The Mirror quotes me at length this morning, saying:
Some have claimed Sunak's alleged financial links to Russia mean he is not a “fit" to be in charge of the nation's purse. Speaking to the Mirror, Professor Richard Murphy, Director of Tax Research UK, said: “Sunak's wife has close ties through her family to a company that is trading and profiting from Russia, and which has been a significant source of business for them over recent years, which has led to her being worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
“The Chancellor lives in a family of untold wealth and some of that wealth is presently being supported by commercial links with Russia, which they appear to have no sign of wishing to break. I'm quite sure they are not breaking them because it pays them to keep them going.
“I follow a rule which is commonplace in finance, which is to ask the question whether someone is a fit and proper person to undertake the job. The person has to prove that they are independent, to be able to offer objective advice on which people can rely, and that their opinion making is free from influence. Rishi Sunak is the man in charge of our nation's finances. My question is, is he a fit and proper person to be in charge? Is he objective and able to form an uninfluenced opinion about what is best for this country, independent of Russia's influence on his family's fortune? I don't think he is.”
I admit they had used the quote before: it was recycled by them.
But if Labour knows anything about political attack it is a line they should be taking, especially after yesterday's conference performance.
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Although the Security Services have files on most leading politicians, it seems they usually have ‘shown interest’ in Labour and other opposition politicians. From what I have read, mainly in the Cold War context, it seems most of their interest has been in Labour politicians.
How far they have used their knowledge to interfere in domestic politics is open to debate. Given the scale of Oligarch activity, I hope are active in scrutinising the Conservative party too. One topic could be Cambridge Analytica and the links with American billionaires and their involvement in Brexit.
Sir Joseph Ball, senior member of MI5 and first Director of Research for the Conservative Party ‘bugged’ the Labour Party, and Winston Churchill for that matter (and was the malignant force behind the anti-semitic prejudice that drove Hore-Belisha out of the Cabinet); all for Neville Chamberlain. The irony of Winston Churchill rising to sanctification in the modern Conservative Party is that he was not only deeply loathed within the Party, but the core Tory Party did not ever consider him to be a Tory; until 1940, when the ‘real Tories’ decided it was now prudent to hide their rancid beliefs from now on; and then quietly buried them, forever.
John, Dr David Owen wrote a book , Cabinet’s Finest Hour, which basically said cabinet government is usually better than single hero leadership. Churchill’s account doesn’t mention that some parts of the Conservative party, lead by Halifax were in favour of a negotiated peace but a series of meetings moved policy away from this.
I hadn’t known that Atlee and Greenwood backed Churchill for PM. Atlee had been at Gallipoli, was the second to last man off the beach during the evacuation, and never blamed Churchill for its failure. Churchill was never quite the strategist that popular history thinks but Atlee thought we had to fight on.
Mr Stevenson,
In order to understand what was happening up to the moment Churchill became PM and save the Conservatives from themselves, it is critical to understand the role played by Sir Joseph Ball. Everything revolved around him, and the story is thick with fog; including the discrete efforts (independent of the FO) to negotiate peace with Hitler, through contact with Italy as intermediary. Few have heard of Ball. He burned most of his papers before he died, and historians have frankly failed to address the issue or adequately research him. He has largely escaped attention.
Lord Blake, the eminent historian of the Conservative Party wrote this in an astonishingly tentative observation in his history of the Party, “The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill” (1970): “Ball is an enigmatic figure who appears from time to time in some of the more mysterious transactions of the period. ….. One would like to know about his activities” (p.232). If he didn’t know, who would? Blake has nothing more to say. Ball’s career survived even Churchill’s triumph, and he was still heavily involved in Africa, or recruiting both ‘Tiny’ Rowlands, and, it seems Guy Burgess; carrying on his mysterious transactions until his death in 1964. Two post-war generations of Conservatives and historians just wanted to forget the dark corners of British history, and avoided lancing the boil. Much of the story is no doubt buried deep, and it appears there remains reluctance to disturb the dirt (with a few exceptions).
Mr Stevenson,
Nothing I wrote suggested Churchill was an outstanding strategist, nor is it really relevant. I have little time for Owen. It is rather a matter of reinterpreting the weak concept of “appeasement” (as a sort of passivity) that’s become conventional as an explanation; and rather seeing that the crisis was how to save the Government and country from catastrophe for liberty, by someone stepping in (Churchill) to save the Conservative Party from itself. Allow me to put this in context; at the time Churchill was far, far less popular with the Party itself (the members and many MPs), than even Sunak is today. It is astonishing he was ever elected PM, and it could only have happened ‘in extremis’, in a national crisis of the worst kind.
