Shifty: Jacob Rees-Mogg is facing an investigation into his business practices outside Parliament – by a Standards Commissioner he tried to have abolished. Now, why would he have wanted to do that?
Karma comes around quickly these days, doesn’t it?
Remember how Jacob Rees-Mogg tried to shut down Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone after she found Owen Paterson guilty of corruption?
Now Ms Stone is investigating claims that he took £6 million of loans from his company, Saliston Ltd, between 2018 and 2020 – and failed to make an “open and frank” disclosure of them in the register of members’ interests.
The details are here:
https://t.co/Hr8MMy4bfR KARMA has a habit of coming back and biting you.. imagine, had you not told Johnson your plan was water tight, now you have leaked your own problems, no one guilty until proven,I do hope they take you to the cleaners, has he been to confessional today?
Rees-Mogg tried to have the Standards Commissioner’s role abolished, and is now being investigated by the Standards Commissioner.
Was he corruptly acting on his own behalf, rather than (as he undoubtedly claimed) in the interests of justice?
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The question of the day is, did we learn anything from the vote to save Owen Paterson from a 30-day suspension as an MP that we didn’t know already?
Debatable, isn’t it?
We know why he had been recommended for suspension – or at least, we should…
If you're wondering what the Owen Paterson case is basically about, it's this: the healthcare firm that kept him on a six-figure retainer won a £133m contract to produce Covid testing kits without even having to bid. Now, is that right or is that wrong?
Well… he may have been instrumental in getting Randox that contract. The real shocker is the fact that many of the Randox testing kits had to be withdrawn due to concerns about contamination – meaning care homes did not get the test kits they needed. And we know that the 30,000 or so care home deaths were a major controversy in the Covid-19 crisis.
If only the protective ring thrown around care homes had matched the one thrown around Owen Paterson.
But those are just consequences of his crime, which was simply to have undertaken paid lobbying for the companies that employed him – as Standards Committee member Chris Bryant made plain in his speech:
Chris Bryant(Standards Committee) lays out the charges against #OwenPaterson
"He did the one the thing he was banned from doing, lobby Minister's time & again in a way that conferred a direct benefit on his paying clients, that is expressly forbidden, it is a corrupt practice" pic.twitter.com/1r8UC9O7HZ
In fact, Bryant’s speech is well worth watching in full because it puts the whole situation in its proper context and damns those who have undermined Parliament’s processes in order to protect a corrupt colleague for bringing shame down upon all MPs:
Chris Bryant's closing contribution to the Owen Paterson debate is one of the most quietly effective and damning Commons speeches you'll hear in a while. Worth watching in full.https://t.co/Wf9RdBpaRk
We know why Paterson’s fellow Tory backbenchers wanted to stop it from happening: it made him vulnerable to a recall demand and to the possibility of losing his seat in a by-election.
We knew that he had claimed the investigation into his activities had been unfair and that worrying about it may have driven his wife to her death. It seems, however, that he had not suggested anything of the sort at the inquest into her death – so he was probably lying.
Hi @OwenPaterson I’m a bit confused. You said at the inquest for your poor wife that you knew of no reason she would take her own life. Last week you said it was because you were being investigated and might be ruined. Which was the truth?
— Madame Poubelle Pamplemousse #TakeBackBritain (@msmousse1) November 3, 2021
What does it say about the measure of a man who is willing to use the tragic death of his wife as a bulwark against legitimate scrutiny, and as an emotional gag to manipulate his critics into silence?
We know that the decision to suspend the current process of independent investigation of MPs and replace it with a process whereby Tories investigate each other will result in corrupt decisions; look at the way Boris Johnson has ignored flagrant breaches of the Ministerial Code – including his own – because as prime minister he was responsible for policing such breaches.
BREAKING: The House of Commons votes by 250 to 232 to overturn Conservative MP Owen Paterson’s suspension and rip up the Standards regime that found him guilty of breaking anti-corruption rules.
MPs have just voted to set up a committee to consider the standards system, and declined to approve Paterson's suspension. Our Parliament is a complete and utter cess-pit of bribery and corruption.
