Conservative Party
Keir Starmer Faces an Immediate Test of His Pledge to ‘Crackdown on Cronyism’
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Occasionally a politician makes a commitment that you instantly know will be repeated back at them endlessly in the years to come.
One such moment took place on Thursday, when the Labour leader Keir Starmer set out his pledge to “restore standards in public life” if he becomes Prime Minister with “a total crackdown on cronyism”.
“No-one will be above the law in a Britain I lead”, Starmer insisted.
The Labour leader’s cast iron commitment to eliminate the sort of bad behaviour demonstrated by the current Government over the last 14 years was crystal clear.
However, this commitment was put to an immediate test when he was asked by one journalist in the room about reports of the relationship between his close political ally Peter Mandelson and the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Asked if Mandelson, who continues to advise the Labour leader, has “questions to answer” about his previous relationship with Epstein, Starmer entirely dodged the question, replying that “I don't know any more than you do and therefore, there's not really much I can add to what you already know I'm afraid and that's simply the state of the affairs".
For a politician who had just made restoring standards in public life the centre piece of his campaign to become Prime Minister, this was hardly a satisfying answer.
Reports about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein first emerged in June last year, at which point Starmer’s spokesman insisted that the Labour leader had “no reason to believe” that Mandelson wasn’t a fit and proper person.
Yet the Labour leader is now insisting that at no point in the intervening seven months has he ever thought to seek any more information from his adviser about that relationship.
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Setting the Bar High
Other doubts continue to surround the Labour leader’s commitment to standards in public life.
He has already abandoned most of the ten pledges he made while running for the leadership, with the full list now deleted from his website. Subsequent pledges to spend £28 billion a year on green investments have also been watered down, with the Labour leader again suggesting today that the target would only remain if it met “our fiscal rules”.
Of course political commitments are always subject to circumstances and there is arguably a difference between commitments made in a leadership campaign and those made before a general election.
However, if you choose to run a campaign based on highlighting your own political integrity, then you have to be make sure that it is able to fully stand up to public scrutiny.
Luckily for Starmer, the bar set by the current Government should not be particularly hard for him to clear. Since promising to restore “integrity, professionalism and accountability” to Government, Rishi Sunak has presided over a series of ministerial scandals, while breaking multiple pledges made just months ago.
This breach has furthered a gradual collapse in trust in both him and his Government over recent years. To give just one recent example, new polling conducted by pollsters We Think for Byline Times, shows that Sunak’s claim to the Covid Inquiry to have lost access to every single WhatsApp message he sent during the pandemic is believed by just 23% of voters, compared to 77% who disbelieve him.
However, in choosing to emphasise his own commitment to restore public trust in politics, Starmer is asking the public to judge him by the highest possible standards, if and when he does become Prime Minister.
Time will tell whether that decision proves to have been a wise one.
The Mone Scandal Shows New Laws Around Offshore Ownership Aren’t Working
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The furore around the Conservative Peer Michelle Mone and her concealment of involvement in a £203 million Covid contract shows that laws requiring offshore companies to list their beneficial owners are being ignored.
In 2022, the Register of Overseas Entities (ROE) came into force in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the Government pledging to “require anonymous foreign owners of UK property to reveal their real identities to ensure criminals cannot hide behind secretive chains of shell companies”. However, research by Byline Times shows that many companies that own property in the UK continue to obscure their real owners.
Held by Companies House, the ROE “requires overseas entities that own land or property in the UK to declare their beneficial owners and/or managing officers”, and promises “severe sanctions for those who do not comply”.
A beneficial owner is “any individual or entity that has significant influence or control over the overseas entity”. However, many businesses seem to be avoiding the new rules, with only 40% of offshore companies having registered by March 2023. LSE researchers revealed in September that “70 per cent of properties held via overseas shell companies (109,000 out of 152,000) still do not publish information about who really owns them”.
The new legislation is useful from a journalistic perspective because it allows us to check company records with publicly available information about who benefits from particular companies. Tory peer Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman are connected to a number of companies that don’t appear to list them as their ultimate owner.
COVID Cronyism and Mone – The Tip of the Iceberg: Byline Times’ Full Story of the PPE Cash Carousel
Byline Times has been unravelling the dealings behind the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the UK since the very early days of the pandemic. Here’s what we learnt – and what we still need answers to…
Josiah Mortimer
While PPE Medpro doesn’t seem to own property in the UK, it currently lists Arthur John Lancaster as its beneficial owner, who the website Tax Policy Associates says is “an accountant who is closely connected to Douglas Barrowman and the Knox Group. Lancaster was recently described by a tax tribunal as “seriously misleading”, “evasive” and “lacking in candor”.” Tax Policy states that if Barrowman intentionally hid his ownership of PPE Medpro, “then criminal offences were committed.”
Tax Policy Associates also reported this week that Barrowman and Mone hid their ownership of a house in Belgravia through two British Virgin Islands companies and a trust, none of which name them as the beneficial owners on Companies House.
Following their interview with the BBC, the broadcaster reported that “Mr Barrowman said that he had led the PPE Medpro consortium, even though he is not listed at Companies House as having any connection to the company. He told the BBC that he was, in effect, the ultimate beneficial owner of the firm”.
What about the Russian oligarchs whose activities in the UK were the reason for the introduction of the ROE legislation? The Cypriot website Philenews stated in February that “Only four Russian nationals under British Government sanctions appeared on the [ROE] register as of Thursday morning. They were: Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia’s wealthiest businessmen; Russia’s former first deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov and his wife; and Alexander Frolov, the former chief executive officer of Evraz, a Russian steel and mining company.”
Bloomberg reported in February that the register revealed Frolov’s property in Knightsbridge and St George’s Hill in London
Oliver Bullough, author of the book Butler to the World, told Byline Times that wealthy oligarchs would generally not bother using shell companies in offshore jurisdictions like the Isle of Man, which is known as a location for registering private jets. Instead, they are more likely to use trusts to hide their ownership of UK property. While HMRC holds information on who the beneficiaries of trusts are, this information is not public.
However, it doesn’t seem that some Russian oligarchs with known property in the UK are abiding by the legislation either. Oleg Deripaska, for example, is known to own a property in Belgrave Square, whose registered owner according to the Land Registry is a company based in the British Virgin Islands, and not registered on Companies House.
Beechwood House in Hampstead, previously owned by sanctioned Uzbek-Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov, was reported to have been transferred to a trust in 2022 before he was hit with sanctions. The Land Registry title deed gives its owner as Hanley Ltd, a company that lists its beneficial owner as the Swiss based Pomerol Capital Sa, and its correspondence address as another Geneva company which is part of the Summit Group, “a leading independent provider of personalised fiduciary and administrative services”.
Usmanov's lawyers told Byline Times that he does not own Beechwood House, and that it was transferred to a trust in 2008, long before sanctions were imposed. He claims to no longer be a beneficiary of the trust as of 2022, and that the transfer of assets to the trust was done to benefit his relatives.
One offshore property owner who does seem to have complied with the legislation is Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates. The Guardian revealed in 2020 that he had a £5 billion London property empire, and judging by the title deed to his Berkeley Square properties, the company which owns them, Berkeley Square Holdings Limited, does in fact register that its owner is the ‘Private Department Of The President Of Uae’.
