Money: Liz Truss had half a million pounds in funding for her Tory leadership campaign – almost twice the permitted amount. It came from hedge fund bosses, bankers and business leaders – the “status quo” that she warned against in her two-faced Conservative Party conference speech.
Remember this, from Liz Truss’s keynote speech at the Conservative Party conference, only yesterday?
Today we discover that, not only is it an option for her, but it was her first option when seeking funding for her campaign to be leader of the Conservative Party – and prime minister by default:
Liz Truss was given more than £500,000 for her leadership campaign, with about half of it coming from donors linked to hedge fund bosses, venture capitalists and other City financiers. https://t.co/W6FgZACee3
These are people who will now consider it their right to make demands of the UK’s prime minister, ensuring that she does what they tell her – because she owes them her job.
When Liz Truss suggests she's "challenging the status quo", it's worth remembering the super-rich donors who funded her leadership campaign, including: a billionaire (£25k donation), a city banker (£50k) and an ex-BP executive partner (£100k).
The prime minister, who has made a virtue of being pro-business and cutting taxes, saw a further round of donations declared on the register of MPs’ interests on Wednesday.
The second tranche of donations takes the amount she has received to more than £500,000 – way above the campaign spending limit of £300,000.
So she broke the campaign’s rules.
Doesn’t that make her candidacy invalid? Shouldn’t she be resigning right about now, rather than jetsetting around the world on a prime ministerial jolly?
Having realised his decision to cut the 45p tax rate was unpopular, Kwasi Kwarteng has reversed it (alongside his prime minister, Liz Truss). He will also bring forward his budget from November 23 to this month, to address concerns that it is unfunded and unviable.
But then he ruined it all by announcing new policies that are going to send voters running to other parties. They include:
£18 billion of cuts to public services – the amount that would be raised by a rise in Corporation Tax – and this is just the start.
A real-terms cut in benefits (yet to be announced but understood to be on the way).
And he’s still:
Removing the cap on bankers’ bonuses.
Cancelling the rise in Corporation Tax.
Here’s more in-depth information:
Bear in mind what Phil Moorhouse says about the reason the Tories shaft poor people: because they don’t vote in great enough numbers to harm Conservative electoral chances. It’s only when their cruelty seems likely to affect middle-class voters (like when many of them claimed Universal Credit during Covid-19 lockdown) that they make political – not economic – decisions that are intended to placate those voters.
This is the reason Tory MPs are developing a social conscience in the face of Truss’s – and Kwarteng’s – policies; they don’t want to upset their voters.
So if you’re a benefit claimant who has been shafted by Kwarteng and his bandits time and again – but you don’t vote – I have to ask: why do you have such a death wish?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Easy money: it’s not quite a backhander for bankers who supported Liz Truss to have made fortunes “shorting” the pound in anticipation of its fall during and after Kwasi Kwarteng’s financial statement.
It is being reported that
Liz Truss-supporting investors made “small fortunes” as the value of the pound plummeted following the radical Conservative budget announced on Friday.
This is deeply concerning because it suggests corruption – that these businesspeople who helped Truss become prime minister may have been given knowledge of what Kwasi Kwarteng was going to say and advised to bet that the value of the pound would drop (also known as “shorting”).
An anonymous source quoted in the Sunday Times told the paper they had attended a dinner with hedge-fund managers who were said to have won big betting against the pound last week.
They were quoted as saying: “They were all supporters of Truss and every one of them was shorting the pound.”
The paper added: “Several made small fortunes on Friday betting against the currency.”
Seems straightforward enough, doesn’t it? Well…
Responding to speculation the traders were given insider knowledge of the budget before it was announced – which would be illegal if it were used for their financial gain – Tim Shipman, who co-authored the piece, said: “It’s not fraud, it’s just a bunch of city people having a view and betting on it. It wasn’t a Tory dinner where the mysteries of the budget were secretly conveyed over the canapes.”
Do you believe it?
A lot of people made a lot of money and they were all Tory-supporting backers of Liz Truss, but it was entirely innocent?