Tory MPs have just voted to approve sleaze in the workings of the House of Commons, and effectively ended the rule of law with regard to their affairs. A tradition dating back to 1695 has been ended. MPs can now just be the hired hands of corporate lobbyists. #Theendofdemocracy
How long will it be before Johnson is back on £250,000 a year from the Telegraph whilst still being PM? Or perhaps a few Russian contracts might help him out instead? Who knows what will happen now…..
Owen Paterson MP was found by a watchdog to have "repeatedly" used his position as an MP to benefit two companies who paid him £100,000 a year. Parliament just voted to let him off.
It turns out that fully a quarter of the Tories who lined up to support Paterson – and corruption – have themselves corruptly broken Parliament’s rules:
The Tories were fully aware that they were exposing their own corruption to the gaze of the world – and were completely comfortable with it. Some of them appeared on television, attempting to dismiss criticisms by saying they were unhappy with the investigation system rather than with its findings against Paterson. And they were shot down as hypocrites:
“I'm aware how this looks,” says Conservative MP Miriam Cates, who will not vote to suspend fellow Tory Owen Paterson, who was found to have broken standards rules
And we now know that Labour under Keir Starmer is not interested in tackling Tory corruption because 28 Labour MPs failed to vote against the motion that got Paterson off the hook; if they had, the attempt to pervert Parliamentary justice would have failed.
28 Labour MP's let Paterson off the hook and failed to inflict a defeat on the tories by not voting. Some may have been paired but not all of them. What absolute failure in opposition.
If Labour is a serious Opposition it now has to cease cooperation with the government on the workings of the Commons – to force the Tories to own the corruption that they are now actively promoting.
Ultimately we know that, while this vote superficially helps Owen Paterson keep his job despite his corruption, the deeper effect is to further undermine faith that our elected government is trustworthy – a faith that has already been perilously eroded by all the previous corruptions of Boris Johnson and his crooked cronies:
This is the most corrupt Government in modern history.
I can’t even begin to describe the deep down gut wrenching raging anger I feel at what Johnsons reckless, lying, law breaking Government has done to our Parliament, our democracy & our country. If I have to make it my life’s ambition to see it thrown from office so be it
Don’t forget Johnsons Gov’t plans to strip judges of powers to review its decisions, plans to strip the Electoral Commission of its power to prosecute law-breaking, repeatedly ignores the Ministerial Code & repeatedly breaks the law. It has no comprehension of right & wrong
Why is his local constituency party not speaking out to deselect him – is every member of the Tory Party corrupt – it is looking that way as so many of their MP's have carried out borderline illegal activities and stay in situ.
A Tory MP can accept a £100K bribe and nothing happens, but a nurse can't accept more than a box of chocolates because this would be a conflict of interests. Let that sink in.
One thing we also knew – that came out strongly here – is that current Commons Speaker Lyndsay Hoyle is not strong enough to restrain the Tories’ corruption:
Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle should never have accepted Andrea Leadsom's amendment to Owen Paterson's punishment Bill.
The vote should be on the independent commissioners findings and recommendation only.
Parliament will now act on the amendment that protected Paterson (proposed by Andrea Leadsom, by the way; let’s make sure the right people get the blame).
We will see how the process unfolds. My guess is that it will scandalise and outrage the public to a huge degree – if they get to hear about it.
So please feel free to share this article – especially to people who voted for the shower of scum that was on display during this debate and vote.
Oh, and you can check how your own MP voted, here:
Here’s a list of every MP who just voted to scrap Parliament’s anti-corruption rules and let a corrupt MP off the hook https://t.co/oOXDqrkLVt
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Laughing at us: Boris Johnson appointed his former Bullingdon Club colleague to Parliament’s sleaze watchdog, over 171 other applicants. It seems clear he did it to ensure that he would never be found guilty of the many corruption accusations made against him.
We all screamed “foul” when it was revealed that Boris Johnson’s government had appointed his Bullingdon Club chum Ewen Fergusson to Parliament’s sleaze watchdog.
Was he put in the Committee on Standards in Public Life to rubber-stamp Johnson’s offences as being within reasonable standards of behaviour, we asked (or at least, This Writer did).
Now we have more evidence, and it suggests that he was.
Why else would Johnson’s government have appointed his friend over 171 other applicants who were not directly and personally linked to him – in the face of objections that the connection should disqualify Fergusson altogether?
