Tulip Siddiq: investigate possible insider trading that caused the Pound to collapse, she says.
Labour are urging the Financial Conduct Authority to investigate whether leaks of the mini-Budget allowed hedge fund managers to make huge profits by shorting the pound.
Shadow City minister Tulip Siddiq told the Evening Standard the FCA should examine reports that some hedge fund bosses had made “small fortunes” by betting against sterling.
She said:
“The Financial Conduct Authority should investigate any potential wrongdoing, to determine whether it is possible that any leaks or information provided by this Conservative Government to their wealthy friends contributed to the collapse of the Pound.
“A weaker Pound means that imports such as food and energy will become even more expensive, at time when inflation and the cost-of-living crisis is already spiralling out of control.”
Well, it’s good that someone in politics is picking up on what’s being said by commentators like This Site.
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If you’re thinking Jeremy Corbyn would never have done this, you’re probably right:
Sir Keir Starmer has been found to have breached the MPs’ code of conduct eight times.
An inquiry into the Labour leader was opened in June by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone, relating to claims about late declaration of earnings and gifts, benefits or hospitality from UK sources.
These included a directors’ box for two people at Crystal Palace worth £720, four tickets for Watford vs Arsenal and tickets for his staff for the British Kebab awards.
Speaking at the time, Sir Keir said he was “absolutely confident” he had not broken the MPs’ code of conduct.
But the commissioner has now found the leader of the Opposition failed to register eight interests – five more than the ones alleged in the original complaint.
There’s no need to get carried away with this – the breaches are all minor and/or inadvertent, there was no deliberate intent to mislead, and they could all be corrected using the rectification procedure, by which MPs publish the details of the breaches and an apology on the House of Commons website.
But one has to wonder, if Starmer can’t even do his own housekeeping properly, how he expects to run an entire nation, if he is elected to government.
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Kit Malthouse: does he look like he cares about anything?
Policing minister Kit Malthouse has been – rightly – slammed for repeatedly saying the Government must wait for the outcome of a police watchdog report into the traumatic strip search of a black schoolgirl.
In December 2020, police – two male, two female – were called by teachers at a secondary school in Hackney, who believed a girl was carrying drugs because they could smell cannabis.
She was subjected to what seems clearly a deliberately humiliating strip-search. She was made to strip naked, to spread her legs, to use her hands to spread her buttock cheeks and then to cough.
She was menstruating. According to family members, the police insisted that she take off the bloody pad and would not let her go to the toilet to clean up. Then they made her reuse the same pad.
No drugs were found, yet the rumour spread around the school that this perfectly innocent girl was a drug dealer.
The experience left the girl traumatised, in therapy and self-harming.
Answering an urgent question in Parliament, Malthouse condemned the “distressing” incident, saying she “could have been any one of our relatives”.
But he insisted that the government had to wait for a report into the incident, on which the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has already been working for 10 months.
He said the police officers involved had a right to “due process”, which is all well and good – but justice delayed is justice denied, and doesn’t Child Q have a right to justice?
And despite a safeguarding review into the matter producing a series of recommendations for the Government and police to act upon, Malthouse insisted there was doubt whether the police have a specific problem or a systemic problem relating to their policies and practices.
“It is the role of the independent police watchdog – the Independent Office for Police Conduct – to investigate serious matters involving the police and the IOPC has said it has been investigating the actions of the Metropolitan police in this particular case,” he said.
“We must let the IOPC conclude its work. We would, of course, expect any findings to be acted upon swiftly but it’s vital that we don’t prejudge the IOPC’s investigations or prejudice due process – so it would be wrong for me to make any comment on the case in question at this time.”
This Writer wonders whether Malthouse is simply hoping the IOPC will find a way to exonerate the officers involved (one of whom, it seems, was male – in a gross violation of police rules).
And he did not respond to a call to publish data on the number of times children are strip-searched. Why not?
Other MPs saw matters differently – not that he should not comment until the inquiry had been completed but that he should life a finger or two to bring the matter to that conclusion:
Labour MP for Eltham, Clive Efford, criticised Mr Malthouse for having a “wait and see attitude”, and said: “I feel like we’ve woken the minister from an afternoon nap to come in and make this statement”.
He added: “There’s a complete lack of urgency in his approach. It is quite clear that there are areas now where the Government can act; why isn’t the minister coming to this house to explain to us just exactly what he’s going to do, rather than this wait and see attitude?”
