Why did the Tory government use public money for polls about Opposition politicians?
Dominic Cummings (left): when he was chums with Boris Johnson (right), he ordered civil servants to spend public money on party political polling that should have been funded by the Conservatives, not the nation.
More Tory crony contracts: Ex-Vote Leave boss Dominic Cummings and ex-Vote Leave Downing Street colleague Ben Warner pressurised civil servants to give more than £1.3 million in contracts to polling firm Hanbury Strategy, run by ex-Vote Leave comms chief Paul Stephenson.
Your money was frittered away on Cummings’s Vote Leave friends. And for what?
For party political polling on Labour leader Keir Starmer and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
And emails show Cummings pressuring officials by saying anybody who would “whine” about it should be told the order came from prime minister Boris Johnson.
The emails, published by the Good Law Project (GLP), show civil servants were uncomfortable about the polling, with one saying in May 2020: “Hanbury measure attitudes towards political figures, which they shouldn’t do using government money, but they’ve been asked to and it’s a battle that I think is hard to fight.”
Mr Cummings wrote: “Pls sign off immediately so Paul S can get our large scale polls into field TODAY. Anybody in [the Cabinet Office] whines tell them I ordered it from PM.”
A civil servant wrote: “This all makes me really uncomfortable. Ben Warner wants us to spend £110k of public money per month with the agency who were behind Vote Leave who have no mainstream polling experience.
“And he wants to be in on the call/talking to Hanbury directly. Q is what do we do?”
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner is no angel, as we’ve all discovered, but This Writer thinks she was right when she said, “This has the hallmarks of a racket, not a government acting in the national interest during a pandemic.
“Taxpayers’ money that has been abused in this way should be paid back by the Conservative Party.
“Taxpayers’ money is not the personal cashpoint of Conservative Ministers to dish out to their mates.”
Source: Government used public money for polls about Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan – Mirror Online
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