Ed’s hedge fund donor and a grubby set of deals
ATRAILER for the faintly absurd Da Vinci’s Demons TV show — all about the Tuscan polymath and swordsman’s intimate life — has Leonardo complaining that it’s ‘political chicanery’ to question his doings.
Another character, Zoroaster, remarks unhelpfully: ‘ Hearing how you deflowered a nun won’t help.’
The May 7 General Election inspires the usual grave allegations of political chicanery. Thankfully — thus far — none of them involves a nun.
They’re mostly about money. Just weeks after ex-ministers Jack Straw of Labour and Sir Malcolm Rifkind of the Conservatives were caught seeking thousands in fees to give inside advice and help to companies, there’s a slew of grubby rows over political donations.
LIb DEM Deputy Premier Nick Clegg is reported to have told one potential donor — former hedgefund manager Paul Wilmott, who later gave £10,000 — that his gift could be split over two years to ensure anonymity.
The party says Clegg behaved ‘ entirely correctly’ in giving this advice. The exotic- sounding Lib Dem peer who organised Wilmott’s donation — baron Strasburger! — resigns the party whip, but denies wrongdoing.
A SURPRISING new Labour donor is revealed — Martin Taylor, 46, a rich hedge-fund boss whose private health company is bidding for £1.2 billion worth of work from the NHS.
He’s a most curious new source of funds: Labour’s Ed Miliband poses as a saviour of the NHS, protecting it from hedge-fund privateers.
A spokesman for the party says they’re grateful to people ‘ from all walks of life’ for their support — including hedge- fund ogres, presumably, adding optimistically: ‘Ed Miliband will enter Downing Street owing nothing to anybody.’
MEANWHILE, the Sunday Times wins its libel battle with spreadbetting tycoon and former Tory treasurer Peter Cruddas, whom they said had offered undercover reporters posing as business types access to the Prime Minister for £250,000.
Appeal Court judges said it was ‘inappropriate, unacceptable and wrong’ of Cruddas to offer top-level access to undercover reporters pretending to be potential party donors, who sought confidential meetings with David Cameron for explicitly commercial motives.
Lord Justice Jackson said: ‘Wealthy donors should not be able to tap into confidential government information, or government thinking. Nor should they be given an opportunity to discuss with the Prime Minister (even in general terms) the appropriate strategy for them to pursue in purchasing government assets.’
Quite so, you might say. That’s telling them. but will it make any difference? All three major parties routinely beg money from rich individuals and/or companies.
WE ARE asked to believe that no inside info is given, or honours offered, as a result. The money is donated simply because the individual or company involved believes in the policies being pursued or the individual politician pursuing them.
Some politicians say there would not be a problem if we funded political parties more generously. We could provide every cent required for political campaigning — along with far larger salaries and expenses — but I don’t believe it would prevent them selling information or baubles in exchange for more money.
The information and baubles are hot items, which is why lots of people are happy to pay for them. The resulting moolah is more attractive to party chiefs than governmental handouts, with their tiresome rules and regulations.
Those who control the info and baubles will be as discreet as possible, stick closely to such rules as do exist and hire the best legal advice when their bagmen are caught by undercover reporters. It was ever thus.
The relationship between those who give money to political parties and the dispensation of peerages is ‘ significant’, says a new, exhaustive study by the university of Oxford. Yet it finds ‘no cast-iron proof’ that peerages are sold. Likewise, a 2007 Scotland Yard investigation into ‘cash for coronets’ found there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution. Are we taken for fools? Despite Scotland Yard investigations, and the new Oxford study, evidence of dirty work at the political crossroads is all around us, every day of the week. If there’s insufficient evidence, or no cast-iron proof, it’s because the laws covering donations to political parties — devised by politicians themselves, of course — are vague not by accident but by design.
They are fashioned to allow private money to oil the public wheels of government without this being considered unlawful, or even unethical.
‘Grassing’ rival parties and their dodgy donors to the newspapers — which then send out undercover reporters — is merely part of election campaigns now.