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I can’t even – politicalbetting.com
I can’t even – politicalbetting.com
Nadhim Zahawi's statement. Whether it was full blown illegal tax evasion or "careless" tax avoidance as he prefers, the facts are: 1. Zahawi hadn't paid tax that HMRC ruled was long owed, 2. while he was Chancellor, and 3. having tried to angrily dismiss it as a smear. Not great. pic.twitter.com/UWZISPCiGH
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He will have been earning a 'decent' salary all his adult life. As a journalist; as an MP, as a TV pundit, as MoL, and as PM. Not mahoosive amounts, but good, solid money.
True, he has a string of children, but even then he must be able to live his life within his income? If he cannot, how the heck do the rest of us manage?
That he's even mentioned as making a possible return at some point speaks volumes about the state we are in. The bloke should be in a cell before he gets within a million miles of being in Number 10.
As for Sharp and Zahawi, why the actual f*** haven't the pair of them resigned, and why hasn't Sunak himself forced their hands? It is utterly ludicrous.
https://www.youtube.com/@PitchMeetings
This could cause him a few problems.
https://news.sky.com/story/joe-biden-white-house-says-six-more-classified-documents-found-in-search-of-us-presidents-home-12792511
Since the matter is now public however it must be made plain that this is no legal avoidance but illegal evasion we are talking about. Penalties are not imposed for avoidance, and certainly not on this scale. Thirty per cent is seventy off the max, but it is no mere slap on the wrists. It was serious and he must have known what he was doing.
It's over to his boss now. I should think at the very least he should be debarred from the Treasury and similar offices involving financial oversight.
As for Boris, is there really anybody left who thinks he is other than pond life?
As for Sunak and Zahawi, it looks like they've got the same value set as Big Dog. How could they not, given that they were among his backers in 2019, and later on in his government? Rules are for losers and if the little people want them out, they'll have to wait until 2024. Maybe later if they want a final Christmas in office.
Income greater than expenditure equals happiness, income less than expenditure equals misery.
Most of us work out how to live within our means, or at least not too far out of them. For whatever reason, BoJo has chosen a lifestyle where his spending exceeds his income, no matter how massive that income is.
Now I know. He should, of course, resign. But he won't.
Well done @TSE
For the large blob (Charles Moore's favourite word for the rest of the world) of tories who are still trying to justify these antics, it's going to be a long period in the wilderness.
He was allegedly drinking in a pub one day when a passer-by told him his Boris was a little shit. He replied 'I know' and carried on drinking.
Mr. Observer, the situation now is not great. However, pretending that dubious things have not occurred in the recent past is misleading. Consider the weapons of mass destruction. Or Brown reneging upon a referendum promise in a manifesto.
Personal greed and self-enrichment appears to be the sin of the incumbents, whereas the (in-office) vices of yesteryear seem to be more about misleading the electorate to the detriment of the nation and trust in politics (though there was the Ecclestone million too, of course). Is Zahawai's tax situation worse for the nation than Brown's insane carrier contract that funnelled public money into certain constituencies and made it cheaper to build two carriers than one (cancelling one of the two being so prohibitively expensive)?
"There has never been any remuneration or compensation to Mr Sharp from Boris Johnson for this or any other service."
He gave the bloke a public sector job for which he had no particular qualification.
Sharp should resign and the pair of thieving toerags should face prosecution.
The next Conservative PM might not even be an MP yet.
Mr. Pointer, I think it's useful to remember things that happened more than a short time ago. It's why history is useful as well as interesting.
Without it Osborne would have scrapped at least one and possibly both and gone for just a helicopter carrier.
The more we see of this government, the worse it gets.
Quite clearly the matter was not adequately recorded, vouched or disclosed and HMRC have taken the view that all of the gain on sale was subject to tax by Zahawi who had either exhausted his life time allowance or was, in some other way not eligible (there may have been a problem since his own interest was not particularly clearly disclosed).
According to him, HMRC have compromised by accepting that his father was entitled to some of the sale proceeds but not as much as claimed, resulting in him having an additional liability and a penalty (allegedly over £1m) for late accounting.
There is an element of this that is simply everyday entrepreneurial folk. The astonishing, and genuinely jaw dropping aspect of this is (a) that Boris appointed him Chancellor when this dispute was going on and (b) he was delusional enough to accept. It is very hard to work out what they were thinking.
Then he'll definitely have enough to live on.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/when-i-said-nadhim-zahawi-owed-the-taxman-he-set-his-lawyers-on-me-now-hes-handed-over-millions-qjpqrhtnj
'Sleaze' might add to the general impression a tired government needs to go but it rarely switches the votes of any voters beyond those which have already gone anyway.
It certainly won't produce an 'extinction level' event for the Tories. That would only be if Farage's RefUK overtook them as the main party of the right
She was neither an ideological nut job, a narcissist, a prefect playing PM nor a technocrat on the take.
