This is more from the Led By Donkeys investigation into MPs’ who have or try to get second jobs with huge pay rather than helping constituents who have to struggle on tiny wages or benefits.
It seems Kwasi Kwarteng, in discussions with the fake South Korean firm set up by the campaigning group, suggested he could get former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson to represent them.
Here’s the resulting video clip:
More to follow…
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Backhander: another problem with MPs taking second jobs is that they don’t declare any interest when taking part in debates – you have to look up their details in the House of Commons Register of Interests to find out about it.
The film series in which Led By Donkeys exposes MPs who are happy to neglect their first duty – to their constituents – for a second job with a (fake) foreign firm has won huge public interest since its trailer debuted yesterday.
But let’s remember one thing while we’re looking at Tory MPs trying to get their noses in the trough:
Labour’s leader is no better.
In 2017, Keir Starmer was blocked from taking a second job with law firm Mishcon de Reya – by then-party leader Jeremy Corbyn (a man with better principles than all the MPs mentioned in the Led By Donkeys research, put together).
Nowadays, it seems he likes to say he was only “in discussion” with that firm – as though it doesn’t mean he was talking with its people about working for them. Watch him get contradicted by a Sky News reporter here:
I wonder how Sky News will be treated by a future Labour government, considering the way Starmer has abused and persecuted dissenters in his own party?
A huge problem with MPs having second jobs – besides the fact that it reduces their work for constituents to a part-time hobby – is that it makes them employees of organisations that may (and many do) wish to influence politics in the UK. But that isn’t the only way it can be done.
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has said the party will end the scandal of MPs’ second jobs – as though that will be the end of the corruption.
What about the donations she (along with other Labour MPs) takes from pro-Israel lobbyist Trevor Chinn? As matters stand, there is no reason they shouldn’t take his money – but what are they obliged to do in return?
What about MP’s accepting donations from Israeli lobbyists? Will you put an end to that racket? I expect not. You Hypocrite ! pic.twitter.com/V6cyGNtNIP
Here’s a ray of hope, though: fortunately some MPs still remember the reason they were elected to Parliament, and are prepared to point out the failings of their fellow representatives. Here’s Zarah Sultana:
"From gifts, dinners and trips abroad to donations from the super rich & second jobs from big businesses. This web of influence is aimed to do one thing, to get this house to work for the wealthy few and not the people we're elected to serve"
Needless to say, she has been sidelined by Starmer.
Another backbencher, sidelined by Starmer, is Richard Burgon – whose Private Members’ Bill to ban MPs from having second jobs is currently going through the Parliamentary process:
My Bill banning MPs from having Second Jobs has not only been drafted but has been laid in the House of Commons.
The Government could choose to pass it and implement it in a matter of days.
He has spoken forcefully about the issue in the House of Commons:
"We hear of some MPs briefing newspapers that they're going to stand down if they can't have second jobs because £82,000 a year isn't enough. I say to those MPs, good riddance, go! Our democracy does not need you"@RichardBurgon. 👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/udguuY1c2E
How many of you expect this excellent legislation to be filibustered out of existence by the usual Tory suspects?
None of this should be allowed to override the main point of the Led By Donkeys exposure, though – that sitting MPs are demanding huge amounts of money to shill for commercial interests while their constituents suffer in poverty and hunger.
Let’s have a look at some of the figures:
£1,500 per hour for Hancock
£14 per hour for junior doctors.
Time for society to decide who’s more important
— Geo-Politics Lecturer (@GeoPolLecturer) March 26, 2023
Doctors are asking for £19 and hour for their day job.
Ex-health sec Matt Hancock is asking for £1500 an hour for a second job.
It’s corruption fuelled by greed, pure and simple.
And the fact is that it will continue because there is no way to compel MPs to stop.
Or will the tide of public opinion be enough to make these avaricious pigs lift their snouts from the trough and do the right thing – for fear of being ousted at the next election?
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The thought of Kwasi Kwarteng delivering his “package” to Liz Truss is enough to give brave men pause, though.
