David Cameron has no answer to tax-dodging allegations
Time is running out for David Cameron – and on the strength of today’s performance, it won’t be a moment too soon.
The circus that is Prime Minister’s Questions gave us some illuminating information today.
Ed Miliband kicked off his questioning strongly with the following facts: “An hour ago, we learned that linked to the HSBC tax avoidance scandal are seven Tory donors, including a former treasurer of the Tory party, who between them have given the party nearly £5 million. How can the Prime Minister explain the revolving door between Tory party HQ and the Swiss branch of HSBC?
Cameron didn’t have an answer, so relied on diversion instead: “I saw that list just before coming to Prime Minister’s questions. One of the people named is the Labour donor, Lord Paul, who funded Gordon Brown’s election campaign.”
Mr Miliband tried a different tack: “None of those people has given a penny [to the Labour Party] on my watch, and he [Cameron] is up to his neck in this. Let us take Stanley Fink, who gave £3 million to the Conservative party. The Prime Minister actually appointed him as treasurer of the party and gave him a peerage for good measure. Will he now explain what steps he is going to take about the tax avoidance activities of Lord Fink?
No, the Prime Minister wouldn’t. Instead he made a weak point that Tory donors don’t pick candidates or choose policies – which we know isn’t accurate. Tory donors pay for the chance to bend Cameron’s ear and influence his policies; that’s what the ‘Gagging Act’ was all about.
Miliband pulled him up on it: “He is a dodgy Prime Minister surrounded by dodgy donors. He did not just take the money; he appointed the man who was head of HSBC as a minister. It was in the public domain in September 2010 that HSBC was enabling tax avoidance on an industrial scale. Are we seriously expected to believe that when he made Stephen Green a minister four months later, he had no idea about these allegations?”
Cameron’s response was to point out that Labour has a history with Lord Green as well. The problem with this, of course, is that the facts about Lord Green were not known until May 2010, after Labour had left office.
Miliband’s last words on the subject: “The Prime Minister is bang to rights, just like his donors. And doesn’t this all sound familiar? The Prime Minister appoints someone to a senior job in government. There are public allegations but he does not ask the questions, he turns a blind eye. Isn’t this just the behaviour we saw with Andy Coulson?”
Bang on target.
Look at this exchange. We see a Prime Minister with something to hide. He has no answers to the questions and must resort to deflection and insult in the hope that nobody will notice.
It’s a forlorn hope.
And it doesn’t matter how much money the tax avoiders have given the Tories –
This man and his party are morally bankrupt.
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utter utter b*****ds aka foodbank party
Lou Collins Radio Show 9.2.15 Gordon Bowden Part 4 David Cameron’s link to… https://www.mixcloud.com/shylou73/?utm_campaign=notification_new_upload&utm_medium=email&utm_source=notification&utm_content=html David Cameron should be arrested
Trouble is, Cameron will get away with it, just like he did with Coulson re: phone hacking.
Lord Fink has already threatened to sue over it and I see the dust settling and everything being quickly forgotten.
“We see a Prime Minister with something to hide. He has no answers to the questions and must resort to deflection and insult in the hope that nobody will notice.”
This so typical of Cameron on PMQs.
Glad to see Ed is emerging as a potentially clever guy. He has had to bide his time, keeping his cards to his chest. But now the gloves are off, and he has come out fighting (for us)!
“Tory donors don’t pick candidates or choose policies” ? So why would they pay £15k to sit at a table with a minister? or £17k to go shoes shopping with May? It’s not going to be for their good looks or charm.
What an appalling debate. No questions answered and no intervention from the Speaker. Pointless in the extreme. The only solution if for a Police investigation; the regulators can’t or won’t help here and the government is clearly in league with the banksters.
Cameron comes from a family of wealthy tax-dodgers. They don’t care a jot about the rest of society, in fact one well known nasty Tory didn’t believe there was any such thing as society. The Tory Party is poison.
Margaret Thatcher, yes – I’ve mentioned it in several articles and you’re right to raise it now.