As The Independent puts it,
The longtime friend of the prime minister was appointed to scrutinise him.
By the way: final say on who got the job went to Boris Johnson. He chose his friend for the position.
If you wanted an honest verdict on your own actions, would you appoint a personal friend to provide it? I wouldn’t. My friends would tell me if they thought I was going wrong, but they’d never voluntarily say so to strangers.
And this was pointed out by the Labour Party (even though it shouldn’t have to be):
Labour said friends of the prime minister should be disqualified from the role on the Committee on Standards In Public Life, given the nature of its job scrutinising members of the government, including Mr Johnson.
“Being Boris Johnson’s chum from the Bullingdon Club does not qualify you to sit on the watchdog that is supposed to crack down on sleaze and cronyism in our politics. In fact, it should disqualify you,” deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner told The Independent.
“This appointment is an utter joke, and out of 173 applicants of course the Bullingdon Boy fits the job description of marking the prime minister’s homework.
It is a joke. And next time Johnson gets accused of corruption, and his Bullingdon chum green-lights it, he’ll be the one laughing at all of us.
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Two-fingered salute:: Boris Johnson’s answer to those of us who accuse him of cronyism.
We point out their corruption by taking them to court for giving cash to their cronies, and the Tories simply shrug and do it again.
Boris Johnson has appointed a former Bullingdon Club colleague, Ewen Fergusson, to sit on Whitehall’s “sleaze” watchdog – the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
Is this so his friend can rubber-stamp all Johnson’s own offences as being well within reasonable standards of behaviour?
Questions have already been raised about the appointment, which was approved by Johnson, as you can read in this Guardian article.
And the reaction outside the Tory bubble has been… as one might expect:
Boris Johnson has appointed his Bullingdon University chum to the Committee that is supposed to advise on ethics & proper conduct in public life.
What an utter joke.
This Prime Minister doesn’t even care enough to hide his blatant cronyism – he treats the public with contempt. pic.twitter.com/Afglg8eg8j
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Spotted on the internet: and who knows how many more nasty little secrets Dominic Cummings will be able to release, just when they will do Boris Johnson the most harm?
I’m waiting for Theresa May to turn up and say, “Now, boys, play nicely!” Not that she’d have any effect at all.
It seems that Boris Johnson thought details of his text conversation promising tax breaks to James Dyson had been leaked by Dominic Cummings.
Denying this, Cummings has nevertheless come out with a different claim – that Johnson had planned a “possibly illegal” way to get Tory donors to pay for renovations to the Downing Street flat that the prime minister uses.
Cummings wrote in his blog: “The PM stopped speaking to me about this matter in 2020 as I told him I thought his plans to have donors secretly pay for the renovation were unethical, foolish, possibly illegal and almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political donations if conducted in the way he intended. I refused to help him organise these payments.”
For good measure, Cummings has also denied leaking details of the UK’s second Covid-19 lockdown last summer – but he put an extra sting into this one.
He said Johnson had considered stopping an inquiry into that leak (that eventually exonerated Cummings) because (he reckoned) the evidence pointed to Henry Newman, a close personal friend of the prime minister’s fiancee, Carrie Symonds.
Cummings claimed Johnson was concerned that he would have to sack Newman, and this would cause friction with Symonds.
The official line from Downing Street is that Johnson has never interfered with any inquiries – but that’s not what Cummings claimed.
The claim was that Johnson had considered interfering – and this is entirely plausible after Johnson admitted promising to interfere with the tax system for Dyson, at Prime Minister’s Question on Wednesday. (Or did he? Will we have yet another clarification from “a Downing Street source” that he meant something completely – and implausibly – different?)
The result of the inquiry has never been published.
Cummings wrote: “I told him that this was ‘mad’ and totally unethical, that he had ordered the inquiry himself and authorised the Cabinet Secretary to use more invasive methods than are usually applied to leak inquiries because of the seriousness of the leak. I told him that he could not possibly cancel an inquiry about a leak that affected millions of people, just because it might implicate his girlfriend’s friends.”
He added: “It is sad to see the PM and his office fall so far below the standards of competence and integrity the country deserves.”
