It is very clear that this article in the Daily Telegraph is not claiming that David Cameron has been corrupt. He has as many of us have read in other places apparently used his personal and historic contacts with a range of very powerful people in the current Government to try to help the business that he was being very well paid for, before it went bust. Given that his access to Rishi Sunak and other Ministers was deemed very useful to such a business, it is perhaps understanding that he can get paid millions of pounds each year for his influence. There are many other examples of people who have spent time working within the Government or within Parliament or even in some cases within Councils who have been handed personal contracts that many of us find disturbing. Then again many of us use our contacts to help achieve objectives or build businesses so it becomes very hard to determine what is acceptable and what is crossing inappropriate lines. After all when people who have been Prime Ministers or even MPs or Presidents can get paid literally millions of pounds for making speeches and supporting companies, this may seem a bit extreme to those of us whose pay opportunities is much lower, but perhaps that is perfectly acceptable. Indeed maybe we should applaud them for their success. However if hidden conversations with national leaders release funds to businesses from public money and then the businesses pay people that the national leaders used to work with and who began the conversations, one could question if there is corruption. It is here that a Parliamentary Inquiry would make sense. Yet according to a very public Daily Telegraph article, it was Conservative MPs who blocked the call for an Inquiry. Now publicly blocking calls is not a high level of corruption. Indeed arguably it will save money from being spent to formulate the inquiry. However if the Conservative MPs are protecting their processes or their colleagues for mistakes or worse, is concerning. If this was a Labour Government and the Labour MPs were blocking inquiries into influence from some well funded Trade Unions that were changing situations for the nation in a non democratic way that would be just as disturbing. So perhaps what is needed is an Independent basis for such inquiries from now on and for party dominance to be ended when it comes to looking into corruption! The first piece of text is from a different concern which has emerged since Tuesday night and has appeared in a number of places including the Independent online piece and then the second piece is from this article in the Telegraph. Both of these and indeed potentially other cases need to be checked in my view. The Telegraph piece was authored by Rachel Millard, Louise Moon and the Independent piece came from Jon Stone.

Boris Johnson is facing a barrage of criticism after he told Tory MPs that he believed “greed” was behind the success of the UK’s Covid vaccination programme. Campaigners said the prime minister’s comments showed he had a “warped” understanding of how the vaccine had been developed and why the UK’s rollout had so far been so successful. In comments first reported by The Sun newspaper Mr Johnson told a video call with Conservative backbenchers: “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.” Apparently sensing he had made a gaffe, the Tory leader is understood to have repeatedly asked those at the 1922 Committee meeting to forget he used the term.

Conservative MPs have blocked an attempt to launch a parliamentary inquiry into David Cameron’s work for collapsed lender Greensill. The influential Treasury select committee discussed the matter on Monday but a bid by Labour MPs to investigate it further was shot down. The former prime minister is alleged to have contacted the Treasury, including Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, and Number 10 to try to help Greensill access coronavirus relief funding. On Monday night, Channel 4 News reported that the Bank of England told the programme it had also received several approaches from Greensill, including on its behalf personally from Mr Cameron, trying to help Greensill access the Covid Corporate Financing Facility for large firms. Mr Cameron was hired as an adviser to Greensill in 2018, two years after leaving Downing Street. Its founder Lex Greensill was made CBE for services to the economy in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2017. The company collapsed into administration at the start of the month, leaving Britain’s third largest steel producer, Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, scrambling to raise new financing. Mr Cameron’s alleged approaches to Number 10, the Treasury and the Bank of England did not succeed, with Greensill denied access to the CCFF. However, the claims have triggered concerns about transparency and fairness. Labour shadow chancellor Annaliese Dodds over the weekend called for an inquiry, saying: “This is public money, and the processes involved in decision-making should be fully transparent and beyond reproach. “The Government must leave no stone unturned with a full and thorough investigation into this.”