Some people have doubts:
Truss/Kwarteng lifted the cap on bankers' bonus.
Few days earlier they met hedge-fund managers "and every one of them was shorting the pound".
It crashed after the budget. They made millions without producing anything, will collect big bonus & tax cuts.https://t.co/rykE0iD8nL
Any MP who shorted the pound with their prior knowledge of its collapse should be prosecuted for Insider Trading.
— Sir Norman of Nowhere, KBE, CSE.🏴☠️ (@Normanjam671) September 25, 2022
Say what you like about Universal Credit claimants, but last time I checked, none of them made millions of pounds shorting sterling ahead of the mini-budget
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
A Tory MP, trying to defend Liz Truss lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses by saying the UK needs to stop them defecting to the EU, was forced to admit that bankers are only going there because of Brexit.
It’s a huge foot-in-mouth moment because Truss is currently a huge Brexiteer (she used to be a Remainer but it seems she’ll support anything if she thinks it’s good for her career) and the decision to leave the EU is not to be questioned on any level.
And it is also true; lifting the bonus cap won’t keep bankers from going to the European Union if that is where their job takes them, due to political decisions.
Here’s Maximilien Robespierre:
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
The bank holiday weekend may be over, but this article is being produced in the period before everybody goes back to work – so I’m still putting up material that has interested me – and I hope it interests you. Make of it what you will:
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Have you seen this on the mainstream news… anywhere?
It seems the Tory government has taken advantage of its new Brexit-given freedoms to lift a cap on bankers’ bonuses.
It’s being touted as part of a drive to return the UK to economic growth – but in reality it is nothing of the sort.
Bankers are paid a fortune already and don’t need the cash. Therefore they won’t spend it into the economy – they’ll stash it away somewhere and it won’t do anything to restore economic growth.
Also, the Bank of England has been advocating pay restraint for the rest of us – in the face of double-figure inflation – because it says pay rises in line with inflation will cause even more inflation.
Do you get the impression these people are talking out of their collective rear ends?
If a government wants to get its economy going, it has to pay money to the poorest people in the country – because they need it, and they’ll spend it. The cash will go through more hands, if it starts at the lowest level, before being taxed out of the system – and this means it will create the greatest boost to the economy, adding value with every exchange.
What’s happening here will harm the UK economy. See if I’m wrong.
Here’s the clip that inspired this article:
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Attack: Mark Field said he acted in the belief that a peaceful, female Greenpeace protester might be about to do violence. But – in this image – who is attacking who?
If you had not heard of Mark Field before today, nobody could blame you.
The only reference to him on This Site is from 2014, when he was named as one of many Conservative MPs with a stake in private health companies who was therefore likely to profit by allowing those firms to provide NHS services.
It’s a reasonable bet that you’ll have heard of him now, though – he has become infamous overnight after he grabbed a female Greenpeace activist by the throat and forcibly ejected her from the Mansion House, where she was taking part in a climate change protest at the annual dinner for bankers and politicians where Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond was making a speech.
As I type this, it is emerging that (caretaker) prime minister Theresa May has suspended Mr Field from his job as a Foreign Office minister, due to his apparent behaviour in this incident.
Let’s look at the video footage, courtesy of ITV reporter Paul Brand:
WATCH: Conservative MP Mark Field shoves a protestor against a pillar then grabs her by her neck and shoves her out of the Mansion House dinner after climate change protestors interrupted the banquet. pic.twitter.com/DFwZYxROfF
In this longer version of the video, you can see the woman apparently posing no immediate threat as she passes behind Mark Field. He marches her out of the room by her neck. I wasn’t there, so I can’t say she didn’t pose a risk, but it looks heavy handed. pic.twitter.com/zX2BtcPW4t
Take note of that – he says she did not appear to present any immediate threat. That is important when considering the subsequent protestations of people like Peter Bottomley.
Which also means Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is his boss. An interesting question for him tomorrow in his first day campaigning for the vote of Tory members… should Mark Field resign?