Asked to comment on the matter, Johnson himself came out with what may be his only accurate words on any of the corruption allegations that are currently pelting his government. He said:
“I think people aren’t so much interested in who is leaking what to whom as the substance of the issue at hand.”
Yes indeed.
We want to see accurate, verified evidence showing whether Johnson intervened with HMRC to change tax rules of Dyson.
We want to see evidence showing whether Johnson was implicated in the Greensill lobbying scandal.
We want evidence on how Johnson funded his flat renovations.
We want to know why the inquiry into the lockdown leak wasn’t published.
And we want to see evidence on the accuracy of all the other corruption claims that have come out of the woodwork – and that are likely to emerge in the future.
And no – “a Downing Street spokesperson denied the allegations” will not be acceptable.
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Gavin Williamson: If anybody has benefited from the Tory sex scandal, it isn’t women – it’s him [Image: David Mirzoeff/PA].
Isn’t it ironic that former Conservative Chief Whip Gavin Williamson has been appointed as the new Defence Secretary after Sir Michael Fallon’s resignation?
You see, Mr Williamson is the man who, we’re told, compiled the weekly “Ins and Outs” reports on Tory MPs’ sexual offences. Sir Michael’s name was on the Tory sleaze spreadsheet apparently compiled by the whips’ office and it is now being alleged that further claims were made about his behaviour to minority prime minister Theresa May yesterday afternoon (November 1), right before the former Defence Secretary resigned.
It also looks very much like a case of life imitating House of Cards – not the US knock-off starring the now-disgraced (due to a sex scandal) Kevin Spacey, but the superior BBC version of the 1990s, in which fictional chief whip Francis Urquhart uses the sexual indiscretions of fellow MPs to climb the Parliamentary heirarchy, eventually becoming prime minister. And it is said that Mr Williamson has prime ministerial ambitions himself.
Already, Twitter is abuzz with information about him:
So. The chap who sat on the dossier of indiscretion is the new Secretary of State for Defence. I won’t reveal the words used in the newsroom
As I write this, some Tory is on the BBC News spewing tripe that Theresa May has been strong, having zero tolerance for the kind of behaviour that has triggered this minor reshuffle. It is ridiculous. Michael Fallon is just one of dozens of Tory MPs who stand accused, and she has done nothing about it at all. The allegations themselves merit suspension. Just look at the contrast with Labour:
Jared O'Mara, whip withdrawn, investigation set up for Bex Bailey assault, and still all is quiet on #TorySleaze, sickening, #Newsnight
The new Chief Whip is the former Deputy Chief Whip, Julian Smith (who?).
And the new Deputy Chief Whip is none other than Esther McVey.
That’s right – Fester McVile is in the whips’ office. This woman was ejected from the Wirral West constituency in the 2015 elections, in response to her abominable treatment of jobseekers, the sick and disabled as an employment minister. She spent a couple of years shoehorned into a cushy job as chair of the British Transport Police Authority before being parachuted into the Tatton constituency after George Osborne quit to become a newspaper editor (among multiple other jobs).
What a revolting development.
Meanwhile, the lashing of Sir Michael Fallon continues. People in his Sevenoaks constituency – and the usual commentators – are angry that he seems to think his behaviour fell short of the standards expected of a defence minister – but was fine for a constituency MP. They want to know why he hasn’t resigned from politics altogether:
‘I’m much too predatory to be defence secretary. I’m just about the right amount of predatory to be an mp’. Doesn’t make sense, tho, does it
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Damian Green isn’t laughing – he’s tooling up with lawyers to fight allegations of inappropriate behaviour after he was named on the Tory sex spreadsheet [Image: Peter Nicholls/Reuters].
“Yes, that’s right,” said Mrs Mike. “Everybody’s making a big joke about it – and that is what allows it to continue.”
I had just pointed out the cover of the latest issue of Private Eye to her. Here it is:
Is it funny?
If you think so, ask yourself: Would you feel the same if you were a victim of the (alleged) monsters who have inflicted themselves on unwilling victims and forced them to stay silent? That is what has happened in some of the cases on the Tory sex spreadsheet – and never forget that there may be other cases yet to come to light.