Mr Warren
I think Ball was linked with the Zinoviev letter. Certainly a supporter of right wing causes. There were several names who wanted an agreement with Hitler. I see a few of Ball’s papers are held by the Bodleain Library.
I agree Churchill would not have been selected in time of peace. His strength was that he had warned of Germany’s rising power and danger and been proven right. He had support among some civil servants, diplomats and military. He was First lord of the Admiralty in 1939. (He claims in his memoirs that the Admiralty sent a signal to the Fleet
‘Winston’s back’- but Gordon Corrigen, the military historian says no trace has ever been found of it!) After the Norway fiasco, the position was stark. New leadership was needed. (Chamberlain had stomach cancer and was to die in Nov. 1940. Ball had, i gather, hitched his star to Chamberlain’s chariot.
Of course, as you imply, there is a lot we don’t know. All those private conversations between MPs and family and friends, some of whom were senior military. Churchill had been Secretary of State for War and also Air, in the immediate post First World War cabinet. He had the experience and once Labour had made their position clear (154 seats but a popular in the high 30s) I think he was the obvious choice. The day he assumed office the Germans attacked in the west.
Mr Stevenson,
It is possible Ball may have drafted the Zonoviev letter. He did not just attach himself to Chamberlain’s ‘chariot’. They were close friends; they spent fishing holidays together. JCC Davidson first brought Ball, who had been in MI5 since WWI, into the heart of the Party as first Director of Research. Chamberlain relied on Ball as his chief intelligence source and ‘fixer’. In the 1930s Ball was responsible for publishing a pro-fascist, virulently anti-semitic newspaper ‘Truth’ (through which he attacked Hore-Belisha, then a reformist Secretary of State for War); for the last see RB Cockett, ‘Communication: Ball, Chamberlain and Truth’; in, ‘The Historical journal’, (1990), 33, 1, pp.131-142. The history is being addressed, but at glacial pace.
Churchill wasn’t elected in 1940; he was purely Chamberlain’s nomination as the next PM. And something I read was that when Chamberlain went to tender his resignation to the King, he was asked ‘Shall I send for Halifax?’ (generally accepted likely successor), and the King was slightly taken aback when he answered ‘No, Churchill’.
True, JeremyGH, but your point is trivial. The election was implicit, not explicit. I was not writing an academic paper. The debate of 7th-8th May, 1940 in Parliament brought the Conservative MP Sir Leopold Amery to his feet, with a devastating attack on Chamberlain that ended with the words of Oliver Cromwell: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”. The Government still won the vote, but almost 80 Conservatives either voted against the Government, or abstained. Chamberlain was finished. Halifax represented the demoralised remains of the discredited Cabinet, and knew he couldn’t deliver. The Conservatives had no one credible (outside the Old Guard of the Conservative Party) to turn to, but Churchill; to save themselves.
People I know at Goldman Sachs said he was a nice person to work with when he was there.
The fact that these people themselves worked at GS can put that observation in some sort of context.
The shady work of private ‘divestment’ banking does not produce people fit to work in an accountable way in the public sector in my view.
Nor does the legal profession for that matter does it Tone’?
Stymied’s Labour could well end up like the American Democrats have done under a party funding system that seems to ape the U.S. one – they will be nothing but a containment party for popular, ground up political sentiment that will contain until hopelessness sets in and alternatives die off.
A party of the Establishment, in other words.
Putting to one side, for a moment, Sunak’s Russia connections, the man (in common with most/many/all of his colleagues) is a congenital liar. The “seven bins+meat tax” saga is evidence of this (& his colleagues all piled in – the recent vile-tory event demonstrated this) – knowing that the vile-tories are going down to defeat, collectively they are adjusting the political terrain to make life hard for whatever government suceeds them. The last gasp of desparate liars and frauds to groom UK serfs.
The Russia connection demonstrates (again) that vile-tories are mainly being interested in …. themselves. I have zero doubt that they care not one jot for Ukrainians (the weapons deliveries can be seen in the context of a weapons testing exercise) . The slow action on ejecting Russian oiligarchs from Londonburg & asset confiscation is evidence of this.
Sunak is not a fit person to clean my toilet.
Were you misquoted in Para 2?
Rishi Sunak is currently PM, not Chancellor?
As I said, it was recycled
Pilgrim Slight Return,
One CANNOT compare the party system of the USA to party system of the UK as they are completely different.