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Michelle Mone’s Lawyer Distances Himself from Baroness’ Claim She Lied to the Press on his Advice
A lawyer acting for the lawyer of Baroness Michelle Mone told Byline Times it would be defamatory to suggest David McKie ‘knowingly represented a false position’
Iain Overton
Besides oligarchs and oil sheikhs, property developers who own UK property through offshore companies also need to comply with the ROE legislation.
Byline Times has looked at dozens of companies based at the same address in the Isle of Man, many of which are linked to the property tycoon Asif Aziz and managed by the company Golfrate, which Aziz founded in 1991. The Times reported in 2020 that “Golfrate is run by Aziz's family and controls 900 properties”.
A number of companies registered here were reported by Private Eye in 2015 to be involved in buying up pubs in London and turning them into luxury apartments. Planning documents from 2023 show that Golfrate is still acting for companies registered in the Isle of Man, such as Hamna Wakaf Ltd. Many of the companies registered at the address list another offshore company, Circumference Fs (Cayman) Ltd as their owner.
In a recent House of Commons debate on the Register of Overseas Entities, Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, said, “Journalists have revealed that the family of Asif Aziz, a landlord to my constituents in Britannia Point, Colliers Wood, manages a large property portfolio registered under dozens of companies on the Isle of Man.” Britannia Point is owned by another company registered at the same Isle of Man address which also lists Circumference Fs (Cayman) Ltd as its ultimate beneficial owner.
Asif Aziz’s lawyers insist he has “never closed down a pub” and “is not the beneficial owner” of companies managed by Golfrate. Listing a Cayman Islands financial services company as the beneficial owner of another offshore company may not be against the Register of Overseas Entities rules, but raises the question about whether those rules themselves are effective.
Sunak’s Government is throwing out plans to get dirty money out of the UK
Josiah Mortimer
Analysis by BBC News and Transparency International in February suggested that “almost half of firms required to declare who is behind them failed to do so.” At that time, Transparency International said around 52,000 UK properties were still owned anonymously.
The Department for Business, responding to a Freedom of Information request sent by Byline Times, said “Companies House has begun enforcement against overseas entities that have either failed to register or have failed to provide their annual update on time. For the offence of failing to register, 3190 warning notices have been sent, which has brought a number of overseas entities into compliance, and 45 penalties to a total value of £2,100,000 have been issued so far (data as of 17 October 2023).” How much money has actually been collected in fines is unclear.
Although new reporting requirements have been introduced for companies where the Beneficial Owner is a trustee of a trust, LSE reported that “In an overwhelming 87 per cent of cases, where the researchers found that beneficial ownership information was missing or inaccessible to the public, it was due to deliberate choices by Government to keep the information out of scope of the legislation, rather than rule-breaking by overseas companies.”
A spokesperson from the Department for Business and Trade said, “The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill will bear down on kleptocrats, criminals and terrorists who abuse our open economy, strengthening the UK's reputation as a place where legitimate business can thrive. We are committed to publishing a consultation before the end of the year on how to make trust information more transparent”.
Labour peer Lord Coaker, responding to the passage of the Economic Crime and Transparency Act, which tightens up reporting requirements for the ROE, said “The Bill is an important step forward, but the enforcement of it is everything. If laws that have been improved are not enforced, much of the debate and discussion we have had will not be as valuable as it should be.”
This article was updated on 25/12/23 with more information on Alisher Usmanov’s connection to Beechwood House
The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life – review
In The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life, Theresa May examines several “abuses of power” by politicians and civil servants involved in policy, and advocates for a shift from careerism to public service is needed to achieve better governance. In Chris Featherstone‘s view, May’s selective case studies and weak defence of her role in controversial events like the Windrush scandal will do little either to forge a new model of British politics or rehabilitate her reputation.
The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life. Theresa May. Headline. 2023.
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This is not your typical political memoir. The reader is assured of this by a glance at the dust jacket before even opening The Abuse of Power. In recent tradition, books by former Prime Ministers typically take the form of an attempt to correct the narrative of their time behind the famous black door (David Cameron’s For the Record), or to explain their route to the top job in UK politics (Tony Blair’s A Journey). Taking an alternative tack, Theresa May scrutinises a range of cases of what she calls “abuses of power” by politicians and civil servants involved in policy, analysing the reasons behind them. Yet, despite this ostensibly different approach, The Abuse of Power reveals itself as an attempt to rehabilitate May’s reputation after her acrimonious exit from Downing Street in 2019.
The Abuse of Power reveals itself as an attempt to rehabilitate May’s reputation after her acrimonious exit from Downing Street in 2019.
The book examines examples of “injustice in public life”, highlighting the flaws in how government has approached and dealt with these issues. Examining cases ranging from the Salisbury Poisonings and the Hillsborough disaster to Brexit and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, May highlights two factors. Firstly, she argues that it is the natural disposition of many in the public sector to place protecting the public sector ahead of the interests of those they serve. Secondly, she observes the growth of careerism and popularity-seeking amongst politicians, and the prioritisation of this over “the job they are there to do”.
May argues for the necessity of a deep attitudinal change in those in public life, especially from civil servants and politicians.
May’s proposed solution to these pervasive flaws in British public life is “service”, a theme that runs throughout her account of her own political career. As such, May argues for the necessity of a deep attitudinal change in those in public life, especially from civil servants and politicians. Her calls for greater diversity in those recruited to the civil service and a wider selection of candidates to stand in elections are well-intentioned, but unsupported with recommendations for how this can be achieved.
At first glance, her proposal that working for the broad public good could prevent many of the scandals she analyses appears somewhat convincing.
At first glance, her proposal that working for the broad public good could prevent many of the scandals she analyses appears somewhat convincing. The analysis used to form this argument is engaging, especially in those cases where May has personal knowledge, such as the Grenfell Tower tragedy (when external cladding on a tower-block caught fire, killing 72 people) or bullying and sexual harassment in Westminster. Yet, this reveals an underlying theme that accompanies the focus on “service”: May’s attention to governance rather than politics.
This partiality is reflected in May’s scepticism of politicians’ relationship with the media. In a chapter on social media, May characterises politicians’ use of social media as a superficial means of humanising them by showing the coffee cup they use or their typical breakfast. Despite raising important concerns on regulating the use of social media (whilst in Downing Street May initiated a government review of social media regulation, attacking the “vile” messages sent to female MPs), her simplistic and patronising framing of the use of social media in communication between politicians and the electorate is out of touch, and detracts from her argument.
May’s focus on effectively serving the public is coupled with a disregard for the politics of government, the importance of persuading people why policies are effective.
May’s media scepticism continues in her view of what characteristics are desirable in leaders. She condemns both short-term headline-seeking and the media focus that means if a leader does not speak to the media they are “written off.” These reactions against contemporary media and political communication methods are almost quaint, demonstrating wishful thinking for a bygone era of politics. May’s focus on effectively serving the public is coupled with a disregard for the politics of government, the importance of persuading people why policies are effective.
The Brexit chapter in particular highlights this inattention to the importance of persuading people – politicians and voters alike – of her approach. May accuses some MPs, including former Speaker John Bercow, of abusing their power by voting in their own, rather than the “national” interest when debating her Brexit deal. May’s compromise position – that the whole of the UK would remain in a de-facto customs union with the rest of the EU, and the UK and EU would have to agree to the UK’s withdrawal from this de-facto arrangement – received little support from either the remain or from the “hard Brexit” wings of her own party, or from opposition parties.
What stands out is May’s lack of engagement with the other views in the Brexit debates, giving insight into her difficulties building unity in the Conservative party during the Brexit process.
