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What we saw from Blair's home secretaries is that anybody in the post is likely to be captured and turned into a bit of a fascist by the unpleasant organisations they oversee, and their constant drip drip of mostly non-existent threats to justify their existence.
In those circumstances I'd always prefer to start off with somebody who is not *already* an unhinged extremist, and is ideally lazy and ineffective. Abbot would have been a far better choice for the role than Patel or Braverman.
Firstly, he didn't resign when it was obvious that he had to, that his party and his party leader wanted him to. So he won't get back into Cabinet again unless he bribes his way in like Suella Braverman did (promising support in return for a Cabinet post).
Secondly, he seems to see himself as a victim of a shoddy process and of racism. Obviously I can't judge the latter, but I think it's unlikely. If he carries out his "vendetta" to justify his actions he'll only make things worse for himself. Yes, he made a mistake with his taxes, but it's not that that's the problem, it's that he lied about it, didn't tell people he should have told, threatened journalists with libel actions, took no responsibility for his actions and didn't apologise.
Of course Sunak should have sacked him sooner, all he had to do was to ask Zahawi a few pertinent questions which is what his "ethics adviser" essentially did. He'd have come to the same conclusion as we had already assumed ourselves. But at least his delegation was a quick process and he acted swiftly in the end.
This damages Sunak and sets a precedent for handling Dominic Raab, but if Sunak is deft he can escape the worst of it. It's a result of Boris Johnson's cavalier leadership after all. But Zahawi is digging a big hole for himself and if he's got any sense he should stop digging now and shut up.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
What we saw from Blair's home secretaries is that anybody in the post is likely to be captured and turned into a bit of a fascist by the unpleasant organisations they oversee, and their constant drip drip of mostly non-existent threats to justify their existence.
In those circumstances I'd always prefer to start off with somebody who is not *already* an unhinged extremist, and is ideally lazy and ineffective. Abbot would have been a far better choice for the role than Patel or Braverman.
I agree with you completely - his home secretaries all got "trained" and "converted" by the likes of GCHQ and other organisations and joined in with some of their worst fantasies. These people are a necessary evil and they also do good things to protect us from worse people, but they go too far.
Theresa May was relatively good in this regard, she had other faults - so do we all - but as a long-serving home secretary who didn't go native she was the exception rather than the rule.
Patel and Braverman are simply nasty to start with, they don't need conversion and they're probably irredeemable. The good news is that their powers are limited by other MPs and the House of Lords and the courts so they don't get their way as often as they want to.
My signature reference the Treasury but I do feel the same is true of the Home Office. At this point I think the institution itself is so rotten that it needs destroying and starting again from scratch. Whatever your views of immigration and asylum seeking the present Home Office is not working for anyone.
This Zahawi scandal stinks - these Tories don't think the rules apply to them and that it is just us plebs that have to pay tax.
To be a minister you should have to disclose your own tax affairs and those of your wife and close family for 5 years either side of your service as a minster. What have you got to hide? Real people don't have trust funds and off shore accounts. Why do you?
EDIT - why did take Sunak so long to sack Zahawi? We all knew he was finished at least a week ago. Why did little Rishi not grasp that?
That's not what he thinks. Sunak has said this morning that he "acted pretty decisively" and "took a very quick decision". Of course he's referring to after the ethics investigation but that wasn't needed to take action.
When I was paid as a civil servant I had no issue with telling anyone how much I was paid. Perhaps publishing my tax return would have been a step too far, but I wasn't radically opposed to it in theory.
If I were to become a MP - unlikely - I would definitely publish my tax return as a matter of course, and I know many MPs do (not my MP, though, but then again she'll never get my vote anyway). Whether or not it should be required is different - I think it shouldn't be, but people like Zahawi will move the goalposts by their actions.
There's nothing wrong with complicated tax affairs but as an MP it's important to be transparent about your actions and publishing a tax return goes a long way to doing this, as far as money is concerned anyway.
There's nothing wrong with complicated tax affairs but as an MP it's important to be transparent about your actions and publishing a tax return goes a long way to doing this, as far as money is concerned anyway.
My signature reference the Treasury but I do feel the same is true of the Home Office. At this point I think the institution itself is so rotten that it needs destroying and starting again from scratch. Whatever your views of immigration and asylum seeking the present Home Office is not working for anyone.
It's working for the Conservative Party, in an attempt to retain seats with a large proportion of social conservatives who might not agree with traditional Tory economic policy, but do not like immigration. Hence the only chance of a Tory hold in such seats, in the eyes of the Home Office, is to keep up the anti-immigration rhetoric.
But I suspect most have moved on from the 2016-2019 mood now, and realise the country has far more serious problems than too much immigration - so I suspect the strategy will fail.
Zahawi should have already gone over his U-turn on vaccine passports, if nothing else. It is quite fascinating now to do a web search for 'zahawi vaccine passports', where you find half of the returned results are from January/February 2021 saying we're not going to introduce them and it would be discriminatory to do so, and half of the results from summer 2021 saying that vaccine passports are indeed being introduced by, err, the same bloke who said they weren't going to happen and would be discriminatory just 6 months earlier.
Complication isn't the problem.
