On the Today Programme this morning Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones crystallised much of yesterday evening’s spin from Labour types on Tulip Siddiq’s resignation. Damage control in full deployment…
Laurie Magnus’ soft-touch “fact-finding exercise” blamed Siddiq for not anticipating optical problems with her taking the anti-corruption brief. Over a tetchy enough five minutes of questions from Justin Webb the takeaways from Jones are:
He doesn’t know if she was wrong to threaten the Mail on Sunday with legal action for asking about the provenance of her Awami League-gifted flat. That’s because “when you come into government every minister has to complete a comprehensive set of declarations of interest – Tulip had done that.” Magnus’ letter says ” a lack of records and lapse of time has meant that, unfortunately, I have not been able to obtain comprehensive comfort in relation to all the UK property-related matters”…
The “new independent process is working” because the adviser has “the right to conduct investigations irrespective of what the Prime Minister says.” Any action is of course always the PM’s choice…
No suggestion of improper behaviour on her part, it’s just that her association with her “wider family” has become a distraction. Interesting line…
It’s “not fair” to question Starmer’s judgement for hiring her in the first place seeing as she’s apparently resigned only for her association with Hasina. Right…
Tulip could be welcomed back in the future when the “distraction” over her family ends. That would be fun…
Tulip is right to step down.
Labour doesn’t have a bad habit when it comes to salubrious gifts because the Cabinet was educated at state school.
Labour will be hoping this will all go away now. Events in Bangladesh and closer to home may prevent that…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”