What stands out is May’s lack of engagement with the other views in the Brexit debates, giving insight into her difficulties building unity in the Conservative party during the Brexit process. Conspicuously absent is an explanation of how this judgement of “national interest” was made, other than this simply being May’s opinion. There is a ring of the internal-external attribution problem in her assessment, wherein she attributes her own actions to a personal conviction to pursue a “compromise” position in the national interest, and others’ actions to political machinations for personal gain. The chapter unintentionally highlights a root of the May government’s difficulties in persuading MPs and the public of the efficacy of their approach to Brexit.
The book’s highly selective approach to the cases analysed is epitomised in the chapter on the Hillsborough disaster, when 97 Liverpool football fans died in a crush, the UK’s worst sporting disaster. May confesses that when the tragedy occurred, she believed the “propaganda” put out by the police, politicians, and the media. May was by no means alone in this acceptance of the official line, yet, of the three groups she identifies in promulgating this lie, it is the police who come in for the major share of her analytical ire. As a former Conservative Home Secretary and Prime Minister, and current Conservative backbench MP, the inattention to the torrid relationship between Conservative politicians and Liverpool as a city as well as to the Hillsborough tragedy is a stark omission. Except for a couple of sentences on the role of politicians, the chapter largely diminishes their role in the framing of the tragedy in public discourse. Notably, almost all references are to “politicians”, intentionally skating over the (Conservative) party which they represented.
[May] fails to substantively support her claim and convince readers how Windrush is markedly different from the other abuses she examines.
Similarly, the explanation of the Windrush scandal, in which she was embroiled, is short and historically focused. May’s defence of the fiasco (which saw hundreds of Caribbean immigrants wrongfully issued with deportation notices) is that whilst other abuses of power she examines were to defend an institution, the Windrush case was in defence of a policy. She fails to substantively support her claim and convince readers how Windrush is markedly different from the other abuses she examines. May accuses the US of an abuse of power in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and yet this would surely be defended by the Biden administration as the enaction and defence of their policy of troop withdrawal. Similarly, May’s defence of the use of the term “hostile environment” in her controversial immigration policy lacks depth. She suggests that when the term was proposed, it clearly referred to people who were in the UK illegally, implying that the controversy stems from its misinterpretation. This assumes it was merely the name of the policy, rather than the contested and controversial views that it was built on, with which critics disagreed.
The underlying message – that greater devotion to public service will solve these disparate and varied problems – falls flat. Her analysis of the ‘abuses’ catalogued reads at best naïve and at worst wilfully ignorant of the pervasive and deeply entwined nature of many of the causes of their causes.
May’s non-traditional memoir is an interesting read, giving some insight into cases that continue to puzzle policymakers (Brexit), and memorably controversial cases. However, the underlying message – that greater devotion to public service will solve these disparate and varied problems – falls flat. Her analysis of the “abuses” catalogued reads at best naïve and at worst wilfully ignorant of the pervasive and deeply entwined nature of many of the causes of their causes. This shallow defence of her time in government will do little to help polish May’s image, relying on unsupported claims about the intention of policies, such as those that led to the Windrush scandal, and selective attempts to blame others, as in the case of Brexit.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: pcruciatti on Shutterstock.
‘Those Who Enjoyed the Post-1945 Social Progress of the West Were Made Complacent By It: We Forgot Its Price is Vigilance’
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On New Year’s Day 2024 ‘DEI’ will end at all 33 publicly-funded higher education institutions in Texas. ‘DEI’ stands for ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ and is the programme aimed at ending racism, sexism and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination while promoting multiculturalism and inclusion. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the anti-DEI Bill into law in June, and already many institutions have dismantled their DEI resource centres and reassigned their staff.
As a move in the culture wars, this is pretty blunt – only one step short of banning people of colour or difference of sexual preferences from campuses outright (people who do not feel welcome will ban themselves; that’s part of the plan), and – in my view – two steps short of lynching them, which was once, and not that long ago, the option of choice in the US’ southern reaches. This fact has to be mentioned because the direction of travel indicated by ending DEI points that unpalatable way – for the simple reason that it’s the direction from which conservative moral thinking comes.
‘Conservative moral thinking’ is a kind way of putting it, because thinking is not what underlies moral conservativism.
What underlies it is feeling: emotions not of empathy and kindness, understanding and acceptance – but of tribalism, xenophobia, racism, fear of change, fear of difference.
Simplistic binaries – white-black, good-bad, male-female, right-wrong – lie at the source and limit of these feelings. Any gradations or nuances upset conservatives and must therefore be stamped on.
One of the major attractions of religion to conservative moralists is that it offers strong rules in relation to anything that does not observe the binaries – the more simplistic the better.
The political wing of conservatism is not, however, quite so unthinking.
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From its followers’ point of view, the great inconvenience in life is what they regard as the wrong kind of liberty. Whereas being free from taxes and federal laws, free to carry a pistol and own several assault rifles, free to exploit workers, free to cheat customers, and free to say hateful things about people different from them is the kind of freedom they like – they do not like protests and strikes, people voting in support of their opponents, the law protecting people unlike themselves, and they emphatically do not like paying taxes for other peoples’ health care or education.
This point of view has been frankly and openly voiced in America for decades. But it is only in the last decade or so that this agenda – from 1945 a mostly sleeping virus in Europe’s immune system – has broken through the skin like leprous ulcers in the form of Hungary’s Orbán, Italy’s Meloni, the Netherlands’ Wilders, Austria’s Kickl, France’s Le Pen, Germany’s AfD, and the enablement of the British Conservative Party’s capture by the UKIP/Brexit Party.
The current UK Government has placed limits on protest, set out to ban strikes, introduced mandatory voter ID, shifted billions of pounds from public service budgets into cronies’ pockets, allowed the NHS and local government to wither (so that they can be bought cheap by ‘private providers’ one suspects), protected the Thatcher-sold utility companies with profit-gouging and poor services matched in ambition only by the further billions of debt that have accumulated in order to pay dividends, plan to introduce dozens of ‘freeports’ and ‘special economic zones’ in which private corporations will be effectively be the government and will sell to the local population, for profit, what once were public services – and so wretchedly on, in full asset-stripping, civil-liberty-limiting, anti-democratic mode.
Rishi Sunak attended a gathering in Italy recently, along with Viktor Orbán and Steve Bannon, as a guest of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Bannon’s presence is significant. The ‘Bannon playbook’ for right-wing politicians is brutal in its simplicity and effectiveness. It is: cause chaos, disrupt, frighten and anger people about immigrants, wokeists, gay people coming for their kids; roil them up; embroil them in difficulties caused by anarcho-capitalism (privatisation on steroids) which makes them paddle faster and harder in the rising waters of debt and insecurity, and put the blame for their plight on the immigrants (mainly) and the wokeists, bien-pensants and ‘liberals’.
Anarcho-capitalism, very bad for the have-nots, is very good for the haves – there’s profit in chaos, lifting bonus caps and selling public assets cheap. While this is going on ‘the state can be rolled-back’ and those pesky civil liberties and democratic restraints that make governing difficult can be ‘disapplied’.
The aim is to reverse the idea that government is the servant of the people’s interests; the people are to be made to serve the governor’s interests. Rulers must rule – without following any rules – and the little people must not get in the way. Their role is to be milked, ceaselessly, mercilessly, impotently.
We see all of this unfolding before our eyes, plain and clear. There is a mighty battle already under way.