One last thought on this… if ever there was an image that sums up the Conservative Party’s disconnect with the younger generation right now it’s a man in black tie at an elite dinner grabbing a climate change protestor by her neck.
No complaint has (yet) been made to the police. But fellow activist Hannah Martin has tweeted this statement:
We were peaceful protestors making a critical point about the state of our country’s response to the most pressing issue of our time. We should not expect to receive such disproportionate physical violence. Full stop. #r4todaypic.twitter.com/10EaHuWoVL
Some Tories rushed to defend Mr Field’s behaviour, quoting bizarre reasons. Peter Bottomley was quoted by The Mirror as saying it was justified because “a person could be carrying a collapsible truncheon”. Mr Bottomley added: “He intervened. I congratulate him for that. I would have done the same.”
Have a look at the footage again and ask yourself where she could have been hiding a truncheon. In her (tiny) handbag?
Here’s Mike Hurst, who labels himself as a security professional, standing up for Mr Field – and being thrown a truth bomb by another Twitter user:
Do you indulge in this sort of behaviour frequently then Mike? Potential physical attack my a*se. As a so called “security professional” you would surely know that the best way to disarm a person would be to grab their arms not their neck!
— Christiana ♥Banana (@_chrissydelishy) June 21, 2019
How about this comment – and the response from a formerly battered wife:
I wouldnt have shoved her about !!! She hadnt got a weapon Nothing in her hand in pic of her walking out Hes a big guy I was a battered wife so dont come out with rot like this He should b arrested and sacked !
Mr Field himself has released the following statement: “In the confusion many guests understandably felt threatened and when one protester rushed past me towards the top table I instinctively reacted.
“There was no security present and I was for a split second genuinely worried she might have been armed.
“As a result I grasped the intruder firmly in order to remove her from the room as swiftly as possible.”
“Grasped the intruder firmly”? He slammed her against a pillar.
He added: “I deeply regret this episode and unreservedly apologise to the lady concerned for grabbing her but in the current climate I felt the need to act decisively to close down the threat to the safety of those present.”
The “Tory Racism” Twitter account has slowed the footage and added a commentary – making the important point that not one person out of the 350 at the dinner lifted a single finger to help the peaceful protester who was being manhandled out of the room by a man who had gone for her throat:
We slowed down the video of Tory MP Mark Field assaulting a young female Greenpeace protester as he grabs her by the neck and pushes her out of a posh business event at Mansion House. This is #torybritain. He will likely get away with this though, because of who he is pic.twitter.com/0uEcUGadgD
This lack of intervention has been roundly condemned:
Notable how many Tories defending Mark Field on the basis that “she could have been armed” just sat there when that comedian approached May during her conference speech. And when I say “how many”, I mean: it was literally all of them. All of them just sat there.
Tim O’Seery tweeted: “I actually find this quite harrowing. He brutalised this young woman while the rest of the Chinless Wonders just sat there and watched. This was assault and people have a Public Duty to prevent this sort of thing happening, if they can.”
Mr Field’s action is even more questionable when one examines his own – expressed – attitude to climate change. In a tweet just two weeks ago, he stated: “Climate security must be at the heart of foreign policy work at a global level. I am grateful for Germany’s action in shining a spotlight on this issue at the Climate and Security Conference yesterday and look forward to continuing our work together.”
To this, ‘Geri the Gerbil’ appended: “As long as they don’t interrupt my dinner.”
Of course there is a political aspect to this:
CORBYN:
*breathes
MEDIA:
“Sack him! He’s not fit for public office!”
TORY MP:
*Attacks woman at banquet
MEDIA:
“Give this man a medal! How statesmanlike!”#SackMarkField
Quite taken aback by this footage of a peaceful, female Greenpeace member being grabbed by the neck by a Government Minister for holding the Government to account on the climate emergency.
Was this appropriate? No. Even the minister in question recognises it was out of order https://t.co/hCvxOpJtcb
Last word on this (for now) should go to Tom Clark of Another Angry Voice:
This is clearly not the calm actions of a man who sees the protester as a threat or security risk.
