Cameron’s Oz banker carried his own No10 business card
New access row as lobbying storm grows
DAVID Cameron was facing fresh questions about his closeness to a controversial businessman last night as it emerged the Australian financier once had his own Downing Street business card.
Lex Greensill was described as a ‘senior adviser’ in the ‘Prime Minister’s Office’ on the card, which was obtained by Labour.
He had a No 10 email address during his three years as a financial adviser to the Cameron government, between 2012 and 2015, and a landline telephone number at Downing Street.
Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds said: ‘This raises further serious questions about the special access Lex Greensill was granted to the heart of government. The public have a right to know what happened here.’
In 2016, two years after Mr Cameron quit as prime minister, the roles were reversed as he was appointed as a senior
‘This gets murkier by the day’
adviser to Mr Greensill’s company Greensill Capital.
It came amid claims that Mr Cameron and Mr Greensill went on a desert camping trip with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia – who is accused of approving the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – early last year.
The desert trip by Mr Greensill and also allegedly by his senior adviser Mr Cameron are believed to have been part of a bid to win a lucrative contract with state-run oil firm Saudi Aramco, the world’s most profitable company, The Financial Times reported. It comes after the Daily Mail told how Mr Cameron had previously given the headline speech at a Saudi summit known as ‘Davos in the Desert’ in October 2019.
Mr Cameron went on to lobby ministers, civil servants and the Bank of England in a failed bid to get Greensill Capital access to the biggest taxpayer-funded Covid loan fund. His stake in the company could have been worth tens of millions of pounds, but the specialist lender collapsed into administration this month, putting thousands of British steel jobs at risk.
Labour is pressing Cabinet Secretary Simon Case to probe the access Mr Greensill and Mr Cameron had to the top levels of Government and Whitehall. Leader Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘What’s happening with Greensill gets murkier by the day.’
However, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng told Sky News yesterday: ‘As far as I know, David Cameron did absolutely nothing wrong.’ Mr Cameron’s spokesman has declined repeated requests to comment.
It came as Mr Kwarteng said the Government could bail out Liberty Steel jobs and plants – but not owner Sanjeev Gupta’s firm, GFG, which employs 5,000 people in Britain. About 3,000 of these work at Liberty.
GFG has been battling to stay afloat since Greensill Capital went into administration.
Mr Kwarteng said all options were on the table to save jobs and 11 Liberty factories. They could include nationalising the struggling steel maker.
LISTeNING to the shrill proponents of identity politics, one might believe modern Britain is a sulphurous pit of racism.
But are members of ethnic minorities really subjugated by institutional bigotry?
A landmark race report, commissioned by the Government following the Black Lives Matter protests, found no evidence of this.
In education, for instance, children from many ethnic communities do substantially better than white pupils. In turn, this is creating fairer and more diverse workplaces, with pay and opportunity gaps shrinking.
Groundbreaking anti-discrimination and equal opportunities legislation has seen the UK, renowned for tolerance, take giant strides towards eliminating inequity.
Unlike on the Continent, racist political parties never gain footholds (bar Labour’s censure for anti-Semitism).
And look at the banlieues of France or the American ghettos. There, lives are routinely segregated along racial lines. Such practices are alien to the UK.
of course, we are by no means perfect. Pockets of overt racism persist – and must be tackled mercilessly. But we should take great heart from the report’s conclusion: That Britain is a successful multi-ethnic, multicultural beacon to the globe.