Is Labour deliberately missing the point about crony jobs?
Is Labour deliberately missing the point about crony jobs?
The new government has defended its appointment of friends of the party to civil service jobs, with Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones [pictured] saying all rules have been followed in the appointment of Ian Corfield as director of investment at the Treasury.
Mr Corfield is a Labour Party donor who has given £20,000 to the party, including £5,000 to Rachel Reeves, who is now his boss.
Undoubtedly in the future we will hear justifications for the appointment of former Labour Together think tank member Jess Sargeant to a deputy directorship in the Cabinet Office’s Property and Constitution group; and of Emily Middleton, whose firm Public Digital paid for her to be seconded to Peter Kyle’s office in opposition, to a director generalship in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, where he is Secretary of State.
We have also heard justifications for the appointment of Boris Johnson‘s chum Ewen Fergusson to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, back in 2021 – apparently to give that prime minister’s many offences a green light.
What about then-Tory MP Karl McCartney‘s decision to make Three Lines Sport – a firm run by lobbyist Mark Ramsdale – Secretary of the many sport-related All-Party Parliamentary Groups he chaired, earning the firm at least £90,000 that was paid through sponsorship?
What about all the Covid-19-related business contracts that were awarded to friends or colleagues of Tory ministers from 2020 onwards? Here‘s an infamous example involving Michael Gove and Boris Johnson’s former adviser Dominic Cummings.
The Tories, I’m sure, said all of the rules had been followed in each of these cases, too.
And in each of the three cases above – along with many others – the Labour Party under Keir Starmer complained bitterly about rampant cronyism and corruption in providing “jobs for the boys” (and girls, where applicable).
So it is not just in whether the rules have been followed that the impropriety lies.
It is with Labour’s hypocrisy in complaining about Tory cronyism over many years and then embarking on exactly the same kind of cronyism, immediately after coming into office.
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If all of the rules have been followed then it is just possible that the rules need to be changed!