It's an entitled half-pissed Tory toff furious at his dinner being interrupted with absolute confidence in his total physical advantage over someone he sees as no threat at all. pic.twitter.com/yAZ3jgyhjm
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Mark Carney speaking at the Bank of England. The governor said it was important to take a tough regulatory stance on the banking sector [Image: Andy Rain/EPA].
Is this the reason certain people in the financial sector are so keen on Brexit?
Bankers caused the crash and subsequent Great Recession, around a decade ago, but Tories tried to blame it on the Labour Party in an attempt to divert attention away from the huge bonuses that were still being paid out.
It wasn’t until 2014 that a cap was introduced on bankers’ bonuses. Now, it seems, that cap could be removed with our departure from the EU, making it possible for bankers to fleece the rest of us, all over again.
Why are these people so greedy? Isn’t twice (or even three times) an already-enormous salary enough?
The governor of the Bank of England has raised the prospect that, after Brexit, the EU rule which puts a cap on bankers’ bonuses could be scrapped.
Mark Carney, a long-standing critic of the bonus rules, listed the cap as among the tweaks that could be made to financial regulations when the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.
The bonus cap was introduced in January 2014 and was a reaction to the financial crisis when bankers received multi-million payouts despite huge losses. The cap limits payouts to 100% of salary or 200% with explicit approval from shareholders.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
A DPAC protest against benefit cuts [Image: Artists Against Blacklisting].
Vast numbers of people are being energised against the Conservative Government’s victimisation of the sick and disabled, thanks to Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake.
They want to express their anger and outrage about what is happening – but most of them don’t even know why.
Do you?
Let me illuminate you: The sick and disabled have been the first targets in a huge con trick to take money away from the poor and give it to the rich.
The idea was simple: Create huge national debts and then make the ordinary – poor – citizens pay for them.
In this way, the rich would be able to justify the privatisation of national assets as necessary measures to combat the debt, to be followed by taxation increases that would, eventually, force the workers into effective slavery, servicing an ever-increasing debt as part of a “zombie economy”.
Who would receive the money? Huge, multinational corporations. Who else?
The sick and disabled are first in the firing-line for cuts because their income is controlled by the state – the greater the disability, the more a person relies on publicly-funded support.
Of course, it just happens to be true, also, that these people are the most likely to die as a result of the removal of that support – especially when it is justified with nonsense (which is what the current work capability assessment undoubtedly is – look up This Blog’s vast library of articles on the subject for further enlightenment).
The refusal of benefit in an unreasonable way sends many of these already-frail people into a spiral of depression that either worsens their physical condition beyond repair, or drives them to suicide.
And that leaves one less sick person to feed, who cannot work to pay the corporate slave-owners part of the interest on the debt created by the corporates.
Look at the banking crisis of 2008. The people of the UK didn’t cause it. The government of the UK didn’t cause it (and the failure of government regulation isn’t to be blamed – individuals have responsibility for their own actions, you know).
Bankers and financiers caused the crisis – and have never paid a penny of the debts they incurred.
Why aren’t people telling the government they elected to stop bullying and killing the defenceless and start addressing the real cause of the problem?
Are we all afraid?
There are more than 60 million of us in the UK alone. If we all acted at once, we would soon see a few changes!
But we all know that won’t happen, don’t we? Because that’s what we’re all told.
So, I’ll tell you what.
Why don’t you have a look around your own area, and see what’s going on near you. Is anyone from DPAC living nearby? How about Black Triangle? Or any of the other organisations dedicated to helping the sick and disabled?
If you really are angry – and not just enjoying a bit of cathartic emotion after watching a good film – then get involved.
And tell others to do the same.
If you can be bothered to do something, eventually anything will be possible.
That’s simple mathematics.
The resistance begins at the raw front lines of those impacted first and impacted the hardest. The UK grassroots direct action group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), run by disabled people, has grown out of that immediate need to hit back against crushing austerity. Their story is a microcosm of the neoliberal story, including its construction, its destructive effects and how to fight back.