Come to that, how about asking whether any other victims of sexual attack – of any kind – thinks it’s funny?
So, did Ian Hislop (the Eye‘s editor) shoot himself in the foot with that cover? It’s a good question. Perhaps it would be a good idea to use that cover as a yardstick for prevailing attitudes. Does a significant proportion of the public feel outraged? Or are they laughing along?
Michael Gove is probably hoping they’re laughing, after his rape “joke” attracted a storm of criticism – and absolutely nothing by way of reprimand from his boss – last weekend.
Labour’s Dawn Butler has drawn attention to it in a letter to Theresa May that asks what the minority prime minister is doing about the scandal – especially as all the activities that have been identified were known to Mrs May, some of them for a considerable period of time, and she did nothing at all to stop them or bring the perpetrators to justice. Doesn’t this make her an accessory to every crime?
Is this the behaviour of anybody you would want to have as prime minister?
Ms Butler writes:
After your spokesperson expressed your “serious concern” at reports of sexual harassment in Westminster on Friday, it was disappointing to hear the comments of a member of your cabinet, Michael Gove, on Radio 4 the next day, which made light of sexual abuse and rape. Abuse is the never the woman’s fault, and insinuating that those who experience it and come forward have lost any of their “dignity” is inherently wrong and harmful. What action has been taken so that Mr Gove and others understand that “jokes” like his make it harder for those who experience harassment to feel like they will be taken seriously if they speak out?
It’s a good letter, calling for robust action to ensure that members of all political parties (not just the Tories) know exactly what to do if they are sexually harassed.
And it attacks the culture that allows these abuses and then makes jokes about it like the Private Eye cover above.
But it doesn’t go far enough. Perhaps Ms Butler is being diplomatic.
Personally, This Writer thinks it is time the police were dispatched to the Whips’ Office and to 10 Downing Street and searched both buildings for any and all evidence about MPs’ and ministers’ sex crimes.
I do not believe Theresa May will tell the truth about her involvement in these activities. I do believe she and her cronies will try to hide – or destroy – any evidence before the authorities have a chance to find them.
Look at what she has done since this scandal broke: Nothing. She has passed the buck to the Speaker’s office. She has asked for an investigation into whether a minister broke the ministerial code (which doesn’t appear to cover such matters) at a time when he wasn’t a minister. She has not suspended the whip from any of the politicians who have been named.
The problem of abuse and harassment of women isn’t restricted to those who make unwanted advances on women; it extends to a culture that has tolerated or made light of abuse for far too long. All political parties have a responsibility to act thoroughly and properly where instances of unacceptable behaviour come to light, and to take appropriate action.
Therefore, I was extremely concerned by reports in Sunday newspapers that your chief of staff and chief whip made you aware of allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Ministers and Conservative MPs. Can you confirm if you were made aware of allegations about members of your party or Government, and what action you took, if any?
Can you explain why the investigation into Mark Garnier appears to be confined to whether he broke the Ministerial Code at a time when he wasn’t a Minister? Further, can you confirm that both he, and Stephen Crabb, will be investigated by the Conservative Party and have the whip suspended while investigations into their conduct take place?
Sunday newspaper reports claim that you are concerned that taking action against ministers could risk the Government collapsing. All party political considerations should be put to one side to ensure we take serious action. I am hopeful that if we do, this could prove to be a turning point that sees us make progress in tackling the sexism and misogyny that pervades our society.
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Underqualified: This Labour Party campaign meme highlights the drawbacks of Michael Gove’s foolish and expensive ‘free school’ experiment.
The country has been concentrating on government sleaze for the past week or so – and this is a mistake. We should also monitor government incompetence and thankfully Michael Gove is around to provide plenty of it.
He wants organisations that are part of his struggling ‘free schools’ pet project to receive special fast-track attention – to avoid the political embarrassment that would be caused by their failure.
Last year the project was rocked by the failure of the Al-Madinah Free School in Derby, and the resignations of unqualified head teachers at Pimlico Free School in London and Discovery School in Crawley. Vox Political discussed all three at the time.
The Discovery School was one of four that were declared inadequate by Ofsted and closed down at the end of March.
Last week, The Observer revealed that Gove wants to hush up any further damaging revelations by ensuring that problems are tackled before Ofsted can publicise them.
