As Labour continues back-patting in the Liverpool Exhibition Centre, over at local socialist haunt The Casa Bar the Cuba Solidarity Campaign gathered for a fundraiser to help bypass the US’ sanctions regime against the communist country. Apart from receiving supportive speeches from Labour MPs and the Cuban Ambassador, numerous union representatives pledged their support to the totalitarian state…
Prison Officers Association general secretary Steve Gillan turned up to announce his union, the largest of prison officers in the UK, would fund the campaign to the tune of £10,000. He added that the funding wasn’t discretionary: “We’re not going to specify how that’s spent… Viva Cuba.” Union dues well spent then…
No one picked up the irony of someone representing prison officers pledging funding for a country which is currently starving and torturing over 1,020 political prisoners. They were too busy getting raffle tickets with a prize of a Che Guevara mug or flights to Cuba to notice…
Former Treasury minister and adviser to Burnham in the Makerfield campaign Lord Jim O’Neill, who has turned down a role in his government, said Burnham’s first statement Commons was:
“The last thing investors wanted to hear… gilt yields have risen by a 0.25% in one day, which is a lot. We’ve not had that since Liz Truss days… If your country is under the focus of ‘can they come up with a sensible fiscal strategy’ on a day when the markets think ‘well no, you’re not showing any sign of it’ you’re going to have a tough day…if it stays like this your mortgage rate is going up.”