Tory Chumocracy are the Brexit winners

SO who are the main winners in the Covid-Brexit stakes?

1. The Tory Chumocracy, ie Tory friends and firms, who have picked up, often without contracts going to open tender, very lucrative Covid contracts. The PM and Matt Hancock appointed key figures in the action against the virus, namely Dido Harding, a Tory peer, as head of Test and Trace; Kate Bingham, who is married to a Tory minister, as head of the Vaccine Task Force; and Mike Coupe as Director of Testing at NHS Test and Trace.

These people are now the subject of a court case brought by The Good Law Project who claim they were appointed without advertisement and without open competition and are also not suitable or qualified for the jobs.

In addition, the government has used private firms closely connected to the Tory Party to take over public services: thus Serco, headed by Rupert Soames, brother of the Tory MP Nicholas Soames, was awarded the Test-and-Trace contract of £410 million; the contract, however, containing no penalty clause. Serco has consistently failed to reach the required 80% of contacts.

2. Speculators and offshore tax-evaders. Many individuals and corporations who use offshore tax havens to avoid paying tax to the UK funded the Brexit campaigns and the winning party in the recent election. And a majority of government contracts have been given to these very firms.

The UK facilitates one third of all global tax dodging which includes large corporations and very wealthy individuals.

Dominic Cummings’s slogan

“Take Back Control” seems to mean Pass the Power (and the money) to the Conservative Party.

M Temple Sidmouth