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Jo Maugham

21 Mar, 13 tweets, 4 min read

So here's the remarkable sequence of events on Rishi, Cameron and Greensill as recorded by the Financial Times and the Sunday Times.

And what it means.THREAD

Lex Greensill is working at the heart of Cameron's Government in 2014. He is given "bizarre" or "weird" levels of access.

In 2018 Cameron gets a part time job with Greensill and gets share options worth as much as £70m.

Then things begin to sour for Greensill and in 2020 it has ten (recorded) meetings with Treasury officials.

No financial support for Greensill is forthcoming so Cameron steps in to lobby Rishi Sunak and - at Rishi's request - Greensill is given another hearing by HMT officials.

That lobbying of Rishi by Cameron happens through unofficial channels - here text messages. "Most" - not all - go unanswered.

Ultimately, Treasury officials refuse to sign off on the deal and Cameron's share options become worthless. Just the one caravan then.

But still, Rishi got Greensill a second chance at Cameron's urging. The story might have been different.

We know sometimes it is different. We know Hancock gave a contract to his publican, Alex Bourne, after private WhatsApp messages. We can't be sure that the WhatsApp messages had an influence but it's not exactly a great look.

These are not the only examples. I am aware - because I have seen them with my own eyes - of other pandemic procurement ministers, and Dominic Cummings, using private email addresses to conduct Government procurement business.

The problem with using unofficial channels if you are spending billions or tens of billions of public money without competition is that there needs to be transparency and accountability over where those huge sums of public money are going.

The Government refuses to publish. meetings Baroness Harding, married to a Tory MP who is apparently anti-corruption champion, has had.

She has a £37bn spend and, the Public Accounts Committee Chair says, it is hard to point to any measurable difference that vast spend has made.

Emails can be deleted. WhatsApp messages can be (and often are) set to auto delete. How do we get transparency over these staggering sums? Will it ever show up in FOI requests? Might it be deleted when when going gets tough? Will it be disclosed in litigation or a public inquiry?

We know Cameron was able to lobby Rishi to give Greensill another chance. Can we know other friendships, political connections, donor relationships, favours aren't being leveraged to win vast public contracts? Would you bet on it? I wouldn't!

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More from @JolyonMaugham

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

21 Mar

@ReclaimTS

Well worth a read on the extraordinary achievement of the organisers of @ReclaimTS in raising over £0.5m for women's charities. theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2…

@ReclaimTS

Postscript on the attack on the women running @ReclaimTS in @PrivateEyeNews. There's a writer there, a man, who had been a supporter of my work. He asked me to brief him on stuff I was doing, on eg tax avoidance, Brexit and procurement and wrote about it there and elsewhere.

There was a week in which I briefed him on a piece featuring our work he was writing for a prominent left wing newspaper.

Then I tweeted about the absurdity of the claims Suzanne Moore had been cancelled emitting from almost every major media platform after leaving the Guardian.

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Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

16 Mar

The thing is, the law can't stop protest. All it can do is criminalise the people for doing it. That's the path this Government has chosen. As intolerant, autocratic governments do.

We all know what relationship a Government that criminalises dissent has with its people. It's that relationship this Government is choosing. But they can't silence the people.

It would be somewhat awkward not to, given we are breaching them ourselves.

Read 4 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

15 Mar

"The insider was also told she was paid 30% - likely a seven-figure sum - of Worldlink's profits on the deals. But Ms Ley's lawyers would not tell the BBC how much commission she earned." bbc.co.uk/news/uk-564005…

If we could see the meta story of PPE deals this - well connected and usually undisclosed parties brokering deals for money - would be a big part of it.

I make no allegations about Ms Ley but where you have undisclosed insiders brokering contracts with companies - especially in combination with the VIP lane and companies being introduced by Ministers - you have the clearest possible opportunity for corruption.

Read 8 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

15 Mar

A criminal justice system that decriminalises rape isn't worthy of the name.

A Government that cared about the epidemic of sexual violence against women would legislate to address failures in the criminal justice system rather than legislating to limit the right of women to complain about them.

Here's my 2018 cri de coeur - saying what I can for the women I love whose lives have been destroyed by rape - for Government to take the continuing crisis seriously. newstatesman.com/politics/femin…

Read 4 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

14 Mar

If, as Cressida Dick here states, the vigil was unlawful how, one wonders, did Kate Middleton manage to escape arrest - or indeed any sanction at all?

@ReclaimTS

Her refusal to acknowledge the facts - that the Judge anticipated the Met engaging with @ReclaimTS about the form of a vigil, that after proper engagement a lawful vigil could have been held, and that had that happened last night might have been avoided - is really troubling.

Of course, if the Tories persist in their snowflake attempt to criminalise much peaceful protest, Cressida may come to be right for future vigils.

Read 5 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

14 Mar

@ReclaimTS

What an extraordinary job @ReclaimTS is doing. A small, mixed team of young women, none professional politicians, thrown together from a standing start, handling a really complex policy mix, with emotions high, and keeping it at the top of the political agenda for day after day.

The flag they carry is for all women suffering routine sexual harassment and violence. Easy to give in to the temptation of advocating law-breaking which would enable opponents to sully that flag. Easy to get sidetracked into criticisms of the Met. Leave those points for others.

@ReclaimTS

I expect Cressida Dick will meet with them. I expect she will be forced into concessions. That will be a real win. So too is @ReclaimTS achievement in keeping violence against women top of the news agenda, day after day.

And you can't argue with this. justgiving.com/crowdfunding/r…

Read 4 tweets

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