The article stated: “It suggests that party political considerations are now driving education policy a year ahead of the general election.”
Quite. It is also a sharp reminder of how far the Coalition government has deviated from its original claim, to be uniting “in the public interest”.
The plan adds extra pressure to the Education department, where morale has already plummetted due to Gove’s determination to employ his own advisors, to overrule the expert advice provided by civil servants in favour of ideologically-motivated dogma.
It also shows that Gove is giving preferential treatment to his pet project. State schools go into special measures after receiving a ruling from Ofsted that they are inadequate – and can remain there for more than a year.
More damaging still is the fact that many of the problems with free schools have nothing to do with education, but are organisational in origin. According to the article, these include: “Operating in temporary sites without a clear permanent home; new, inexperienced and often isolated trusts needing to upskill themselves to run a school for the first time; instability in principal appointments and senior leadership teams.”
So when you hear that your child’s school has been under-performing because it has been deprived of resources and support from the Department for Education, just remember that this has happened because we have an Education Secretary who is more concerned with hiding his own inadequacies – problems that could have been avoided if he had concentrated a little more on the details.
On the basis of this term work, Mr Gove, we’ll have to give you an ‘F’ – for ‘Fail’.
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Scene of the – er – indiscretions: The Light ApartHotel in Manchester. [Image: Sunday Mirror.]
The Party of Sleaze shoots itself in the foot yet again.
It seems the Conservative Party has been keeping documentary evidence of Tory MPs’ indiscretions, crimes and bad behaviour in a “black book” (actually a blue folder), but this has now been destroyed for fear that the Party might be forced to reveal its contents under the Freedom of Information Act.
The information in the “book”, which was destroyed a little more than four years ago as the Tories prepared for the 2010 general election, was used by party whips – its official title was “Whips’ Notes” – if they needed to persuade a colleague to support legislation they opposed, or a minister under fire.
Sources within the Conservative Party say this persuasion did not go as far as blackmail – although you are perfectly entitled to form your own opinion about this, dear reader.
The book’s existence was revealed by the Sunday Mirror, which also carried details of several more ‘sleaze’ scandals, including allegations that:
Taxpayers indirectly funded a £2,500 suite in the Light ApartHotel, used for a gay sex party during the Conservative Party’s 2011 conference in Manchester.
Senior Conservatives regularly tried to seduce male parliamentary workers after getting drunk at the House of Commons.
MPs and peers used ‘date rape’ drugs on junior activists, and paid for abortions after getting their staff pregnant.
The claims are eerily reminiscent of sleaze scandals from the Conservative Parliaments of 1979-1997, in which Cecil Parkinson was forced to resign after impregnating his secretary; David Mellor’s extra-curricular sporting activities with Antonia de Sancha; and sex scandals involving Tim Yeo and the Earl of Caithness.
The headline of this article is based on a song and is intended to evoke comparisons between ‘love and marriage’ and ‘Tories and scandal’.
To close, let’s remember another well-known saying and conclude that if a leopard cannot change its spots, neither can a Tory resist sleaze.
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It looks as though (as I write this, early on January 23) the UK Coalition government is about to lose yet another vote on changes to welfare benefits, in the House of Lords. Quelle surprise.
The changes (I refuse to call them reforms), dreamed up by Iain Duncan Smith, have been pilloried by the public as attacks on the poor, and it’s easy to see why. The Guardian, for example, compares two families.
“One is an Islington couple who have never worked. The other is an Oldham family with four children, where the working parent has just lost his or her job,” writes Tim Leunig. “The Islington couple currently receive £250 a week in housing benefit, while the Oldham family gets only £150.
“Times are tough, and the government wants to save money. Which family should have its housing benefit cut? George Osborne has chosen the Oldham family. He is cutting its housing benefit to £96 a week, while allowing the Islington couple to continue to claim £250 a week for as long as they like.
“That is the reality of the £26,000 benefit cap. It takes no account of your employment history or family size. So a central London couple who have never worked are unaffected, because they currently receive less than £26,000 in benefits. But a large family – even in a cheap house – will be hit. That is not sensible.”
