Just another week on Crazy Island, folks, so let’s jump in with…
AMNESIAC OF THE WEEK, PART ONE
The Conservative party chairman (at time of writing) and “minister without portfolio” (ie. hanger-on) Nadhim Zahawi has been in the news for suddenly, spontaneously and under no compunction whatsoever slinging about £5m the way of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Upon further digging it became apparent that £1.3m or so of this payment was a penalty incurred by Zahawi having “forgotten” to pay capital gains tax on the vast profit he had accrued by selling his stake in the polling company YouGov (wait – YouGov used to partly belong to a leading Conservative MP? How is THAT not a story? – M)
This of course would SEEM to mean that when he briefly served as chancellor of the exchequer in the dying days of Boris Johnson’s premiership (you’d forgotten about that hadn’t you? Understandable), Zahawi was appointed to that position while in dispute with HMRC. It says pretty much everything you need to know about post-Brexit Britain that this scarcely even seems to count as a conflict of interest. Certainly not such a glaring one as…
OLD-FASHIONED CORRUPTION STORY OF THE WEEK
It has emerged that Richard Sharp, the former Goldman Sachs executive and current chairman of the BBC (and NOT, alas, the rough-as-anything rifleman sergeant promoted to the officer class for saving the life of the Duke of Wellington – that was Richard Sharpe with an E) secured that position having first arranged a loan of £800,000 for the then PM Boris Johnson back in 2020 (he also personally donated £400k to the Conservative Party, but as I said, that hardly even counts these days).
A contributing factor to the scandal fatigue that’s slowly grinding down the already-weary nation is the sheer plodding obviousness of the corruption we’re being forced to witness. Come on guys, make an effort here; add some layers of obfuscation and intrigue, TRY to cover your tracks a BIT. Don’t just bung the PM a six-figure sum so you get a peachy job and he gets a BBC chairman who owes him a favour…
Meanwhile, on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday morning BBC show, the expert panel convened to give their opinions on Johnson’s conduct in this matter consisted of the chairman of Tesco, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and Boris’s own sister, Rachel. Unsurprisingly, the consensus was that he did nothing wrong.
So it looks like the investment is paying off
AMNESIAC OF THE WEEK, PART TWO
The incumbent next ex-prime minister Rishi Sunak released a video of himself smilingly outlining his plans for the future while sitting in the back of a speeding ministerial car. It was only after the video was made public that people started to point out that by forgetting to fasten his seatbelt, Sunak was in breach of the law, and indeed he was duly issued with a fixed penalty by Lancashire Police. This makes Sunak the first politician ever to be convicted of an offence while serving both as chancellor (he was given a fixed penalty for breaches of lockdown law, you may recall) and as PM. If, as seems increasingly likely, he’s replaced before the next general election, the incoming prime minister should make him foreign secretary so he can text while bicycling and go for the set.
“THEY’RE ALL AS BAD AS EACH OTHER” OF THE WEEK
Speaking of Partygate as soon after the Seatbeltless Rishi story broke, a tweeter named “Just Saying” posted a photo of, as his caption claimed, “Keir Starmer in back of car working with no seat belt”, by way of apparent “Currygate”-style retaliation. Upon even the most fleeting observation, it became apparent that the photo in question depicted the leader of the opposition in the back seat of a car with his seatbelt very visibly fastened around him. Despite a flurry of replies pointing this out, “Just Saying” has not yet, at time of writing, deleted the post. It’s possible that we’re looking at a bit of slightly-too-clever-for-its-own-good meta-satire here, but in any event there doesn’t appear to be any great urgency to remove the photo as the Labour leader seems disinclined to sue Just Saying for libel, nor indeed have GB News, the Daily Mail or the Sun announced any intention to pursue him for plagiarism.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Boris is in Ukraine again
Far from the battlefield
The beleaguered nation’s people
Make such good human shields
Boris is in Ukraine again
In faux Churchillian mode
While Britain struggles underneath
The chaos that he sowed
Boris is in Ukraine again
It is his safest space
Boris is in Ukraine again
To dodge some more disgrace
Boris is in Ukraine again
To cash in on despair
Boris is in Ukraine again
Here’s hoping he stays there
