Honours list facing fresh chaos
DAVID Cameron’s resignation honours were in chaos last night as his list was branded ‘toxic’.
The turmoil was triggered when Tory donor and businessman Ian Taylor withdrew his name from consideration.
Labour’s deputy leader then called on Remain campaigner Will Straw and civil rights activist Shami Chakrabarti to turn down their gongs in protest at the entire affair. Tom Watson said his party should boycott the honours system until the former prime minister’s list of personal aides, cronies and donors had been thrown out.
As it emerged the nominations could be rushed out in the next few days, there was confusion over whether four pro-Remain
AS head of an oil giant nicknamed ‘the biggest company you’ve never heard of’, Ian Taylor had largely managed to avoid the limelight despite being one of the most powerful figures in business.
But news of his knighthood from David Cameron raised awkward questions about how he amassed his estimated £175million fortune through his willingness to deal with some of the world’s less savoury regimes.
Late on Tuesday night, Mr Taylor, who gave £350,000 to the pro-EU campaign in the recent referendum and was the biggest donor to Better Together in 2014’s referendum, signalled his desire to return to obscurity, announcing he did not want the honour ‘at this time’.
His firm, Vitol, records larger annual revenues than better-known corporate giants such as Apple or Volkswagen, with sales topping $270billion (£200billion) in 2014.
But controversially, part of its success has been thanks to its readiness to do business in corners of the world from which others would run a mile.
Mr Taylor, who has a home in Scotland, has claimed the firm has ‘nothing to hide’ and there are ‘no great secrets or scandals’.
‘It is difficult to try to draw moral lines’
However, the company was fined $17.5million (£13.1million) in 2007 after it admitted handing illicit payments to the Iraqi state oil company.
The payments were made during a time at which the UN had imposed rules on Saddam Hussein’s regime under which its oil could only be sold to purchase the food, medicine and equipment necessary to meet its humanitarian needs.
In 2012, it got around EU sanctions prohibiting the trading of Iranian oil and purchased two million barrels from Tehran as it is based in Switzerland.
In 2014, it announced a $2billion (£1.5billion) gas deal with Russian firm Rosneft, which was led by a close ally of president Vladimir Putin, although the plan was later scrapped as sanctions kicked in.
Defending his firm last year, Mr Taylor said: ‘It is very difficult to try and draw incredibly moral lines on these sort of things but there are limits and there are people out there that we won’t deal with.
‘For example, we didn’t deal with the last Nigerian government for four or five years because it was too corrupt. But at the end of the day we do believe we are in a commercial business.’ Mr Taylor has admitted his career choice was guided by money even at the very start.
‘I’d studied PPE (philosophy, politics, and economics) [at Oxford], which was completely useless, but I was very lucky because I had three or four job offers,’ he told an interviewer last year.
‘I had no idea really what Shell did. I took it because they were offering to pay me £50 more than Morgan Grenfell [the merchant bank] and I needed the money.’ The firm sent him around the world, and he spent time in Venezuela and met his wife Tina before moving to Singapore and leaving to join Vitol in 1985, where he rose to become chief executive.
Mr Taylor has spoken in the past of his ‘typical British working-class childhood’, but spent part of his youth in Iran due to his father’s job as a manager at British chemicals giant ICI. His family is Scottish, but he was educated in Macclesfield.
In his online CV, he says he has been a supporter of Manchester City football club for 50 years.
He also recounts how in 2005, he ‘saved the historic clothing brand Harris Tweed from bankruptcy’ by providing investment and support that led the company towards profitability. From next month he will be chairman of the Board of Royal Opera House Trustees.
His offer of a knighthood came after he donated £1.6million to the Tories under David Cameron’s leadership, and he has enjoyed hospitality at Chequers.
He also gave £350,000 to Britain Stronger In Europe, the official Remain campaign, ahead of June’s EU referendum.