Donald Tusk in Poland, Pedro Sanchez in Spain, and Keir Starmer in the UK appear to buck the Bannoning trend. The EU is structured on the progressive and liberal principles of the post-1945 immune time, but in the 2024 European Parliament elections a Bannonish majority might win. Alas: those of us who enjoyed the increasingly open and inclusive social progress of the West after 1945 were made complacent by it; we forgot that its price is vigilance.
The former Home Secretary showed no interest in urgent threats to the UK as the National Security Strategy Committee reveals that Vladimir Putin made attempts to interfere with the last General Election
David Hencke
Though highly allergic to conspiracy theories, I find it ever harder to resist thinking that there might be something to the allegations of a Russian connection with the Bannoning of politics in the democracies of the West. Putin, Orbán, Trump, Republican reluctance to help fund Ukraine’s war, Boris Johnson and the Lebedevs, Russian donations to Britain’s Conservative politicians, Russian interference in elections, Russians murdering Russians on British soil without much consequence – these are a spattering of dots that beckon one to wonder whether they join up.
If there is a connecting line it is to be found in the answer to this question: who stands to gain most by disunity in, even the fragmentation of, Europe? The answer is: Vladimir Putin.
It is a longstanding and well-known aim of his. To some, it is plain that Brexit was his first great success in this endeavour, with the added bonus of considerably weakening the UK itself. The UK, when both in the EU and a strong ally of the US, was once a formidable thorn in would-be resurgent Russian flesh, if you look at it from Putin’s point of view. Now it is a rusting hulk drifting offshore, and the task of picking off others in the convoy is easier.
The connection between moral and political conservatism? Attacks on immigrants and wokeism and the rest do a double job and do it beautifully: they fire up the base, and distract them from the agenda of making them the subjects to an anarcho-capitalist system in which they have few rights, but pay for everything with and beyond their last pennies.
It is not too late to resist what is happening.
Get the UK out of the Putin-helping (whether intentionally or not) Bannoning trend, return to the task of helping to build a strong and Europe committed – as it constitutionally is – to human rights and civil liberties, and resume vigilance thereafter. This is the least we must do.
COVID Cronyism and Mone – The Tip of the Iceberg: Byline Times’ Full Story of the PPE Cash Carousel
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We still don’t have the full picture of the chaos of the COVID years – the billions wasted, the lives needlessly lost, and the decisions facilitated through WhatsApp messages that have mysteriously vanished.
But Byline Times has attempted to shed some light on the years of scandal, before the public inquiry got underway.
We hope our reporting stands as testament to the need for vigilant journalism, to shine a light on the murkiest days of the pandemic.
This is a snapshot of our reporting on the Coronavirus ‘cash carousel’ and what happens when cronyism seeps deep into British politics.
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The Crisis Begins
Within weeks of the first lockdown, Nafeez Ahmed on Byline Times became arguably the first journalist to break the story of the emerging personal protective equipment (PPE) scandal.
On April 2 2020, he exposed how lucrative contracts were being awarded to Conservative Party associates.
Boris Johnson’s Government had appointed a giant haulage firm with financial ties to the Tory Party to be in charge of a new supply channel for PPE to the NHS. Its founding executive chairman was Steven N. Parkin, a top Conservative Party donor who has attended exclusive ‘Leaders Group’ meetings and donated almost £1 million to the party in the preceding five years.
This set the tone for an extensive investigation into COVID-19 contracts, shedding light on a concerning trend of cronyism.
That May, Stephen Delahunty on Byline Times revealed that another Conservative donor was involved in the COVID-19 contracts.
Europa Worldwide Group – the managing director of which was a personal donor to Johnson – was found to be arranging PPE supplies for the NHS and manufacturing testing kits.
No one would begrudge firms being involved in ‘helping’ the emergency effort. But the lucrative profits secured off the back of many of these deals, often going to Conservative-linked figures, began raising eyebrows.
This newspaper continued – pretty much alone – in examining these contracts.
In July 2020, Delahunty revealed that companies with no prior experience or expertise were inexplicably receiving multi-million-pound contracts. This was despite the looming threat of legal challenges over what was to be dubbed the ‘VIP Lane’: pathways for firms to win government contracts with little oversight and through referrals from well-connected politicians.
EXCLUSIVE
Respected Health Professionals Feel ‘Duped’ into Appearing in Michelle Mone PPE Documentary
A film about the PPE scandal did not declare to some contributors it was being funded by a company that won £203 million in Government PPE contracts
Tom Latchem and Dan Evans
Brexit featured too. That same month, Stephen Komarnyckyj discovered that an award of a PPE contract to a company that had no cash stemmed from the UK choosing not to join the EU-wide PPE purchasing scheme.
In quick succession, we found that a recruitment firm with just £322 in net assets had received an £18 million Government contract. By this time, legal campaigners at Good Law Project were on the case. But their revelations and ours were still largely going unreported in the rest of the established media.
Three more contracts emerged in July, going to a fashion company, a trade consultant and a gambling company. It was beginning to look desperate – and fishy.
Using a legal loophole designed for emergencies, the Government was able to award these huge contracts without any competition. And, it seems, without even basic due diligence checks.
A New Phase
Things got even weirder that August, when Byline Times revealed the companies linked to the exclusive Plymouth Brethren religious sect which were mopping up huge COVID contracts. And still the warning signs kept flashing, as we dug up dormant firms which emerged from seemingly nowhere to win millions in PPE deals.
All these contracts could be justified if they were effective in saving lives. But in August 2020, we began to see the true picture: much of the PPE purchased at vast sums couldn’t actually be used. It wasn't up to scratch. Meanwhile, NHS staff continued to complain of shortages and shoddy equipment.
Labour MP Dawn Butler was among the first politicians to sound the alarm following our reporting. She told Byline Times that summer that the award of the new contracts to unheard-of firms was “yet another example of questionable procurement contracts” by the Government and that “the list seems to be growing day by day”.
“There is no competitive tendering and no transparency,” she added. “The full extent of this scandal must be brought to light, with full details published of all contracts, so this does not happen again. We all deserve to know how our public money is spent.”
Did ministers listen?
It seemed not. September came around, and Sam Bright reported that the Government spent more than £300 million on overalls for NHS staff – at a cost of £840 per bodysuit actually delivered.
EXCLUSIVE
‘VIP’ Firms Referred by Tory MPs and Peers for PPE Deals See Profits Soar
Hundreds of millions of pounds have been earned by companies channelled through the expedited procurement route by Conservative politicians, Sam Bright reports
Sam Bright
By this point, questions were being asked in Parliament. Our findings of the Government awarding £122 Million in PPE contracts to a one-month-old firm appeared to trigger probing at Prime Minister’s Questions.
At this point, we could piece together the picture from the first months of the pandemic – and it was not a pretty sight. Government spending on PPE deals to Conservative backers had hit £364 million.
And still, health professionals continued to call for adequate protection as the second Coronavirus wave approached.
Another Wave of Sleaze
In 2021, the COVID cash machine just kept giving – to a select few.
Pulling together a year of evidence, Byline Times and The Citizens revealed that deals worth at least £2 billion had been awarded to top Conservative Party associates during the Coronavirus crisis.
A firm that gave £400,000 to the Conservatives won a £93.8 million PPE deal. The figures being handed to the Plymouth Brethren sect alone hit £1.1 billion.
And, as before, vast amounts of the PPE were useless.