It seems clear that Malthouse’s fellow Tories felt no need to enact justice for Child Q. Only one Conservative MP turned up to the discussion – Jackie Doyle-Price – and her contribution was to ask what the minister would do to ensure the Metropolitan Police changes its practices.
Underlying this lack of activity there must be the same question that underlies the reasons for the humiliation and trauma of the strip-search of a menstruating teenage girl.
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Say what you want: Boris Johnson’s Tories have stamped on a bid to make MPs conform to principles of anti-racism, inclusion, diversity and respect. What does that tell us about them?
The Conservative government has rejected a proposal to change MPs’ code of conduct in line with a principle of “respect”.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised; they seem to respect few things other than money and power.
They have rejected calls by the Commons Standards Committee that would mean MPs “should demonstrate anti-discriminatory attitudes and behaviours through the promotion of anti-racism, inclusion and diversity”.
It doesn’t actually mean they want to promote racism, exclusion and blind obedience – but it does appear to mean they won’t oppose it if MPs exhibit those traits during debates.
I wonder how long that will last, if non-Tories exploit the openings this presents?
A separate committee on Standards in Public Life has already updated the Seven Principles of Public Life – also known as the Nolan principles – to include the demand that all public officials “treat others with respect”, to counter “increasing intimidation and abuse”.
But 10 Downing Street chief of staff Steve Barclay and chief Tory whip Mark Spencer rejected the idea of incorporating this into the wider MPs code.
They said in a joint statement: “We would not want to stifle legitimate debate on politically contentious issues which are important to our democracy… This could have a chilling effect on free speech on contentious and polarised political issues.”
Expect the Tories to play on this as much as they can, just to rub it in everybody else’s faces.
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An old friend of This Site has written to Rishi Sunak, turning down the Chancellor’s attempt to foist a £200 loan on him to pay for increased energy bills.
Keith Lindsay-Cameron (remember him from A Letter A Day to Number 10, back when David Cameron was in Downing Street?) said he was perfectly capable of managing his own poverty without having more of it pushed on him.
His letter states: “With regards to the recent news that all customers of energy companies in England will be given a £200 loan from the Government to be repaid over following years.
“I would like to state that I do not want this loan. I have not asked for this loan. I do not wish my energy company to transfer the loan to my account, nor take repayments from my account in the future, and I shall be writing to them to this effect.
“I have several reasons for this decision.
“I do not want any debt imposed upon me that I have not asked or given my consent for.
“It is a certainty that prices will continue to rise, thus creating more hardship which this imposed loan will only exacerbate.
“My chosen route to pay for energy is up front payments via Pay As You Go, I do not consent to any sum of money being added to my account that leaves me in debt for several years. I manage my poverty perfectly well without being indebted by you.
“Your government has a bitter record of forcing us into debt and hardship, whilst throwing billions of pounds at banks and corporations, I want no part of the imposition of this loan on ordinary people.”
These are very good points.
Will you be writing to reject Sunak’s plan to impose debt on you for years to come while enriching the privatised energy giants that a previous Tory government created – many of which are at least partly-owned by foreign governments?
Alternatively, you could report Sunak to the Financial Conduct Authority as he seems to be misrepresenting his squalid little loan as a “rebate” or “discount”:
🚨 | ACTION NEEDED
If you are concerned that Rishi Sunak is mis-representing a loan as a 'rebate' or 'discount' then I urge you report him to the Financial Conduct Authority.
Or will you just lie back and let him strip you of more self-respect?
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Another blunder: Keir Starmer’s insistence on allowing a law that would allow the government to undermine his party has created a rift between him and an ever-increasing number of his MPs.
It is already being labelled as a major rebellion against Keir Starmer’s leadership: 34 Labour MPs defying the party whip to vote against the controversial so-called ‘Spycops’ Bill that would allow government agents to commit crimes.
The real question about it, though, is: why so few?
Labour has been targeted by the so-called Establishment in the UK – probably from its beginnings as a political party. This includes espionage by the nation’s intelligence agencies.
We all know about famous incidents such as the Zinoviev Letter, which contributed to the fall of Ramsay MacDonald’s first Labour government. It was a forged communique allegedly between the government and the Communist government of Russia, written by people whose identities remain uncertain…
… but it was published by the Conservative Daily Mail, and it is widely believed that this was on the urging of the SIS – the intelligence service of the day.
Another famous issue is the MI5 file on Harold Wilson, which was opened when he first entered Parliament in 1945 and recorded his contacts with communists, KGB officers and other Russians.