The Boris stuff is as people note no surprise, but the others involved in this particular shadiness makes it worse. Appearance of impropriety has always been a no no as much as actual impropriety, and they don't care about either.
On why Sunak doesn't act well for one there's every reason to assume he thinks none of them have done wrong, but also his position is too weak. There's been no recovery so he cannot upset the faction of his party who would be upset at punishing incompetence and corruption. Which I guess is a large part of it?
The pathetic attempts to defend the indefensible -I´m looking at you, Morris Dancer- just infuriate the punters even further. This is not the normal political games, this truly is out-and-out corruption.
I hold no brief for Rishi Sunak, but it would take a special kind of idiot to believe that the endemic crisis of the Conservatives can be simply solved by challenging/replacing the Tory leader. Indeed, I think that any attempt to do so would be the last straw for many Conservative supporters.
Nevertheless, this is not mere sleaze, this is corruption. Unless fairly decisive action is taken, there will be legal consequences and they will be far more damaging than a few headlines. The chairman of the Conservative party has admitted wrong doing in his tax affairs, however he issued legal threats to the Independent to attempt to stop their legitimate reporting of this. It is the attempt to cover up that reveals the moral turpitude of the man. He simply cannot continue. The careful phraseology of the former Chancellor´s statement implies that other issues may have been under consideration, if so, then these must now be disclosed.
Its a whole can of worms, but Sunak has to face it head on, or else he will be swept away by a tide of stupidity that will not merely defeat the Conservatives, but quite possibly, obliterate them.
So instead, we get Micawber Principle Two/One, the one about hanging on because Something Will Turn Up.
Indeed today's story boosts the PM more and hits any chance of a Boris comeback.
Sunak can sack Zahawi, a former leadership rival, this week if needed
The combination of incompetence and, to be polite, dubious means of self-enrichment is not acceptable and is leading to well-deserved bad headlines. What I'm saying is that claiming this is somehow entirely new or 'o tempora, o mores' when the previous (if we don't count the Coalition) administration broke manifesto commitments and lead us into war on a false prospectus is to overegg the current situation. The NHS database blew billions for nothing. Political incompetence should be highlighted by the media but the idea it's some sort of new thing or unique and special to the current lot is fiction.
This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.
How's that going, Rishi?
I have long-standing connections with Gibraltar and visit regularly for work.
The Government of Gibraltar is meticulous about not upsetting the UK tax authorities and upholding the reputation of the services offered there. Anyone from the UK wanting to do any financial dealings there is told explicitly that they must ensure that they must disclose all details to HMRC in the UK. It is impossible for Zahawi and his advisors not to have known this.
No one has to donate to a party, and if they are interested in serving in a public role then they can prioritise that over trying to influence a party with cash.
Upper class twits
Dull Management of decline
Britain Trump populists
Right wing, crash the economy in a fortnight, ideological zealots.
Corrupt technocrats
It’s a hard one.
Bar Tatton and maybe Thanet South I doubt 'sleaze' changed the result in a single seat in 1997 otherwise
[Brexiters] won’t want to be reminded of the sunny uplands shimmering with ripening fruits promised by Mr Rees-Mogg and the rest of the Brexit mob’s false prophets.
You will remember [JRM’s] claim that the subs paid to the EU only had to be redirected to the NHS to transform it into a world-envied health service. Strike one. What we actually have is a collapsing NHS. Another of their boasts was that the UK would “take back control” of its borders. Strike two. Unmanaged migration is not falling, but rising. The most critical promise was that the economy would roar like a liberated lion just as soon as the UK was “unshackled” from the “sclerotic” EU. Strike three. The UK is the sick man of the G7, the only member with an economy that is still smaller than it was before the pandemic.
Quitting has not been empowering, but enervating. Every credible study concludes that Brexit has introduced new impediments to prosperity while aggravating pre-existing problems.
Even Brexiters know it looks ridiculous to point the finger at recalcitrant “Remoaners” when Brexiters have been running the government for nearly four years. So now they turn the accusation of sabotage on their own gang by blaming the Tories for messing it up by not doing it “properly”, whatever properly is supposed to be. Brexiters in denial can’t admit to themselves that a project founded in delusion, marinated in fantasy, riddled with contradictions and marketed with mendacities was never going to “work”.
The Brexit headbangers apart, everyone at Westminster knows that we need to mitigate the egregious damage that has been inflicted on this country. The sad and cruel truth is that strategic blunders as colossal as Brexit can’t be corrected easily or swiftly. Some mistakes have to be paid for over many years. This, alas, is the UK’s fate. Not a golden age, but ages of regret.
And that was with Major at the helm, and a problem with sleaze rather than full-frontal corruption.
Even for those not convinced Blair would change the country for the better (and promises were pretty modest and cautious in many ways) there was a strong feeling the stables needed hosing down. That made a win a landslide.
And it's hard, even for centre right posters here, not to conclude this administration is not so much a grubby stable as an open sewer at this point.