In what was dubbed “perhaps the most shameful episode of the pandemic”, £4 billion in PPE went up in smoke: burned as unusable, while NHS staff continued to feel burnt-out and abandoned.
Meanwhile, profits quadrupled for the Conservative donor companies. There was nothing stopping them continuing to donate more to the Conservative Party. Byline Times’ Peter Jukes dubbed it a “state-subsidised oligarchy” – a corporate takeover of government.
It was in this context that PPE Medpro – tipped to Michael Gove for a contract by Conservative peer Baroness Michelle Mone – could prosper.
Her representatives threatened to sue us for reporting the facts. Now the truth is finally out
Josiah Mortimer
This newspaper was the first to reveal Mone’s links to the firm – links which were vigorously denied under threat of libel action, but which we now know to have been true. (Mone and PPE Medpro are under investigation by the National Crime Agency but deny any illegality).
It was one of many companies that were referred by Conservative MPs and peers to the expedited ‘VIP Lane' for PPE contracts during the pandemic.
PPE Medpro took in the region of £60 million in profits. Much of its PPE was also deemed unusable by the NHS.
Overall, the value lost to dodgy PPE was nearly £9 billion – a quarter of the annual UK budget for housing and the environment put together.
Is there any other country in the world that has witnessed sleaze and scandal on such a scale around COVID contracts?
And did the £200 million-plus COVID 'bungs’ to the press – the Government's ‘All in, All Together’ public information campaign subsidising profitable newspapers – help Johnson's administration get away with it?
What We Know Now
A series of damning reports by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and more have conclusively vindicated Byline Times’ reporting.
The Government lost billions of taxpayers’ money to dodgy contracts, waste and fraud, after suspending its usual procurement processes during the pandemic.
Johnson’s Government relied heavily on a highly secretive ‘VIP Lane’ for procurement of goods such as PPE, with £8.7 billion of public money wasted on buying unsatisfactory, unusable or overpriced PPE.
Subsequent Labour Party analysis showed that £3.5 billion of pandemic-related contracts were awarded to businesses that were directly linked to the Conservative Party or have donated to them.
To do this, the Government ignored fraud warnings and advice about the lack of basic checks on COVID support schemes.
Former Treasury Minister Lord Agnew described "schoolboy errors" and resigned from over his frustration at the lack of action on tackling COVID fraud. Kemi Badenoch has since criticised Rishi Sunak’s lack of interest in COVID fraud when he was Chancellor and claims he dismissed her concerns.
Boris Johnson’s Covid Inquiry Appearance Exposed the Complicity of his Accomplices
The Covid Inquiry has revealed the former PM to be a deeply negligent and dishonest individual. The only question now is how he was allowed to get away with it
Adam Bienkov
And so it wasn’t just about PPE: the trail of wasted cash ran through the Government’s COVID support schemes too.
The latest estimate for COVID-related fraud in Government support schemes is estimated to be to be £7.2 billion, according to House of Commons Library analysis of Government reports.
This includes fraud losses across business loan and grant schemes, and fraudulent use of the furlough and Rishi Sunak’s 'Eat Out to Help Out’ schemes – the latter of which is credited with triggering a surge in COVID cases in summer 2020. Taxpayer losses from COVID fraud could even reach as high as £10.8 billion.
Stronger checks on who was getting this money could have saved £2.6 billion – roughly equivalent to the total cash that went to Conservative allies.
According to internal documents from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), seen by Good Law Project, VIP Lane suppliers like PPE Medpro were paid on average 80% more per unit than other suppliers. Some contracts were agreed at more than four times the average unit price.
Even the ‘clean-up’ operation is costing a fortune.
The DHSC employed a 'commercial advisor' on 1 April 2022 at a rate of £1,100 a day to help its recently established 'contract dissolution team' extricate the department from the wasteful contracts signed with PPE suppliers.
With a total fee of £242,785 for 220 days work, only the Chief Executive of NHS England was set to be paid more by the DHSC this year, according to Labour.
What Happens Next?
The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee revealed that only 2% of COVID business grants lost to fraud has been recovered to date. Labour says that, if elected next year, it will pursue “every pound of public money” that has been inappropriately lost from pandemic related contacts, fraud and waste. Under the party’s plans, a COVID Corruption Commissioner would tackle the waste, fraud and dodgy contacts signed off by the Government during the pandemic.
Efforts at recovering the money are hampered by the fact that the UK is out of step with other countries such as the US, Canada and Australia, in having no offence of “fraud against the public purse” – except in relation to welfare and tax fraud.
But in the end, it’s not so much about the money, as the lives that would have been saved had Britain had well-stocked PPE supplies and proper checks on whether the supplies NHS workers were demanding were up to standard. Money can be clawed back. Lives cannot.
That baton is now held by the COVID Inquiry, which will begin its third module in the new year. Part of its remit is looking at how the spread of COVID-19 within healthcare settings was prevented – or not – including the adequacy of PPE.
Byline Times wishes it every luck in its digging – and for the hope that, one day, there might be some accountability for the cronyism and catastrophes of the Coronavirus pandemic, which, to date, has resulted in more than 230,000 people in the UK dying.
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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.
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Rishi Sunak Meets Murdochs More than NHS Figures in Latest Lobbying Revelations
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Rishi Sunak met media representatives more than any other sector of the UK economy between July and September, analysis by Byline Times shows.
The Prime Minister met senior executives from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire alone four times in the space of three months, compared to just once for NHS representatives.
Sunak met Daily Mail editors twice in that time, while meeting housing sector figures once. Several of the meetings were listed as “social”, meaning they are unlikely to have been minuted. That includes meetings with the departing News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch, and separately, his son Lachlan who is taking over at the helm.
Every single one of the PM’s eight media meetings in that time is with right-leaning media outlets.
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Journalism professor and Byline Times contributor Brian Cathcart said: "These depressing figures reveal just how close the connection is between the right-wing billionaire press and our multi-millionaire prime minister.
"Forget democracy and forget parliament: this is where the real power in this country resides, and worse still, what we see is just the tip of the iceberg. Contacts of this kind are maintained at every level of Government and are so intensive it's impossible to say where press influence ends and Government begins."
He added that editors and proprietors who have "no democratic mandate" and whose own industry is in a "disgraceful and chaotic state" are listened to more by the prime minister than anyone else in the country.
And Tom Hardy from Extinction Rebellion's 'Tell the Truth' media campaign said the findings were "brazen", adding Sunak's meeting priorities reflected "how out of touch the Government is with a sentient electorate."
Hardy argues that fossil fuel interests and "the billionaire press" appear to be "pulling the strings": "Sunak will tell us that he is still committed to net zero or the health service but we all know what happened to Pinocchio."
Read the full meeting declarations for the three months over the Summer here.
