The 2015 Popularity Contest (aka UK General Election )
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davek
Player Valuation: £150m
He was predicting that seat share yesterday and it was 1%.
Clegg losing his seat will be not quite on par with Portillo losing his.
Plotting how they can keep their servant Cameron in No 10.
We're All In It Together News:
The Tory Leader's Group donor club: 'A chance for like-minded people to talk'
A payment of £50,000 gives business people direct access to David Cameron and other senior Conservatives at dinners, drinks receptions and other events
David Cameron, above, and the chancellor, George Osborne, attend at least one Leader’s Group event for elite Tory supporters every three months. Photograph: Alex Wong/Camera Press
Holly Watt
Monday 4 May 2015
Since it was built in the 16th century, Syon House in west London has hosted the nation’s kingmakers and kings.
A recent Conservative party dinner was no exception, bringing together politicians and political donors in the exquisite house, which is owned by the Duke of Northumberland and surrounded by Capability Brown landscaping.
The black-tie event in March was held by one of the most exclusive dining clubs, the Leader’s Group, which requires a minimum donation of £50,000 a year to theConservatives. The group attracts some of the most successful business people in the world to regular dinners and parties with senior cabinet ministers, including the prime minister.
Rajeev Misra, a former debt trading executive at Deutsche Bank, gave the Conservatives £50,000 last year. He is the former boss of the culture secretary, Sajid Javid, and attended one of the Leader’s Group gatherings with his wife, Shalini, in Syon House.
Shalini Misra said the event gave “like-minded people” the chance to talk. “People come from all over the country and they are there for the cause. They talk about it. There are a few speeches that are quite nice to hear,” she said.
“A general election dinner in honour of the prime minister and Samantha Cameron,” said the glossy invitation, complete with crest. Guests arrived at 7pm and dined at 8.15pm, with “carriages at midnight”. Although it is set in 200 acres, Syon is, conveniently, only nine miles from central London.
Donors sat at long tables, discussing politics and catching up on gossip, and posed for photographs with the Camerons in front of the fireplace in the Red Drawing Room.
David and Samantha Cameron at the Syon House event, with Goldman Sachs banker Christopher French and artist Ghizlan El Glaoui Photograph: Instagram
But the Syon House event was only one of a series of glamorous functions held by the Tories for their major donors. In the marketing literature, the Conservatives make it clear what is on offer at the “premier supporter group of the Conservative party”.
“Members are invited to join David Cameron and other senior figures from the Conservative party at dinners, post-PMQ lunches, drinks receptions, election result events and important campaign launches,” says the literature.
One donor, who regularly attends the events, said some meetings were also held at the party’s headquarters in Westminster, a few minutes’ walk from the House of Commons. That would allow the prime minister to rush over every Wednesday that the house sits after facing parliament.
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Syon House, west London, owned by the Duke of Northumberland and the venue for a black-tie Leader’s Group dinner in March. Photograph: Robert Harding/Shutterstock
Since 2013, the Conservative party has provided a limited glimpse of its elite donor evenings. Four times a year, it published a list of donors who have attended events, along with a list of the cabinet ministers who have attended. The prime minister and the chancellor, George Osborne, go to at least one event every three months.
Alexander Temerko, the Ukrainian-born chairman of the Newcastle-based Offshore Group Newcastle (OGN), an energy services group that operates offshore windfarms, said the group mainly discussed how to make Britain a better place.
However, he sang the praises of the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, recently criticised for his personal attack on Ed Miliband over Trident, for his help as OGN tried to get a contract with the Danish company Maersk Oil. “He persuade, he chase Maersk to give us part of job. […] He has contacts. He tried to help us,” said Temerko.
At the time, OGN was bidding for a lucrative contract to build an oil rig component for Maersk. Temerko praised the way in which Fallon, then the energy minister in charge of oil and gas exploration, pushed for OGN to be awarded the contract. “Very powerful, very clever, very good man. He is one of the diamonds in the cabinet. He understand business. He has business and political mentality,” said Temerko.
Temerko insisted that he never discussed his own company at the Leader’s Group dinner, but would call for government support of, and tax breaks for, the North Sea oil industry.
This illustrates the tension around the organisation’s dinners.
In a recent decision by the court of appeal in relation to a libel case brought by Peter Cruddas, a former Tory party treasurer, against the Sunday Times, a judge pointed out that: “The one undeniable advantage which donors in the Leader’s Group have is that they can express their views directly to the prime minister or to other senior ministers. They do not have to rely upon civil servants or intermediaries to pass on their views.”
“I never talk to officials about my business, it’s like a Chinese wall. I can talk about industry, definitely. I talk about oil and gas sector,” said Temerko, who has given the Conservatives £327,230 in just over two years.
There are several other members of the Leader’s Group whose companies would undoubtedly benefit directly from any changes to the North Sea oil and gas tax regime.
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An invitation to the ‘general election dinner’ with David and Samantha Cameron at Syon House, west London. Photograph: Instagram
Temerko has known and worked in the oil and gas sector alongside Amjad Bseisu for “many, many, many years”. Bseisu is the chief executive of EnQuest, a North Sea oil company. He has given the Conservatives almost £100,000 in the past 18 months and attended the group’s events at least twice in the second half of 2014.
In the North Sea, EnQuest has pursued what it describes as a “scavenger strategy” centred on older fields that other oil companies have deemed unprofitable and abandoned.
In 2011, the coalition government raised the taxes on these fields in the North Sea. At the time, Bseisu called a tax rise a “two by four in the face” and said it threatened more than £200m of investment by his company. Bseisu insists he did not raise the issue at the Leader’s Group meetings.
In his last budget before the election, George Osborne cut petroleum revenue tax (PRT) for older oil fields.
“It’s definitely a welcome move in the right direction,” Bseisu told Bloomberg Television after the announcement. “It’s a very positive step. And I’m very happy the petroleum revenue tax has decreased.”
Last year, OGN signed a multimillion pound contract to rebuild a £250m ship, the EnQuest Producer, for Bseisu’s company. Even if Temerko’s own company doesn’t directly benefit from a change to the tax regime, OGN does a significant amount of business with EnQuest.
“It is EnQuest’s policy not to make political donations and any suggestion that I have ever attempted to influence government for personal gain is wrong,” said Bseisu in a statement.
Several businessmen who attend Leader’s Group events have received honours since the Conservatives came to power, with at least five entering the House of Lords.
Amjad Bseisu, chief executive of oil firm EnQuest, who attended Leader’s Group events at least twice in the second half of 2014, said: ‘It is EnQuest’s policy not to make political donations and any suggestion that I have ever attempted to influence government for personal gain is wrong.’
Since 2010, the former chief executive of Lansdowne Partners Paul Ruddock, the former Goldman Sachs banker Simon Robertson and the CQS hedge fund manager Michael Hintze have all been given knighthoods.
The car dealer Robert Edmiston received a peerage immediately after the 2010 election. Since then he has spoken four times in the Lords, and attended the same number of Leader’s Group events.
The former party treasurer Stanley Fink, who in February said that “everyone” carried out “vanilla” tax avoidance after a Guardian investigation into HSBC, received a peerage on January 2011. The industrialist and JCB heir Anthony Bamford and the financier Howard Leigh, who organises the events, were next.
Leigh co-founded Cavendish Corporate Finance, which co-ordinated the sale of the stationery firm Smythson, where Samantha Cameron works. Cameron received a windfall of about £430,000 in 2005, when the sale went through. Several major Conservative donors were involved in the purchase of Smythson, including Jeremy Isaacs and Howard Shore, who also attend Leader’s Group events.
The fifth member of the Leader’s Group to become part of Britain’s legislative system is the commodities trader Michael Farmer.
Of the 301 Conservative donors listed by the party as attending Leader’s Group events since March 2012, only six are women. These include Melanie Sherwood – wife of Michael Sherwood, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs – and Rosemary Saïd, the wife of Syrian arms dealer Wafic Saïd. Mr Saïd and Mr Sherwood do not donate personally.
Discretion is key. The Tories host the Black and White Ball every year – which this year was attended by Peter Stringfellow and attracted criticism for auctioning off a shoe-shopping trip with the home secretary. But with tickets at “only” about £1,500, the Grosvenor House ball is nothing compared with the Leader’s Group events.
All the Leader’s Group attendees contacted said that while the events were enjoyable, they were also used to develop policy and debate how to improve the country.
With its ornate Corinthian columns and marble statues of Ceres and Bacchus, the state dining room at Syon was designed by Robert Adam to “parade the conveniences and the social pleasures of life”.
How surprised Adam would be to find it used by some of the richest men in the world, all dressed up in black tie, to discuss improvements to the NHS.
Plotting how they can keep their servant Cameron in No 10.
Mrk
Player Valuation: £40m
Never said they were backing the Tories, because they're not, they're not backing the LDs either - they're backing a coalition between the two. Important distinction.
roydo
in memoriam - 1965-2024
How do they know who their readers vote for?
I used to read the Independent, but stopped years ago cos it was rubbish. Not because I didnt agree with what their editorial said.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
The Bow Group trying to prop up UKIP; the Indy trying to prop up the LDs...I'd say from that it isn't going too well for the centre-right bloc and the kitchen sink is being thrown in to try and shore it up.
Interesting times. There's just the faint whiff of panic setting in now I believe.
Interesting times. There's just the faint whiff of panic setting in now I believe.
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Polling?
roydo
in memoriam - 1965-2024
Probably. If a newspaper asked me though, I would tell them to do one.
Mrk
Player Valuation: £40m
I think you're being ever so slightly pedantic about my choice of words...
Call this whatever you like, but it is certainly an endorsement of some kind to a Lib-Con coalition: "For all its faults, another Lib-Con Coalition would both prolong recovery and give our kingdom a better chance of continued existence."
Couldn't agree more. The right wing are panicking so will need to resort to type. Scaremongering. More anti SNP nonsense. If all fails bring out the Miliband supports Putin/ISIS/North Korea/Falklands/Gibraltar/Miliband is an alien or some such nonsense.
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
For me, the way they have treated the most vulnerable in society has been nothing short of scandalous. Things like this, for example:
http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Aboutus...tForSixMonthsorMoreForDisabilityBenefits.aspx
Or the fact that benefit capping has effectively displaced over 50,000 families from central London to other places often without the expertise or resources to serve them sufficiently.
Or the litany of suicides in the wake of sanctions imposed by the Coalition.
And then there is the mysterious delaying of the Chilcot Report into the Iraq War (which, we're told, will limp out in a heavily redacted form after the election even though it was written years ago).
Mrk
Player Valuation: £40m
It may well do, but that doesn't mean it isn't the most shocking endorsement of the election to date.
It'll still make [Poor language removed] all difference to the result, mind you.
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