Tag: Partygate

Starmer Under Pressure to Reveal What He Knew About Louise Haigh’s Fraud Conviction Before She Quit Cabinet

Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure to explain why he allowed a convicted fraudster to be part of his top team for more than four years, after once stating that “you can’t be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker”.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Will Jones

Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure to explain why he allowed a convicted fraudster to be part of his top team for more than four years, after once stating that “you can’t be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker”. The Mail has more.

Louise Haigh quit as Transport Secretary early this morning after confirming she pleaded guilty to an offence involving an insurance claim for a stolen mobile phone that was not stolen. 

No. 10 today suggested that the 37-year-old hid the full details of the 2014 conviction when she joined Sir Keir’s team in 2020.

However friends of the prominent Left-winger dispute this and say she told the PM everything. A spokesman for Sir Keir today was unable to expand on what he knew and when he knew it when grilled by reporters at lunchtime.

It is embarrassing for the PM after his May 2022 demand for a squeaky clean administration. In a Commons attack on then PM Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal he demanded Tory MPs remove him, saying: “The game is up. You cannot be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker, and it is time to pack his bags.”

In a lengthy briefing with reporters a spokesman for the PM would only say that the PM accepted her resignation, the first the Labour Government has suffered since the July election, “following further information emerging” today.

A Conservative Party spokesman said this “raises questions as to why the Prime Minister appointed Ms. Haigh to Cabinet with responsibility for a £30 billion budget”.

“The onus is now on Keir Starmer to explain this obvious failure of judgement to the British public,” he added.

Swindon South MP Heidi Alexander, who was a Deputy London Mayor under Sadiq Khan, was unveiled as her replacement this morning. Ms Haigh, who is seen as a leading member of Labour’s ‘soft Left’, was one of the longest-serving members of the Starmer shadow and full Cabinet, having been appointed interim Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary in 2020 and Shadow Transport Secretary the following year.

Last night it emerged she appeared in court for wrongly claiming her mobile phone had been stolen in an insurance claim to her then employer, Aviva, after she was mugged, pleading guilty. 

But it was also claimed that the Sheffield Heeley MP – a former special constable and shadow policing minister – revealed her spent conviction when she joined Sir Keir’s team four years ago.

It raises questions over what the PM and other senior officials knew about her criminal past, and whether he was prepared to accept it. 

In a statement Ms. Haigh said she discovered “some time later” that the work phone had not been taken. 

She said the matter was a “genuine mistake” from which she “did not make any gain”. She pleaded guilty to fraud by misrepresentation after a probe by her then employer, insurance giant Aviva, and magistrates gave her the “lowest possible outcome”.

Worth reading in full.

Zac Goldsmith’s Resignation Letter Proves There is No Pleasing the Net Zero Fanatics

As Zac Goldsmith resigns over the supposed “apathy” of the Government on environmental issues (yes, really), Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph says it just goes to show that there’s no pleasing the Net Zero extremists.

From The Daily Sceptic

By WILL JONES

As Zac Goldsmith resigns over the supposed “apathy” of the Government on environmental issues (yes, really), Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph says it just goes to show that there’s no pleasing the Net Zero extremists. Here’s an excerpt.

The resignation of Zac Goldsmith, prompted by the Government’s supposed “apathy” on environmental issues, should teach Rishi Sunak a salient lesson.

The Tory peer quit his role as a Foreign Office minister, claiming the U.K. had “stepped off the world stage” on climate and nature, adding: “Too often we are simply absent from key international fora.” Because that’s exactly what the world needs right now – VIPs flocking by private jet to more fora on flora and fauna. 

As one of Boris Johnson’s closest allies, there was undoubtedly more to his dramatic sayonara than green concerns. You do not need to be Poirot to work out the hidden meaning in his suggestion that “having been able to get so much done previously, I have struggled to even hold the line in recent months. The problem is not that the Government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our Prime Minister, are simply uninterested”.

It is no secret that Johnson and his supporters despise Sunak and will do everything in their power to undermine him between now and the next general election after ‘Big Dog’ was forced out of the Commons kennel over partygate. But what Goldsmith’s resignation letter proves is that there is no pleasing the environmental extremists of this world – or any extremist, for that matter. 

The Conservatives have been bending over backwards to meet a Net Zero target that is seemingly anathema to many of its own supporters, yet still those such as Goldsmith, like overgrown Greta Thunbergs, are bleating on about doing more. 

It’s not enough for the likes of this entitled Old Etonian that we should be stripped of our right to drive petrol and diesel cars come 2030, or forced to replace our gas boilers with expensive heat pumps. He won’t be satisfied until wind farms have taken over the entire British Isles and we’re all commuting by eco-scooter – regardless of the crippling cost to the U.K. taxpayer – while other nations build more CO2-belching coal-fired power stations.

Goldsmith (net worth: an estimated £300 million) might not be affected by the £170 green levy that has just been slapped on our energy bills, but sadly that’s not the case for many Brits who, until yesterday, paid his wages. When he talks of a kind of “paralysis” in Whitehall is he aware there is a cost of living crisis, or is he too busy auditioning to replace Chris Packham on Springwatch?

Worth reading in full.