Sunak’s Media Meetings - July-September 2023
- Date: 06/07/2023
- Organisation/Individual: Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of DMG Media
- Purpose of Meeting: "Informal media engagement to discuss the work of the Government"
- Date: 06/07/2023
- Organisation/Individual: The Spectator
- Purpose of Meeting: "Social Meeting"
- Date: 04/08/2023
- Organisation/Individual: Lachlan Murdoch, Co-Chairman of News Corp, Executive Chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation
- Purpose of Meeting: "Social Meeting"
- Date: 07/09/2023
- Organisation/Individual: Rupert Murdoch, Proprietor of News Corporation
- Purpose of Meeting: "Social Meeting"
- Date: 19/09/2023
- Organisation/Individual: Victoria Newton, Editor of The Sun, Alex Mahon, CEO of Channel 4
- Purpose of Meeting: The Sun's "Who Cares Wins" Awards
- Date: 26/09/2023
- Organisation/Individual: Ted Verity, Editor, of the Daily Mail
- Purpose of Meeting: "Informal media engagement to discuss the work of the Government"
- Date: 26/09/2023
- Organisation/Individual: Paul Goodman, Editor of Conservative Home
- Purpose of Meeting: "Informal political media engagement to discuss the work of the Government"
- Date: 30/09/2023
- Organisation/Individual: Tony Gallagher, Editor of The Times, Steven Swinford, Deputy Political Editor of The Times
- Purpose of Meeting: Dinner and meeting at Conservative Party Conference
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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.
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‘Get Brexit Done’ is now ‘Stop the Boats’: Is the Rwanda Bill the Conservatives’ Trojan Horse?
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One of the lines that stays with me from learning Latin at school is from Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid – “Timeo Danaos et Dona Ferrentes” ("I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts”). This line was uttered by the Trojan priest, Laocoon, who was warning that the Trojan Horse apparently gifted to the city of Troy by the departing Greeks might actually be a trap.
In similar fashion, I can’t help feeling that 'I can’t Trust the Conservatives, even when they obey the Law'.
A huge song and dance was made by the Government before last week’s first vote on its Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill that the legislation – just – stayed within the framework of the European Convention of Human Rights.
The Bill, if adopted, would allow government ministers to ignore temporary injunctions raised by the European Court of Human Rights to stop flights taking off at the last minute. However, it would still allow asylum seekers to launch legal appeals to argue that they should be spared deportation, if they can claim various special circumstances.
Supporters of the Government’s approach argue that the Bill goes as far as it can, without breaching international law – and that Rwanda itself would withdraw from the scheme if the UK went any further.
Conservative opponents of the bill, including 29 MPs from the right wing of the party, who abstained on the vote, argue that it does not go far enough and that the language should have explicitly ruled out the scope for any legal challenges to deportation, whether under domestic or international human rights law.
Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, who resigned over his disagreement with Rishi Sunak’s migration policy, was even quoted (ironically, on Human Rights Day) as saying that the Government must put "the views of the British public above contested notions of international law" and that MPs are "not sent to Parliament to be concerned about our reputation on the gilded international circuit".
I feel a weary sense of déjà vu. This is Brexit, on repeat.
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Alexandra Hall Hall
Yet again, we have some members of the Conservative Party arguing that the UK needs to abandon another European institution – this time the European Court of Human Rights – in order to 'take back control' of immigration.
Yet again, they scapegoat others – on this occasion 'lefty lawyers' – for 'thwarting' the will of the people.
Yet again, they claim unique knowledge and possession of what that 'will of the people' actually is – though there has been no explicit vote put to the public as to whether they really do support the Rwanda scheme, even if it involves the UK derogating from some aspects of human rights law. Just as there never was any explicit indication in the EU Referendum that the British public wanted the most hardline break with Brussels, including departure from the Customs Union and Single Market.
Yet again, we have Conservative MPs misrepresenting the facts, to argue that the Rwanda scheme will brilliantly solve all of the UK’s immigration problems – despite the evidence that it will only ever be able to remove a few hundred migrants, at most, and only at vast expense; that it will do nothing to resolve the massive asylum claim backlog; and the fact that most immigrants to the UK come here legally, partly as a result of the Government’s own migration policies.
But then, Conservative MPs never acknowledge inconsistencies in their arguments, whether over Brexit or now over immigration.
Just like during the Brexit debates, Conservative MPs now are also happy to gloss over inconvenient facts regarding migration – such as that our health, care, agriculture and hospitality sectors are dependent on affordable immigrant labour, and that there are no 'safe, legal' routes for asylum seekers to come to the UK.
Instead, they waffle on about this being yet another issue of 'sovereignty'. Indeed, the Rwanda Bill goes one step further than Brexit, in deliberately overriding the Supreme Court’s judgment on Rwanda, to assert that Rwanda actually is a safe country. So now, not just laws, but facts, are whatever the British Government says them to be.
Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping are no doubt delighted to see members of the British political establishment adopt their practices of disinformation and disdain for international law. How much easier it makes it for them to continue gulling their own citizens, and defying international conventions and treaties, when they can point to a country like the UK – previously a stalwart defender of the international rules-based order – doing the same.
And just as during Brexit, so now, we have different factions of the Conservative Party tearing themselves to shreds, while critical national and international problems go unaddressed.
The hapless Sunak is in the role of Theresa May, desperately trying to hold his party together and risking pleasing none. The same Goldilocks dilemma prevails – his immigration policy risks being too hard for the One Nation group of MPs on the moderate wing of the party, but too soft for the so-called 'Five Families’ factions on the right wing of the party.
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Terrified of losing voters to Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, Sunak, like May, will keep trying to appease the migration hardliners, though they will never be satisfied until he has fully ruptured relations with the ECHR. Terrified of alienating traditional conservative voters in their constituencies, the centrist MPs will hold their noses and keep going along, putting party before principle, time and again.
The one advantage Sunak has over May is that it would be hard, even for this shameless party, to seek to replace him as party leader, without triggering a general election, in which – on current polling – many MPs would lose their seats.
But this is precisely why I sense a trap.
For now, Sunak can play the role of responsible statesman, doing his best to restrain the more extreme members of his party, and insisting that any British legislation should stay just on the right side of the law. If the legislation passes, and asylum seekers start being deported to Rwanda – even if it’s only a few dozen – he can make the case that his scheme works, and campaign in the general election for voters to back him, in order to allow it to continue.
But if the legislation falls, or squeaks through only to be defeated again in the courts, before any asylum seekers are deported, Sunak can switch tactics to campaign full bore in support of leaving the ECHR – on the grounds that he has exhausted all options and that his hand has been 'forced' into accepting the most extreme approach.
This ploy might not be enough to prevent Conservative defeat to the Labour Party, but it might be enough to save a few seats and to allow the party to keep posturing in hardline fashion on immigration, without ever having to suffer the embarrassment of the Rwanda scheme failing, or having to deal with the damaging wider consequences of leaving the ECHR, such as for the Good Friday Agreement, or our post-Brexit relationship with the EU.
Like the Trojan Horse, I believe the Rwanda bill is a set-up. 'Get Brexit Done’ is now 'Stop the Boats’. But, unlike the good citizens of Troy, I believe British voters will not let themselves be suckered a second time.
Never trust the Conservatives, even when they bring 'gifts'.
Deaths in the Channel: Survivors and Rescue Teams Feel Targeted by Plan to ‘Stop the Boats’
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A year ago today at least four people drowned while crossing the English Channel in an overcrowded dinghy. Their deaths barely made headlines, there were no public statements from the authorities and no inquiry is underway. The incident was instead co-opted by the Conservative Party, which seized on the chance to talk about the work they are doing to “smash the business model of the people smuggling gangs”.
But the Government isn’t smashing the people smuggling gangs. They’re going after migrants themselves. In January, Ibrahima Bah, a 19-year-old man from Senegal accused of piloting the stricken dinghy will be hauled through the courts again on four counts of manslaughter, held up as an example of what happens to those who have their hand on, or anywhere near, the tiller of a boat. If convicted, he could receive a life sentence.
