place bets!

Takes a while before he gets to his actual suggestions, which are as stupid as you’d expect:

We know what a coherent right-wing agenda would look like: Net Zero immigration, energy sanity, a massive programme of planning reform, and housebuilding. We also know how to get there: identify, train, and promote talented people, primarily from the private sector, and smash the barriers to governing.

• ‘Net zero immigration’ - dystopian, unworkable, self-destructive
• ‘Energy sanity’ - meaningless, nobody thinks of themselves as proposing energy insanity, do they? I assume what he means is ‘Keep exploiting fossil fuels even though revenues are falling, prices are rising, there are obvious alternatives and climate change is accelerating’, which doesn’t strike me as ‘sane’. In any case, Labour’s plans are sane: accelerate the transition to the cheapest, cleanest forms of energy and keep using fossil fuels to keep the lights on while we’re managing the transition
• ‘massive programme of planning reform, and housebuilding’ - exactly what the Tories have failed to deliver and what Labour are proposing, which he assumes they’ll fail at for no discernible reason

And his plans for how to get there are just as asinine:

• ‘identify, train, and promote talented people’ - again, meaningless. Who could oppose this?
• ‘primarily from the private sector’ - why? Because. Sunak is ‘from the private sector’. So was Boris Johnson. How’s that worked out? And notice the weaselly ‘primarily’, too. Is that most? Some? All?
• ‘smash the barriers to governing’ - again, just meaningless waffle, something the Tories have continuously promised and found themselves unable to deliver. Brexit was meant to do this. It didn’t. Is this because, perhaps, the main ‘barriers to governing’ are that the Tories are totally detached from reality?

No. But physical proof is not the standard we use for determining someone’s historical existence.

The serious psychos are in and out of jail. The ones who were just kinda dicks sometimes (which to be honest probably includes me) are basically okay. And why shouldn’t we be? Being a dick when you’re still learning to be a person shouldn’t carry a life sentence of any kind.