It was opened because of concerns about his relationships with Eastern European businessmen. Can you imagine MI5 opening a file on Boris Johnson, over his relationships with oligarches from Russia?
Ultimately, none of the information in the file can have amounted to anything because MI5 never tried to use it to undermine him – despite his own paranoia about this in his later years.
Clearly there is a precedent for the security services – which are predominantly staffed by right-wingers – using every resource within their power to find ways of undermining the Labour Party.
And by abstaining on a Bill that allows government agents to commit crimes in order to achieve their aims, 167 Labour MPs including the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, have just handed them another such resource.
It’s undemocratic and dangerous – the kind of legislation created by a dictatorship in order to ensure, by fair means or foul, that no rival organisation can ever topple it.
But some good may come of it accidentally – the possible removal of Starmer as party leader.
Around 20 of his MPs rebelled against his demand to abstain on the Bill’s second reading. Yesterday (October 15), 34 defied his whip – including eight who resigned from front bench roles to do so:
Here are the 34 Labour MPs who voted against the Tories’ Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill tonight.
The law makes it legal for the state to authorise the murder of political opponents.
The fact Keir Starmer whipped Labour to abstain on outright Fascism is truly horrifying. pic.twitter.com/SMvXPDaUNa
It is with regret that I did not vote with my party on the #spycops bill. Joined by a significant number of other Labour MPs. The stakes were too high in my view to abstain. I always remember Nye Bevan who said 'if you sit in the centre of the road you eventually get run over.'
I have voted against the Covert Human Intelligence Sources bill and so have tendered my resignation from my position as Shadow Schools Minister. I wrote to Keir Starmer before the vote. I’d like to thank Keir for having given me the opportunity to serve on Labour’s front bench. pic.twitter.com/9BmfqhciHz
Today I voted against the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill and resigned as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Andy McDonald MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights. Please read my statement below. 👇https://t.co/Aw7LQXAcHC
It was an honour to serve as Angela Rayner's PPS and I thank her for the opportunity, but as a lifelong trade unionist and a campaigner for social justice I could see no rationale for a second abstention. I am still totally committed to campaigning for a Labour government.
This evening, I again voted against the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill which I fear undermines our democracy and our commitment to champion human rights. #CHISBill
Much of this can be attributed to Starmer’s own attitude, which suggests that he actually supports the Bill’s demand that government agents be allowed to commit any crime without fear of prosecution for it later – any crime at all, including the murder of the Tories’ political opponents:
this is what 166 Labour MPs have ultimately waved through. A dark day and one that ought to go down in infamy in the history of the British labour movement https://t.co/tGqYwneveJpic.twitter.com/pjt3izkhtm
Discontent with his lack of opposition to the worst Tory government in history is growing, and already there are rumours of a leadership challenge in 2021:
We are once again calling on all socialist Labour MPs to start making preparations for a leadership challenge in 2021. #StarmerOut
Political developments are strange; they don’t happen the way anybody expects – unless that person is very far-sighted indeed.
The Zinoviev Letter led to the fall of a Labour government – but only in a roundabout way. Labour’s vote increased in the general election; it was the collapse of the Liberal vote that allowed the Conservatives their victory.
It would be ironic if now, nearly a century after that attempt to end a socialist government, a piece of legislation that legalises espionage against the party that formed that government actually led to its re-founding as a socialist organisation once again.
That is the only comforting thought I can raise from what is, in all other respects, a disaster for democracy.
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Bungler: perhaps Keir Starmer thought his decision to support a law that allows government agents to murder, torture and rape people with no fear of prosecution was a show of power. All it will do is turn more people away from the hollow shell he has made of the Labour Party.
Keir Starmer has gone too far and Labour MPs know it.
That’s how This Writer reads the groundbreaking resignation from the party’s frontbench team of rising star Dan Carden.
The now-former shadow chief secretary to the Treasury has only just distinguished himself in Parliament with this speech attacking Tory corruption and cronyism, taking advantage of the Covid-19 crisis to award themselves and their businesses huge wodges of public money in return for – well, nothing:
The whole thing stinks.
This Government’s incompetence, its cronyism, its ideological obsession with outsourcing and rip-off privatisation has undermined our NHS and put lives at risk.
Time to kick the profiteers out of the system and put local public health teams in charge. pic.twitter.com/ivqRy4WgOe
Now, after being told that Starmer is whipping Labour to abstain on the heinous Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill, he has announced that he will vote with his conscience – and resigned his post as a shadow minister.
He is quite right to do so. Starmer has lied repeatedly about this – or he has been wildly mistaken about what he could achieve.
First he told Labour MPs to abstain on the second reading of the Bill – allowing it to progress through Parliament when a concerted effort by all Labour MPs could have stopped it on the spot.
He told his MPs that there would be a chance to change the Bill, tightening up controls on the kind of crimes that could be committed and the circumstances in which they would be allowed. That has not happened.
And he told his MPs that they would be able to vote against the Bill if attempts to amend it failed. We see now that he is not going to allow this after all.
So Mr Carden did the honourable thing:
As a matter of conscience, I must vote against the #CHISBill tonight.
Take note of the words in his letter. He states that Starmer has “settled” on his position on “legislation that sets dangerous new precedents on the rule of law and civil liberties in this country”.
He’s saying that, in effect, Starmer is supporting a law that will harm our freedom.
The letter also states that in supporting the harm that will be done to us, Starmer’s position is at odds with the vast majority of his party: “I share the deep concerns about this legislation from across the Labour Movement, human rights organisations, and so many who have suffered the abuse of state power, from blacklisted workers to the Hillsborough families and survivors.”
Mention of the Hillsborough tragedy is particularly telling: in supporting this Bill, then, Starmer is setting himself against the Hillsborough families and survivors – and everybody who supports them and their struggle for justice.
That is not a good look for a lawyer!
The Third Reading vote on the CHIS Bill is this evening (October 15).
Labour-voting members of the public will judge their MPs by whether they support Starmer, or if they choose to support justice instead.
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Keir Starmer: he probably thought he was being smart but all he really did was get it wrong again.
Well, isn’t this interesting?
A number of Tories voted against the Spy Ops bill yesterday, enough that, had Labour voted with them, the bill would have been defeated. It passed because Starmer whipped Labour to abstain. It passed because of Labour
The tweet isn’t quite correct; only 20 MPs voted against the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill that would authorise people from the Financial Conduct Authority (for example) to commit crimes up to and including murder, rape and torture in the course of an investigation – and they were all from the Labour Party.
If Keir Starmer had not whipped Labour MPs to abstain – and take note that exactly 182 of them did – then this endorsement of crime by a criminal government would have been stopped in its tracks.
Defenders of the Bill have claimed it isn’t as bad as some of us are saying – that spies working for the various government agencies would need approval to commit crimes before carrying out the acts for which the planned law would grant them immunity.
But the safeguards against abuse are said to be “very vague and very broad” and, as I mentioned in a previous article, there is the issue of “mission creep”: agents will end up committing ever-more-extreme crimes because they are told to do so on the spur of a moment, creating precedents to stretch what is permissible until it covers anything at all.
Take note: Starmer used to be a human rights lawyer.
But he just gave an insult to human rights a free pass to the next stage of becoming law.
And his supporters are trying to flood the social media with claims that he is a good thing. #StarmerOutstanding, they say.
He is outstanding. He is an outstanding threat to the well-being of you, me and everybody we know.
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Keir Starmer: in abstaining on the Bill to give government agents carte blanche to commit crimes including murder, torture and rape, he is supporting the commission of those crimes. The perpetrators will be protected from prosecution by the law.
In one sense, it was only to be expected: a criminal government authorises its enforcers to commit criminal acts.
So the Johnson government – an international criminal due to the Internal Market Bill that is currently going through the House of Lords like a dose of salts – is authorising its spies to commit crimes as part of their duties.
These crimes include murder, torture, and sexual offences:
the legislation would explicitly authorise MI5, the police, the National Crime Agency and other agencies that use informants or undercover agents to commit a specific crime as part of an operation.
Security officials will not say which crimes are authorised, on grounds that this may give away the identities of undercover agents to terrorists and other serious criminals.
So the sky is the limit and the legislation offers the UK’s secret police a licence to do anything they like, to anybody.
Yes, the legislation does require MI5 officers and others to show the crime is “necessary and proportionate”, but what happens when they encounter what’s known as “mission creep”?
The definition of “necessary and proportionate” will stretch over time to encompass anything, laying it open to corruption – and agents may find themselves committing ever-more-extreme crimes because they are told to do so on the spur of a moment.
Home Office minister James Brokenshire said the legislation would “help keep our country safe”, but he did not elaborate on whose country he meant, or who it would be kept safe from.
Both Labour and Conservative MPs have expressed opposition to the Bill as it currently stands, saying the safeguards were “very vague and very broad” and must be strengthened.