The Home Office has long labelled small boat pilots as “people smugglers”. Evidence used against them is often contested. In Bah’s case, it involved being photographed close to the tiller. In June he reportedly told the court that he was merely a passenger who had initially refused to pilot the vessel until being assaulted and threatened with death by the smugglers if he failed to comply.
Often, the evidence used to prosecute is gathered from arriving migrants who are interviewed immediately after they disembark, when they are disoriented, traumatised and still under arrest. Their phones are taken, they are held in a police cell and they may not have legal representation. One of the survivors from the December 2022 incident told me that within an hour of arrival, he and other members of the group had been instructed to point out the pilot in what felt like a “police lineup”. Their statements would then be used as evidence to criminalise Bah, who had, they say, been a friend, “like a brother”, to many in the boat.
For the last year, more than a dozen of the survivors have been holed up together at a dilapidated guesthouse on the Kent coast, presumably so they could be called upon for further evidence in the trial, if required. I went to meet them there one foggy afternoon in September. Among the group were five Afghans who had narrowly escaped death that night, and who knew those who had perished in the shipwreck. "It was so cold, I did not know if I was alive or dead", Abdul-Azim told me.
A fishing trawler had come to their rescue at around 03:00, after at least 45 minutes spent clinging to the rim of the dinghy, its wooden boards collapsed inwards. By that stage, most of the group were in the water; others had been pushed back out to sea by a strong current and died in five degree water. One man slipped while climbing aboard the fishing boat and was crushed between the dinghy and the trawler. Another had been hit in the head by a broken wooden slat as the boat collapsed, knocking him unconscious. He, too, drowned in the freezing water, his body still missing, a year on.
EXCLUSIVE
Asylum Waiting Lists Rocket by 236% as Migrant Housed on Cramped Barge Takes Own Life
A day after the suicide of a man aboard the Bibby Stockholm exclusive data obtained by this newspaper shows migrants waiting three years or more for a decision on their future has more than trebled in the past year
Tom Latchem, Dan Evans and Adam Bienkov
One of the first responders to arrive at the scene, at around 03:30, was the RNLI Dungeness rescue team. Among them was Adam, a volunteer on one of his first shifts as a lookout for the boat crew. Two bodies lay face down in the water; he and other team members had to pull them up. “You never forget something like that,” he told me, standing on the shingle beach the following week. Shortly after that, a group of far-right ‘vigilantes’ (as they’re called by the RNLI) spray-painted ‘Taxi’ over the lifeboat station doors, parroting Nigel Farage’s claims the volunteer crews are a “taxi service for illegal migrants”. Crew members started taking their RNLI parking permits off their cars, after their tyres were repeatedly deflated. Most have been pilloried at the school gates or at their local pub.
Frontline search and rescue staff regularly tell me they resent their roles having become so politicised. “The Government has done nothing to stop the boats except slap a slogan on it", one Border Force member told me on the picket line in Dover recently. “We shouldn’t be used as a political tool - we’re civil servants doing frontline work. Our jobs shouldn’t feel political, or be political, but they are.”
As the scrutiny has worsened, so too has the public response. Search and rescue workers have been consistently demonised in the right-wing press, to the extent they have had to take measures to protect themselves and their families. The teenage daughter of a coastguard was recently approached in the street by three far-right men, who allegedly shouted and swore at her, accusing her father of people smuggling. Another search and rescue contact had left his job after he’d been beaten unconscious in a pub, recognised for TV interviews he had done. Many now understandably choose not to speak out for fear of reprisal.
To make matters worse, the frontline agencies are chronically under-resourced and under-funded. “It’s a clear political choice, isn’t it?” a member of the Border Force said. “We’re on our knees, but we can’t recruit because the pay is so bad, and our vessels aren’t fit-for-purpose.” A senior member of HM Coastguard commented that: “As long as we continue to put policy before operations, people will keep dying in our waters".
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Rather than focusing its efforts on bolstering frontline teams, the Government continues to pile its resources into criminalising migrants who ‘facilitate entry’ by driving boats. Despite the grandstanding, the number of arrests of those accused of piloting boats is tiny: only 87 people since March 2022. It might sound like tough talk, but the figures speak for themselves.
Meanwhile, at the sharp end of it all, whiling away the days and months behind bars is a teenage boy, his mental health reportedly in tatters.
“What happened to him?” the survivors asked me that autumn day on the Kent coast. After they had given their statements, the line of communication had suddenly gone dead. I explained about Bah’s trial in the summer, and how the jury had been discharged. “Ibrahima is not a criminal. None of us are criminals,” Abdul-Azim said. “We saw our friends under the boat, we saw them die out at sea. Why can the Government not see that we are not to blame for this?”
Rishi Sunak’s Attempts to ‘Vice-Signal’ His Way to Victory are Starting to Backfire
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Some commentators have questioned why Rishi Sunak’s Government is focusing so much political energy on a scheme which, even in the unlikely event it ever gets off the ground, would only accommodate a tiny proportion of asylum seekers arriving in the UK.
For context, independent assessments suggest the Rwanda scheme would only be able to accommodate a maximum of a few hundred arrivals each year, compared to the around 175,000 people currently on the UK’s asylum backlog.
Or to put that another way, this is a scheme which, if absolutely everything goes right, will deal with just 0.2% of those currently seeking refuge in the UK. It is an irrelevance, albeit a very expensive one.
So why do it?
The answer is that it is the perfect example of the politics of ‘vice-signalling’.
For vice-signallers, the key motivation is to signal a particular negative political intention, even when the reality of your own actions is the complete opposite. For the Conservative Party this involves signalling their intentions to be as hostile as possible to migrants and refugees, while at the same time presiding over record levels of migration to the UK.
So as immigration numbers hit new highs, so too does the Conservative Party’s attempts to appear as hostile as possible to those who come here. Whether it’s painting over children’s murals in asylum centres, or briefing plans to put wave machines in the English Channel, the strategy involves signalling the greatest amount or vice for the minimum amount of effort.
The Rwanda scheme is the logical extension of this strategy and why the Prime Minister is so keen to be seen as attempting to get it through, even as it becomes clear that he has little hope of ever doing so.
Indeed in some ways, the Government may even believe that it would be better for the scheme to be blocked than for it to actually ever be implemented. After all, if the key motivation is to signal your own vice, rather than actually to do something meaningful, then what better way to achieve that than for your tokenistic plans to be blocked by a coalition of “lefty lawyers” and the Labour Party. The politics of vice-signalling can only work when its proponents are able to drive a wedge between their own vice and others' virtue.
Of course this is not an argument for the Government’s opponents to allow the Rwanda scheme to go through. The Government's plans would not only be a clear breach of international law, but also of the UK’s long-standing responsibilities to offer refuge to some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. It is both legally and morally wrong and should be strongly opposed.
However, it is important to understand what the real motivations are here.
Boris Johnson’s Covid Inquiry Appearance Exposed the Complicity of his Accomplices
The Covid Inquiry has revealed the former PM to be a deeply negligent and dishonest individual. The only question now is how he was allowed to get away with it
Adam Bienkov
The Politics of Vice-Signalling
Once you identify the politics of vice-signalling, then you can see it everywhere. During the debate on the Government’s Bill to declare Rwanda a safe country, on Tuesday, the Conservative MP Nick Fletcher delivered a particularly extreme speech in which he suggested that parts of his Don Valley constituency had become a “ghetto” due to migration.
Fletcher told MPs that “the reason the [NHS] waiting lists are so long is that people do not speak English in these places any more”, adding that “this is what is happening. Members can shout me down. They can say what they want — I really do not care — but this is what is happening.”
Of course the reality is quite different. According to official figures just 0.1% of Don Valley residents cannot speak English, with only 0.8% having lived in the UK for less than five years.
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Yet for the vice-signallers, such facts are an irrelevance. The intention is not to actually examine the country’s problems and to help solve them, but to merely signal their own bad intentions, regardless of what is actually happening in the real world.
The problem for Sunak and his party is that such attempts to vice-signal can often backfire. As he's discovered this week, the problem with any Government setting up a vice-signalling battle is that there are always other people who are willing to raise the stakes much further than your would be able to.
The problem for the Prime Minister is that in attempting to set up a vice-signalling contest with his political opponents, Sunak has so far managed only to create one with his own backbenchers instead.
‘In Fighting for the Cause of Refugees and Migrants, We Fight For Ourselves’
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If Trump wins next year's US Presidential Election, as Robert Kagan in The Washington Post both terrifiedly and terrifyingly says is now inevitable, will there be a flow of intellectuals and scientists out of the United States in a reverse of the flow of intellectuals and scientists from Europe into the US in the 1930s?
A flow of US refugees – genuine refugees, fleeing the collapse of their country into an illiberal, mean-spirited, even perhaps dangerous place for anyone not of the MAGA persuasion – is not inconceivable. Who with a sense of decency could stomach a situation of Donald Trump’s making?
The triumph of the US began in economic power before the Second World War and was sustained and enhanced after it by those refugees from European fascism. What will the world be like with wealth-powerful bullying states overshadowing it and bridling against each other – a Trumpian US; an irredentist, expansionist China; a world dominated by dictators?
This speculation invites analysis, given that the likelihood is that this is our future. But for present purposes let us focus on the word ‘refugees’ just used in this unexpected connection: ‘refugees from the US’. And let us consider that the refugee crises of recent years are as nothing – are as mere Sunday picnics – in comparison to the vast displacements of populations soon to be precipitated by climate change: a catastrophe of hundreds of millions of refugees, not mere millions, into regions unprepared and unwilling.
We have grown used to refugees from the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, but the future’s refugees will be different, from different places, and far more numerous, than those we see today.
The Identity Trap: Race, Representation and the Rise of Conservative Diversity
Rishi Sunak is in the running to be Britain’s first prime minister of colour – but the debate around whether this will be a good thing for ethnic minorities has laid bare conflicting ideas about the ‘individual’ and the ‘collective’, writes Hardeep Matharu
Hardeep Matharu
In the far-right rhetoric of Victor Orbán, Geert Wilders and Suella Braverman, ‘immigrants’ are lumped together – whether they are refugees or migrants – in one unwelcome mass of moving populations seeking (in the case of refugees) safety or (in the case of migrants) opportunity. But as this distinction illustrates, refugees and migrants are not the same.
Many refugees are anxious to return home when peace is restored; migrants are in quest of a new home. Does this distinction show up in the numbers on ‘immigration’, in the provisions made for them, in the way they are dealt with? No. They are all lumped into the category ‘immigration’ because would-be immigrants, when their numbers reach a critical mass, trouble native populations, which – everywhere in the world, when left to unreflective tribalist instincts – are naturally xenophobic if not downright racist.
The resurgence in recent years of far-right politics in Europe and the US is based on the exploitation of xenophobia as the tool of choice for gaining power. Once got, that power is used to roll-back democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law, aimed at reducing the state from a structure of governance on behalf of the people to a structure for wielding coercive power over the people. It is a familiar story to anyone who bothers to read history.
In the UK today, a desperate Conservative Party is flogging the immigration horse as hard as it can to try to save its skin – because it sees how the right elsewhere is gaining ground by means of the anti-immigration agenda. It has not yet finished delivering the state into private pockets and completing its agenda of creating a subject population unable to protest, strike, or expect decent public services. It wants to finish the job of asset-stripping the country for themselves and the masters behind them in the media and tax-havens and board rooms.
That the citizenry of the UK is not pouring onto the streets in protest at the screaming hypocrisy of a UK government stuffed out with the offspring of immigrants is testament to the dazement induced by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of these immigrant children. But what is worse is that the rhetoric is so effective in switching off thought on the part of so many.
For if they did pause to consider, just for a moment, what the individual units of ‘immigration’ actually are – ie: human beings; men, women, fathers, mothers, children – how could they persist in accepting the bemusement of their faculties? Readers of these words won’t need reminding, but here is the distinction between a refugee and a migrant, and what each is.
‘Asylum seeker’, ‘refugee’. What is such a person? A human being fleeing persecution, danger, death, struggle, terror, horror. A human being fleeing guns and bombs, prisons, torture, cruelty, murder. A human being traumatised, shaking with fear, desperate. A human being who has heard, who has emitted, screams and cries of pain and grief, who has run away from a nightmare. A human being in dire need of safety.
‘Migrant’ What is such a person? A human being quitting places of hunger, futurelessness, who wants a chance to make a life, for himself or herself and his and her children, who wants stability, opportunity, who wants a new life, who wants a job, a home, security, a chance to grow into something they feel they can be.
People leave places because they are pushed and because they are pulled. The refugees are pushed by danger, the migrant by sterility of opportunity. Both are pulled by places that are better, safer, far more promising. Their situation in either case is so bad where they are that they risk much, often everything, to reach better places. However unfamiliar the new place, the strange language, the uncertainty of their reception, it is better by far than the place they leave.
Their action takes immense courage, resolve and effort. They do what human beings have always done, from the moment that homo sapiens trekked out of Africa 60,000 years ago – indeed, from the moment that homo erectus trekked out of Africa two million years ago – to find better places to be.
And here is the clincher: immigrants add, they do not take away. Look at the US in the years 1880-1939 and ask whether the huge waves of immigration in those decades was a bad thing for it. Well, was it?
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In today’s UK there are 165,000 vacancies in the care industry – yet the politicians, to pander to ignorance and prejudice, bring down the shutters. Our NHS, our universities, our small business sector (99% of British businesses are small to medium-sized enterprises or SMEs), profit hugely from ‘incomers’. Germany and Australia need net immigration lest their economies stall; whereas the saner political parties in the former understand the problem, politicians in the latter play the same tattered card on both sides of the aisle. It is madness.
Among the solutions to the ‘problem’ of immigration are these: (a) educate the home population on the facts: immigrants add value; (b) invest in the countries that drive migrants outward because of the economic insufficiencies there, so that talent remains there and the impulse to leave is lessened.
And as to refugees and asylum seekers: chief among the solutions to this different problem are: (c) work to bring peace and stability to the regions that drive their terrified populations out; (d) be humane, be kind, welcome them when they stagger onto our shores, succour them.
Note always: migrants are those who explicitly seek to be immigrants. Not all refugees, indeed, perhaps not many of them, wish to be immigrants. Do not discriminate against either of them; discriminate between them and treat them accordingly – which with regard to both means decently.
It is essential to recognise, and not be fooled by, the use of the ‘immigration’ canard to blind us to the real agenda of the far-right. The far-right stir up hostility to an easily demonised ‘other’ as a mask for the rest of their wider and equally bad agenda. They are at present winning this nasty game. We must not let them. In fighting for the cause of refugees and migrants, we fight for ourselves.