To many, especially those who've only ever paid income tax through PAYE, my tax affairs are complicated, I complete an annual self-assessment tax return, but I have only ever avoided tax rather than evaded it.
If an MP is using a mechanism to avoid tax which is equally open to you or to me, then that's fine with me, even if it's complicated.
If an MP is trying to evade tax, that's different, of course.
But if an MP as an individual has reasons for a complicated tax return that are completely genuine and legal, no problem of course. Some MPs might not want to disclose some of their legal sources of income, of course, but currently that's up to them.
i don't mind if an MP does have a fruity arrangement with his accountant - I just think we ought to know about it and judge his character appropriately.
My signature reference the Treasury but I do feel the same is true of the Home Office. At this point I think the institution itself is so rotten that it needs destroying and starting again from scratch. Whatever your views of immigration and asylum seeking the present Home Office is not working for anyone.
The whole Westminster institution is rotten and broken I feel, not just treasury and Home office. I do home they’ll be a proper sit down and review of rules and a reform, perhaps coaxed by independent body, in order to make everything seem a little fairer. However, that seems rather unlikely.
Not sure how much difference Labour can make, but I hope they’ll try, they are really the last candle that isn’t out yet. Lib Dem’s are too small to gain sufficient traction to build up a serious PM bid.
That's not what he thinks. Sunak has said this morning that he "acted pretty decisively" and "took a very quick decision". Of course he's referring to after the ethics investigation but that wasn't needed to take action.
He already knew the answer but he wanted to get some kudos out of it by using the ethics advisor to make it look independent and use it against Labour "you told me i needed an ethics advisor ive got one and hes done a quick enquiry and ive acted promptly". Basically all Magnus had to do was pick up the phone to HMRC and they pinged over an email by return with all the info. Sunak had the letter Wednesday afternoon probably just a matter of timing to release it to maximise political advantage.
Whats interesting is how likes of Bridgen and Parish are moaning how they lost the whip but Zahawi hasn't.
Bridgen appears to have aligned himself with the Reclaim Party and is suing that other ex-Tory Matt Hancock, who turns out to have jointly authored a book with Zawahi back in the dim and distant. Maybe Matt did the colouring in.
Bridgen appears to have aligned himself with the Reclaim Party and is suing that other ex-Tory Matt Hancock, who turns out to have jointly authored a book with Zawahi back in the dim and distant. Maybe Matt did the colouring in.
Let's hope Bridgen stands as an MP for Reclaim in the next election. Based on what happened to candidates from non-traditional parties in 2019, he'll be out on his ear and it'll be one less hard-right-winger in parliament.
Only Sunak would be fatuous enough to claim he was "decisive " when he was, finally, compelled to sack the poor, misunderstood, mistreated Zahawi... who apparently felt one reason for his actions was that he no prior experience of such matters....of course not...because as we know, the evidence was hardly minimal and even provided by Zahawi himself !.
However, there's now an alternative career path emerging...first, JR-M getting his own show on GB News...that should swell the already derisory viewing figures, and then Nadine no less on Talk Talk TV.....whose first guest is non other than Boris ! What a happy surprise !...those searching questions " so Boris, what's your favourite dinner ? " or " Boris, how do you manage to keep so slim and healthy ? " will surely ensure the National Grid is tested to capacity with the power surge as millions tune in !
Thus we await suitable outlet, albeit one supplied by the Environment Agency would be appropriate with their abysmal discharge record, for Zahawi
Just when you thought it was safe to go outside…Truss is supposed to be starting her comeback. Some Conservative MPs are believed to have joined a restarted WhatsApp group and she has apparently written an article for one of the Tory-leaning Sunday papers to kick things off. It is difficult to think of anything madder than this: welcome to Britain unhinged.
Just when you thought it was safe to go outside…Truss is supposed to be starting her comeback. Some Conservative MPs are believed to have joined a restarted WhatsApp group and she has apparently written an article for one of the Tory-leaning Sunday papers to kick things off. It is difficult to think of anything madder than this: welcome to Britain unhinged.
Just when you thought it was safe to go outside…Truss is supposed to be starting her comeback. Some Conservative MPs are believed to have joined a restarted WhatsApp group and she has apparently written an article for one of the Tory-leaning Sunday papers to kick things off. It is difficult to think of anything madder than this: welcome to Britain unhinged.
Just when you thought it was safe to go outside…Truss is supposed to be starting her comeback. Some Conservative MPs are believed to have joined a restarted WhatsApp group and she has apparently written an article for one of the Tory-leaning Sunday papers to kick things off. It is difficult to think of anything madder than this: welcome to Britain unhinged.
It's like shooting yourself in the foot, realising it's really painful and then wondering what it would be like to shoot the other one.
You really have to hand it to this government they're certainly interesting!
Well, it's pretty hard to find a politician who is actually against growth. Where they differ is the measures that they think will deliver that growth.
Well, it's pretty hard to find a politician who is actually against growth. Where they differ is the measures that they think will deliver that growth.
Writing around 100 words for every day she was in office, Liz Truss has tonight issued a 4,000 word essay on why her premiership was thwarted by a ‘left-wing economic establishment’.
Why is she posing for ridiculous photos, and not with her constituents? Now she is senior-politically done for, she should be with them, that’s what she was elected for in the first place.
news.sky.com