But that is the problem with the Tories – no eye for detail. They like to simplify (I believe that’s their euphemism) the benefits system – the classic example being the new Universal Credit, with which they intend to replace a whole bundle of dedicated payments. The problem is that this creates far more problems than it solves and will end up costing far more money. Count on it.
There is grim humour in the fact that this failure to understand the nuances, the details, of the system has become the defining characteristic of Tory leader David Cameron, who was described by Peter Snowdon, in his book Back From The Brink – The Inside Story of the Tory Resurrection, as having “an eye for detail”!
(Snowdon also states that Cameron has a “flair for words”. Considering the trouble his turn of phrase created for him after he described sitting opposite Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls as being similar to facing a man with Tourette’s syndrome, this also seems an unfortunate description)
David Cameron is a loser. His first attempt to get into Parliament was in 1997, when he contested the Stafford seat. He lost. Nobody should ever forget the fact that, with Labour at its lowest point in 13 years, Cameron totally failed to win a Parliamentary majority that was his for the taking in 2010.
And late last year, he managed to use the UK’s EU veto to sideline this nation from the main action in restructuring the Eurozone, effectively isolating us from decisions that directly affect British trade with its largest partner. This is the man who once declared (about Tony Blair): “The socialist Prime Ministers of Europe… want a federalist pussycat and not a British lion. It is up to us in this party… to make sure that lion roars, because when it does no-one can beat us.” In the event, it turned out that the roar was more of a mewl, and no-one outside the UK really noticed. Who’s the pussycat now, David?
People like Lord Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader, have already stated they will oppose the welfare changes. They have realised that the Coalition is an alliance of losers and want to distance themselves.
However, both Cameron and his Tories are faring well in the opinion polls at the moment. Why?
It could be because Labour, under Ed Miliband and the aforementioned Mr Balls, has not created a well-defined image of itself as the opposing political force. The Labour leadership recently stated it would not reverse any of the Coalition’s cuts if it came into power – creating a stink among the trade unions and collapsing support from party members. If the Labour Party won’t change anything, why support it?
To me, it seems that the two Eds are trying to engineer a repeat of history. In the mid-1990s, according to George Bridges (the Tories’ former campaigns director), Tony Blair was “picking up Tory principles that he felt were appealing to middle England and playing them for all they were worth”. He also promised not to raise Income Tax and committed Labour to Tory spending targets for two years after being elected.
But the political landscape was very different in 1997. Inflation had been curbed and the economy was fairly secure, and the UK headed – under Labour – into the most sustained period of growth it had ever known (or certainly the most sustained in decades).
Now, that bubble has burst and we are, as a nation, having to pay. The Coalition, headed by the Tories, has dictated that the poorest of us must pay the most, and that is a weakness that Labour should exploit.
Labour should be attacking the belief that the economy is safe with the Tories. It isn’t. They took a national economy that was showing the beginnings of strong recovery and choked it off with their austerity programme; also, a programme that benefits those who are already rich while forcing the poor, the disabled, and the rising numbers of jobless into increasing penury is not good stewardship. How can it be? With more people out of work, whether they are receiving benefits or not, fewer are contributing taxes to the Treasury to help pay off the national deficit. The recovery cannot happen.
Labour should be attacking the culture of greed and arrogance that Mr Cameron tried to shake off whilst in Opposition, but has reared its ugly head again, now that the Tories are in office.
Labour should be attacking the divisions in the Tory Party – Europe is an example of this. Conservatives are held together, not by any strong, unifying ideals, but by the thirst for power and money, and members of the Party have widely varying views on almost any issue you care to put before them. It’s just a matter of finding the right pressure-point and applying enough leverage, and they’ll splinter.
And then there’s Tory sleaze. This is never far away. Who can forget the extramarital affairs enjoyed by multiple Tory ministers in the administrations of 1979-97, or ‘Cash for Questions’, to quote just two famous examples?
All Labour has to say about its own policies, in government, is that the Party will do what works. The Tories have proved themselves to be wedded to ideological programmes – stripping back the welfare state, creating tax havens so the rich can keep their money and not contribute to public services, and so on. These are harming the nation. In contrast, Labour need only state it will level up the playing field, re-balance the nation’s finances, and set us up to get back on our feet, and the votes should come rolling in.
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