18 months after receiving the Russia Report, the government still hasn’t implemented any of its recommendations
In that time, the Tories have taken more than £1m in donations from Russia-linked sources
The report called for action to clean up dirty money & protect our democracy
Alexander Temerko has given more than £700K to the Conservative Party.
He ‘forged a career at the top of the Russian arms industry and had connections at the highest levels of the Kremlin’ and spoke of how he would ‘plot’ with his friend Boris Johnson:
Temerko’s company Aquind has donated more than £470,000.
Former Business Secretary Alok Sharma dined with executives from the company whose energy project he was due to approve, before eventually recusing himself.
Tory MP David Morris received £10,000 from Aquind in 2019 before asking a question in Parliament about regulatory issues that would benefit the company.
Cabinet Minister Brandon Lewis and Foreign Office Minister Nigel Adams are among several Tory MPs that received repeated cash donations from Temerko in the past, according to the Electoral Commission.
Lubov Chernukhin, wife of Putin’s former deputy finance minister, has given more than £2m to the Tories.
She paid £30k to have dinner with Gavin Williamson, £160k to play tennis with Boris Johnson and £135k to have dinner with Theresa May and Liz Truss. cityam.com/tories-enraged…
In 2014, David Cameron was urged to return donations from Chernukhin, but didn’t.
Chernukhin has remained a major Tory donor and last year gave £400,000 to the Conservative Party. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2…
The leaked FinCEN files reveal Chernukhin’s husband received £8m from Putin ally Suleyman Kerimov. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-542280…
Lord Barker, David Cameron’s Minister for Energy until 2014, is paid millions by a Russian energy company linked to oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a friend of Vladimir Putin. telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/1…
Meanwhile, the UK is still a haven for dirty money.
The head of the National Economic Crime Centre says up to half of the money laundered out of Russia goes through the UK.
He says current efforts to prosecute those responsible are “not good enough”.
The Integrated Review is riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. There is a yawning gap between this government's words and its action
Russia: the government says it’s the most acute threat to Britain’s security, so why has it failed to implement any of the recommendations of the Russia Report?
Saudi arms sales: The government is the ‘penholder’ for Yemen, responsible for drafting UN resolutions to support the peace process, so why is it continuing to sell arms to Saudi Arabia? theguardian.com/world/2021/feb…
I have spoken for many years about declining high streets in our towns. A declining high street is a visible symbol of a town's relative prosperity and people feel that decline very deeply. @BBCPanorama
If the local population is ageing and/or struggling to make ends meet, the high street responds accordingly by replacing flagship retailers with discount stores.
Many of our towns are ageing rapidly. They are thus being stripped of the spending power required to sustain a vibrant mix of high street retailers. Which is one of the reasons why I've been passionately advocating for our towns.
I have just read the PM's Brexit plan, and it has changed…. For the worse. Here are the big changes.
1) Workers rights binned: the key protections in clause 34 now dropped entirely. No clarity on when or what rights workers will have in law by December next year.
2) New December 2020 cliff edge enshrined in law. The new Clause 33 sets a new one year cliff edge for our manufacturers and jobs, damaging our economy.
Today’s Guardian editorial focuses on a rapidly aging nation and work from @centrefortowns which shows the division this has caused between our towns and cities theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
One major (and growing) crisis this has created is in health and social care. In recent years politicians and NHS commissioners have chosen to concentrate those services in major cities, but the older people who most need them don’t live there centrefortowns.org/reports/the-co…
Another is housing. There are 2 million more over-65s in towns than there were in 1981 and this is set to grow. But, as @RIBA and @centrefortowns have shown, we’re building the wrong housing in the wrong places amp.theguardian.com/society/2019/j…
Take a look at where the Revoke Article 50 petition has got the fewest and most signatures. These are two Englands with differences in experience and outlook that run much deeper than the current divisions over Brexit
Views on major issues have been diverging in rural and urban areas and it’s been happening unnoticed for decades, as @drjennings and Gerry Stoker first wrote back in 2016 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…
These areas have had very different experiences of globalisation over recent decades. Towns have lost good jobs and young people have moved away. It’s an aging story as @election_data and @centrefortowns showed here centrefortowns.org/reports/the-ag…
I've been handed emails showing that Ministers and DfT officials were warned about Northern rail chaos 2 years ago. They show utter contempt for Northern passengers. #PMQs
DfT officials describe key routes as 'not really valued' and discuss giving a "sop" to campaigners.
They admit key Northern routes will be axed as early as 2015...