“The amendments are an attempt to ensure that we end up with a framework to deal with not just the goods we import and export but the services we trade in. The customs union amendment that we passed overwhelmingly a few weeks ago is only one half of the equation. The customs union deals only with goods. That is very important: it deals only with goods—tangible items such as cars, washing machines and televisions—where we have a £96 billion trade deficit.
The EEA deals with services—such as retail, tourism, transport, communications, financial services and aerospace, where we have a £14 billion trade surplus…without an EEA equivalent, it will damage our profitable export business and therefore the jobs and livelihoods of many thousands of people. It is for that reason we need to ensure that any continuation in the customs union must include continuation in the EEA or its equivalent…this is bigger than party politics. It is about people’s jobs. It is about the future of our economy.”
The Lords Commissioner Standards has completed an investigation into Lord Alli’s potential breaches of conduct. It concludes there are four breaches:
“Finally, while I consider each individual breach of the Code to be minor, I have found there to be four breaches in total, and have therefore recommended that Lord Alli write a letter of apology to the Chair of the Conduct Committee, Baroness Manningham-Buller.”
Lord Alli’s apology:
“I am writing to you today to offer my apology for my breach of conduct by not registering my interests correctly. I will endeavour to keep to the Code of Conduct at all times to avoid such circumstances again.”
The breaches are explained:
- “Lord Alli should have included in his entry on the Register of Lords’ Interests his position as an unremunerated director of The Charlie Parsons Foundation, as well as his trusteeship. By not doing so he was in breach of paragraphs 14(a) and 17 of the Code of Conduct.”
- “I find that Lord Alli’s late registration of his interest as an unremunerated director of MAC (BVI) Limited breached paragraph 17 of the Code of Conduct.”
- “I find that Lord Alli should have maintained his entry in category 3 of the Register of Lords’ Interests as he remains on the Companies House register as a Person with Significant Control of Silvergate BP Bidco Limited.”
- “Similarly, I find that he should have maintained his registration in category 4(a) of his shareholding amounting to a controlling interest. By removing these register entries prematurely Lord Alli breached paragraphs 14(a) and 17 of the Code of Conduct.”
Read the full report below:
Of all the plum jobs in the Commons, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FASC) is the sweetest. It gives the incumbent a strong media platform, endless global jollies, and the chance to quiz David Lammy, which should be nothing if not entertaining…
When Emily Thornberry was brutally but hilariously binned from the incoming Labour Government, she launched a hardcore lobbying campaign to become FASC chairman. Lady Nugee ‘put the thumbscrews on’, said one Labour MP, pressuring her parliamentary colleagues to back her and help her recover from the embarrassment of not getting a front bench role. There’s a little local difficulty however, which is being talked about on the Labour benches…
Thornberry is best friends with scandal-wrecked Lord Alli. She lived on the same street as him in the 1990s, and is credited with actually introducing Alli to the party in the first place: ‘Lord Alli was encouraged to join Labour by his next-door neighbour, Emily Thornberry‘. As Guido revealed, Alli has some exotic foreign policy preferences, joining figures such as Jeremy Corbyn as one of the very few British parliamentarians to go into bat for – checks notes – Bashar al Assad. As he boasted himself in a Lords debate: “I have visited Syria on a number of occasions and held talks with President Assad on several.”
And which Shadow Foreign Secretary caused outrage in 2018 when they praised Assad’s “depth and breadth of support” which is greater “than is recognised in the west”? Only Lady Nugee herself. An eyebrow raising coincidence making Labour MPs nervous about her chairmanship…
Ellie Reeves has ‘updated’ the Commons on rule changes Labour is pursuing in the ongoing freebiegate scandal. Reeves blames the Tories for an anodyne discrepancy between ministerial declarations and MP declarations…
Reeves says the government will close Tories’ “freebie loophole” with a new version of the register of ministers’ gifts and hospitality – to function on a “broadly equivalent” basis to the MP register. The ministerial register is only different in that the value of gifts is not declared and it is published every quarter as opposed to every fortnight. Altering that system does nothing to address Labour’s rank hypocrisy over months of freebies revelations…
Seeing as the Tories managed to get an Urgent Question in Shadow Paymaster General John Glen asked Reeves for a few clarifications, including:
- Will ministers be banned from taking tickets to the Oasis 25 tour?