In 2010, UK chancellor George Osborne announced cuts of 20 per cent to disabled people, despite the fact that the government’s own figures stated only 0.5 per cent of claimants to be potentially fraudulent.
Disabled people have been forced to pay nine times more than the average citizen to reduce the budget deficit and people with high or complex support needs have been forced to pay 19 times more. From the failed Bedroom Tax, cuts to Employment and Support Allowance and the closing of the Independent Living Fund, it has been relentless. The UK has become the first country in the world to use the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities to be investigated for ‘grave and systemic violations’ of disabled peoples’ rights and it is telling that the Tory government has since refused to make public the findings.
Andy Greene, member of the national steering committee for DPAC, tells me, ‘What you have is the people who are engaged most with the state, disabled people because of the nature of impairment, being the first in the firing line when these public services and the welfare state start to be dismantled in the name of austerity… and the fall out is that peoples’ lives shrink or people die.’
Anyone who thinks David Cameron’s promise of a five-year ‘tax lock’ is a good idea must need psychiatric help.
Cameron promised to introduce a law banning income tax, VAT or national insurance increases in the next parliament if the Conservative Party is elected back into office, clearly in the belief that anybody on average wages or less is too stupid to know what this means.
We know better, don’t we?
We know that taxes are set according to each income group’s ability to pay. This means that people in the lowest taxable bracket pay the lowest amount, as they need most of the money they earn in order to pay their way. The amount of tax then increases by increments up to the highest earners – who take home considerably more than they need to survive, and who can therefore afford to contribute a much larger amount with no impact on their quality of life.
We also know that a five-year ‘tax lock’ will not affect the lowest-earning people at all. Nobody earning up to £10,600 pays any tax at the moment, so a freeze on nothing is still nothing.
What will it do to the people in the highest tax bracket? Well, it depends what they earn and how fast their pay increases, doesn’t it? Let’s have a look at the handy guide to average UK pay rises, created by fellow blogger Tom Pride last November:
So the director of a FTSE 100 company, paid the average amount of a mere £2.4 million, would have contributed 45 per cent in tax, or £1.08 million in the 2014-15 tax year. Over a five-year period, if that person’s income continued to rise at 14 per cent, then by 2020 – at a 45 per cent tax rate – they would pay a total of £8,138,360 in tax over the years until 2020. That’s certainly a respectable figure.
But Labour has proposed an increase in the top rate of tax, back to 50 per cent. Under the same conditions, this would mean FTSE 100 directors earning £2.4 million in the tax year 2014-15 would pay £9,042,623.
That’s a difference of £904,263; nearly a million pounds each.
This writer doesn’t have current figures for banker salaries and cannot, therefore, work out how much tax they would pay – but you can see for yourself that the difference between the two scenarios is likely to come to several million pounds per top banker.
Those people don’t need that amount of money in order to survive. The cost of living in the UK is less than 1/50 of what the FTSE directors take home, let alone the bankers. But David Cameron wants them to keep that money.
Meanwhile the UK Treasury goes without millions of pounds that could be used to help balance the national deficit, pay off the national debt, and boost the economy.
We’re back to ‘Starve the Beast’ economics again. The nation’s finances can go to Hell, as far as Cameron is concerned. He wants to starve the Treasury with tax cuts for the rich – either actual cuts or de facto cuts like his ‘tax lock’ – and then claim that public services cost too much and will have to be scrapped or sold off to rich corporations in return for donations to the Conservative Party – as we have seen in the years of the Coalition Government (most obviously in the case of the NHS).
Unless you are a banker, an FTSE100 director, or a member of Parliament, you would be mad to support such a wasteful and selfish plan.
If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. This includes scrolling or continued navigation. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
![A DPAC protest against benefit cuts [Image: Artists Against Blacklisting].](https://i0.wp.com/voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/161026-DPAC-protest.jpg)