Alternatively, Professor Tim Wilson may be having a nervous breakdown over the Tory leadership contest; your mileage may vary, as the saying goes.
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Someone at the BBC edited together a neat little minute-long summary of how Trussonomics – and in fact Liz Truss’s entire policy platform – was trashed over the last few days.
At the time, they probably thought that was the biggest thing likely to happen this week. How wrong they were.
It’s a fun little summary though. See for yourself:
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They used to say a week was a long time in politics; now it’s down to just half an hour.
When I started writing this article, it was about the press conference Liz Truss has announced, in which she is likely to reverse several – or all – elements of the disastrous ‘fiscal event’ of September 23.
But this has been superceded already – with the announcement that Kwasi Kwarteng has become the UK’s second shortest-serving Chancellor, being out after only 38 days in the job.
As I write this, it isn’t clear whether he has been asked to resign or sacked outright.
Truss herself didn’t have many options after she painted herself into a corner during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.
She had previously said she would cut taxes for the already-obscenely rich. This meant she would have to finance the change with more borrowing – or cut public services.
But at PMQs on Wednesday, she said she would not be borrowing – nor would there be any public service reductions.
That left Truss with nowhere to go – and everyone knew it.
Kwarteng himself has been in Washington DC for a meeting with the IMF (some have speculated that he went there cap-in-hand, as Denis Healey did, back in the 1970s) – but has been recalled to London.
This triggered speculation that he is to be asked to resign, as Priti Patel was after it was discovered that she had been trying to run her own personal foreign policy alongside the Israeli government while acting as International Trade Secretary.
And now he’s gone:
Apparently The Times is suggesting Jeremy Hunt could be the next Chancellor.
What next?
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We’ve all had a laugh at the expense of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng but now it’s time to get serious.
Their ideological dogma is in tatters and the Bank of England has told them they are causing a material risk of financial harm to the UK. They need to change.
But will they?
As the blurb for the following clip states, “The government haven’t really done anything to boost confidence in the market. They are still defending an uncosted budget, they are still refusing to publicise the economic forecast. Unless they change direction, the economic damage will continue.”
Here’s the detailed discussion:
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This video is great fun, so let’s all enjoy Kwasi Kwarteng being discomfited by his own idiocies.
Best bit for This Writer? When someone congratulates the Tory government on its overnight transformation of 10 Downing Street – from a nightclub to a casino.
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Now questions are being asked about whether he is still taking money from Crispin Odey who, This Writer understands, made a huge amount of money from the crash Kwarteng engineered with his ‘fiscal event’ last month.
Apparently the Eye has mentioned it again:
Once again it falls to @PrivateEyeNews to conduct real journalism. This week they reveal Kwasi Kwarteng has had a second job with Cripin Odey's hedge fund as a paid 'political advisor' at £20,000 a month ever since he was elected as an MP in 2010.
The connection is still concerning and we need clarity. Doesn’t Parliament have a watchdog for these details?
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The grinning Kwarteng: in his next public statement, he’ll announce a plan to deal with the debt he created in his last public statement. Who’s willing to bet he’ll cut your public services to the bone?
Who reckons he’s going to cut public services?
Kwasi Kwarteng, who by some miracle is still Chancellor of the Exchequer, has announced that he will set out his new (detailed, he says) plan to cut public debt and balance the government’s finances, on October 31. That’s nearly a month before his previously-announced date, November 23.
An independent forecast of how the economy will perform in coming years, by the Office of Budget Responsibility, will be published at the same time, so we will all be able to judge whether his plan is worth the paper it’s written on.
The statement will come days before the Bank of England announces its latest decision on interest rates – on November 3. We’ll definitely know if ‘Queasy’ Kwarteng has got it wrong by then, and if interest rates rise again, it’ll be further evidence.
Today’s announcement is yet another u-turn for Liz Truss’s hapless government; Kwarteng claimed on October 4 that the plan would be announced on November 23, as he had originally stated and that “people have been reading the runes and the pauses”.
It turns out that those people knew more about the future than he did. How normal for a government that simply doesn’t know what it is doing from one day to the next.
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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?
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