What happened this week in the UK election campaign, from a betting controversy to Farage's ambition

abcnews.go.com:

The U.K. general election is nearly two weeks away

LONDON — The U.K.'s general election campaign is less than two weeks away now, and the prevailing trends don't appear to have changed much.

The left-of-center Labour Party is the clear favorite to defeat Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservatives, with Keir Starmer looking set to replace him as U.K. leader on the morning of July 5.

Given how condensed U.K. election campaigns are — it's not been a month since Sunak called the election for July 4 outside his residence at No. 10 Downing Street in the pouring rain — the leaders must be getting pretty tired.

At least the European Championship soccer tournament has arrived — as has summer. Both should provide a distraction for one and all.

Here are some things we’ve learned in the past week:

Britain, it's often said, is a nation of gamblers. Mostly on horses, or the football. But the bookmakers can offer odds on almost anything.

For general elections, there's a growing market over the date of the vote, as unlike most other democracies that decision rests solely in the hands of the prime minister.

All everyone knew was that Sunak had to call an election by January 2025. For months, he'd been saying that his “working assumption” was that it would be in the second half of the year.

Given the upcoming summer vacation period, most pundits and lawmakers in his Conservative Party, were predicting that it would likely take place in the fall. So it came as something of a surprise that Sunak announced the date on May 22.

It wasn't that much of a surprise to some people apparently. The Gambling Commission, the industry's regulator, has revealed that it's investigating allegations that a string of people with links to Sunak bet on the