But Labour’s leadership said it would not oppose the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill at its second reading on October 5.
This has led to further claims that current Labour leader Keir Starmer is nothing more than a closet Conservative, forcing party members to accept acts that are directly opposed to their principles as he supports the Johnson government time and time again – and his MPs support him.
Only 20 Labour MPs defied his order to abstain on the Bill’s second reading, including former leader Jeremy Corbyn and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, and others including Ian Lavery, who tweeted this:
I voted against the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill tonight. This was the correct course of action.
I simply could not support legislation that would allow #spycops to murder, torture and use sexual violence without fear of any legal accountability.
Note the hashtag #spycops – others include #LabStainers and #NoOpposition, with #StarmerOut being the most popular (although it is also infested with supporters of ‘Sir Keith’ who are trying to stifle the views of the majority).
Here are a few examples of the #StarmerOut tweets, to show the strength of feeling about this:
Mass kidnappings, torture & assassinations all without any comeback now the rule of law in 3rd world, nonentity Torydom. Every so called "British value" disappeared on the 5/10/20. pic.twitter.com/mxi5fmUZN7
Keir Starmer writes articles behind paywalls, is sponsored by private healthcare lobbyists & has promoted the same MP’s who have spent five long years purposely sabotaged the chances for real change under Corbyn & whips MP’s to abstain on voting against torture. #StarmerOut
This is not the Labour party, it's sham. This is not what I voted for in 2019. I voted for an opposition to stances that are morally and ethinically wrong. I voted for human rights, workers rights. I voted for equality, social justice.
Any Labour leader that throws their party's principles under the bus might as well get in the Tories red double-decker, to save fuel as they're both travelling in the same direction. #StarmerOut
— Elaine Dyson #DemocraticSocialist (@ElaineDyson1) October 6, 2020
#StarmerOut? Well yes, but it doesn’t really matter, does it?
Only 20 Labour MPs had the bravery and decency to vote against the Spy Cops Bill.
It’s time to stop hanging onto Labour as a comfort blanket.
It’s a lost cause and socialists need to organise and start something new
#StarmerOut The Labour party & the public deserve better. During the COVID-19 crisis & with Brexit just a couple of months away, we need a strong opposition against the Tory gov. Labour must stop whipping its MPs to abstain on bills that leave sh*tstains on human rights.
— Elaine Dyson #DemocraticSocialist (@ElaineDyson1) October 6, 2020
Supporters of Starmer say he is acting strategically in order to demonstrate that Johnson and his ministers have nobody to blame for their mistakes but themselves. This is a trap for Labour.
Having abstained from voting on this Bill, Starmer and his followers in the Labour Party have said they accept the necessity of agents of the Financial Conduct Authority committing rape (to put forward an extreme example).
Are their supporters seriously trying to tell us this won’t come back and bite them?
There is only one reasonable response to legislation that authorises government agents to commit crimes – especially extreme crimes such as those contemplated here, and that is opposition.
But opposition is not in Keir Starmer’s vocabulary.
Let’s have a leadership challenge. He has to go.
And if he isn’t ousted this time, let’s have another challenge, and another, until he is. He has turned Labour into a travesty.
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This Writer only published Vox Political‘s story about the Metropolitan police targeting black athletes Ricardo dos Santos, Bianca Williams and their three-month-old baby for a stop/search a couple of hours ago, and already the case has been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct!
If you want something to happen, get me to write about it.
But seriously…
It actually took several days and the threat of a court case for this matter to be referred to the IOPC, and This Writer is concerned that we’ll see another stitch-up.
The IOPC blotted its copy book with its whitewashing of the relationship between Boris Johnson and Jennifer Arcuri, and I fear that any investigation of this case will go the same way.
It occur to me that, if the IOPC – and the police in general – want us to accept any verdict on this, we’ll have to see all the evidence when the report comes in.
That seems the best way to ensure fairness. Don’t you agree?
The Metropolitan Police has referred itself to the police watchdog over the actions of its officers in a stop and search involving athlete Bianca Williams.
The 26-year-old Team GB sprinter was dragged from the vehicle and handcuffed in Maida Vale, West London on Saturday along with partner Ricardo dos Santos, a Portuguese 400m runner, in front of their three month-old-son.
The athlete has since accused the Met of racial profiling – telling LBC radio she believes they were stopped because the car is all black and her partner is a black man. “There is no other reason,” she added.
Now the force has said it will voluntarily refer itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC)
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