Rishi and Liz on menu at democracy-for-sale dinner
JUST four days before they learn if they’ve been chosen to be PM, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss will ingratiate themselves with the constituents that really matter – Tory donors. A ‘secret leadership dinner’ with the party’s biggest cheque bookholders is planned for September 1, I can reveal. Guests at the ‘tuxedos and tiaras’ shindig will express their love and largesse – while, of course, wanting nothing in return.
Strangely, this glitzy spectacle of democracy for sale doesn’t feature on the Conservative Party HQ’s official leadership hustings programme.
Perhaps Truss will be reunited with Lubov Chernukhin, the Russian-born, now British-pass port holding donor, who in 2019 bought dinner with her, then-PM Theresa May and four other Cabinet Ministers for £135,000. Truss got into hot water by posting a picture of the group on her Instagram. As the Thatcher legacy candidate admitted last week, sometimes she just gets too enthusiastic.
For his part, Sunak will be among an audience where his £3,500 bespoke suits are de rigueur. A donor told me they expect the event to be ‘less of a hustings, more selling yourself to the people you want at your side at the next election’.
The secret September dinner could also be a swansong for party Treasurer and major donor Malik Karim as we await Boris Johnson’s Lavender List of those heading for the House of Lords. Whatever promises Liz and Rishi make as they scrabble for the votes of 160,000 Tory members, expect the winner to bring a sudden batch of donor ideas with them to Downing Street.
BORIS Johnson’s farewell party at Chequers was as wonderfully vindictive as his approach to governing. Only ‘uber loyalists’ were allowed, one guest told me. Another added: ‘The criteria was loyalty to the end’. Among those not invited was Welsh Secretary Robert Buckland, who had called for Johnson to quit. Revellers enjoyed a BBQ while mingling with fellow dead-meat and offered a choice of Magnums or Twisters as they muttered sotto voce: ‘What have we done?’
TORY MPs are often called the ‘most sophisticated electorate in the world’.
Which will be why during the leadership ballots, several ran back into the voting room in a panic looking for the phones they had forgotten.
NO more money for public-sector workers. The National Insurance tax hike stays. Plans to tackle the cost of living – but not until October. No, not the manifesto of continuity candidate Rishi Sunak. But the exciting radical alternative put forward by Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
No number of glossy interviews wearing flattering red dresses can compensate for the Blair heir having nothing new to say and policies that are copycat blue.
BRANDON Lewis has apologised – not for his patchy record as Northern Ireland Secretary but for taking a donation from a ghost company.
Last month, the then-Cabinet Minister accepted £5,000, followed by days out at Lord’s
and Ascot worth £2,334 from a company run by a Pakistanborn Tory peer Lord (Zameer) Choudrey.
The billionaire donor was garlanded by Prince Charles before getting his seat in the Lords in 2019.
Lewis declared the money and freebies in his MP register of interests as coming from Bestway (Holdings) Ltd, which was put into voluntary liquidation nearly a year ago.
Asked about the donations, liquidator PWC said Bestway ‘has not made any donation or provided any hospitality tickets to Brandon Lewis MP since our appointment as liquidators on August 17, 2021’.
So, where did the money come from? When blogger Dr Alex May alerted Lewis to the donation’s ghostly nature, the MP apologised and blamed an ‘administrative error’ by his staff (classy) and said the donation was from another of Choudrey’s firms, Bestway Wholesale Ltd, whose parent company is incorporated in Guernsey.
Now on the backbenches, Lewis has time to read the
MPs’ Code of Conduct, which is clear MPs are ‘personally responsible’ for correctly registering their interests, with staff errors not an excuse.