- What role did Downing Street play in the VIP escort further to the free tickets for Taylor Swift from Universal Music?
- Have all the political staff in the PM’s parliamentary office correctly declared their financial interests and hospitality?
- Why do ministers refuse in PQs to say when the new ministerial transparency platform will go live?
- Will the PM recuse himself from the Football Governance Bill after taking a donation in kind of £100,000 a year from Arsenal Football Club?
- Where is Labour’s new ethics and integrity commission?
- What discussions did Sue Gray have with Lord Alli on ministerial appointments and public appointments?
- Will ministers place in the library all the documents relating to Lord Alli’s operational integrity?
Reeves launched on the Tories in response and said she’d “take no lectures” as Labour backbenchers are rolled out to list historic Tory freebie-taking. Pressed on Swiftgate, Reeves stuck to the line that the top-level security motorcade was an “operational matter” for the police, despite the fact that the Attorney General, Mayor of London, Sue Gray, and the Home Secretary all personally got involved in lobbying the Met. Labour’s lines on the latest freebiegate scandal are going as well as all the last ones…
Guido first raised Starmer’s potential multiple electoral law breach last month over his living in an address in a constituency other than the one put on his nomination paper. Starmer himself said he and his family moved into Lord Alli’s £18 million penthouse before the deadline for submitting nomination papers – in the Cities of London and Westminster…
Starmer admitted about his son:
“I promised him we would move somewhere, get out of the house and go somewhere where he could be peacefully studying”
UKIP’s Paul Nuttall was investigated by police in 2017 for claiming on his nomination paper that he lived at a house hadn’t yet moved into. He was forced to prove to them that he used his house regularly as a “base” in the campaign for the Stoke By-Election. Guido understands that the City of London Police are in the process of referring the matter to the Met in response to a submitted inquiry. The Met will be formally required to consider it. An equal application of the law would see the matter investigated, seeing as Nuttall was officially probed for the exact same reason…
Starmer told parliament he was living at Lord Alli’s in Covent Garden (Westminster and Camden) before and after the election, declared as the sworn truth that at the time he was was living in Kentish Town (Holbron & St Pancras) on his nomination form. The law is clear, must be current address or you are committing a criminal offence.
Those who contact the Chief Executives Office of Camden Council with regard to Starmer’s potential breach of electoral law have been contacted by Camden’s Borough Solicitor, who advises them to contact the police “immediately.” Translation: ‘We do not want to deal with this one’…
Boris has done a long interview with Wilfred Frost on Sky News. Apart from pointing out that the public ‘craved’ lockdown rules, Boris had a few words about his old chum Sue Gray:
“I appointed Sue Gray, who then turned out to be the Chief of Staff leader of the Labour Party – RIP… “
Boris issued his analysis of the current Downing Street implosion:
“At the time that I asked her to do that particular job, she had presented to me as a model of political impartiality and propriety, and I’m not certain about either of those things…. I thought it was always looking a bit dodgy – her position was probably going to be untenable ever since it emerged that her son had taken money from Waheed Alli, and that she’d then given Waheed Alli a pass to No 10. I thought that was probably going to end in the way that it has.”
Cronies gonna crony…
Questions about the motives of big Labour donor Lord Alli are swirling in SW1. The party’s line that he’s just a peer without any agenda, and that he doesn’t intervene politically apart from ‘being Labour’, took a hit when Guido exposed his arguments against the ousting of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Coupled with the fact he was sent to Iraq by Number 10 to meddle in the January 2005 elections, Labour’s defence line is quickly wearing thin…
Guido has dug through the archives and found more evidence of Alli intervening politically. Back in May 2018, then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn urged his MPs to resist calls for a Norway-style Brexit deal. Lord Alli was far from happy, denouncing the move as “cowardice.” He made his case in the Lords for why the UK should remain in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the Customs Union:
