MASSIVE new Labour scandal erupts!

Right, so if this isn’t the ultimate example of absolutely nothing changing under Keir Starmer and the Labour government he leads, having replaced the Tories after 14 years of their corruption and cronyism I’m not sure what does, but if this is the kind of thing donations to Labour are capable of buying in effect, then we should all be very, very concerned and all the more so, that this isn’t being picked up because a Labour donor, a banker who has donated £20,000 to Rachel Reeves our new Chancellor of the Exchequer, though given the economic nonsense that has spewed forth from her mouth since taking office, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s George Osborne in a wig, has just been given a job, working with her, in the Treasury. Is she literally selling jobs there now then? Are donors able to buy their way into plum government employment? The optics of this are scandalous, is our government infrastructure, the very running of governmental departments now up for sale to the highest bidder too?
Right, so this is a proper stinker of a story, the sort of thing we knew the Tories loved to get up to, jobs for the boys, contracts for their mates, the one instance springing to mind as I was writing this would be those pandemic VIP Lanes, most notably Matt Hancock and how his horse racing set couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with Jockey Club head honcho Dido Harding getting that track and trace contract, the cash involved it’s still unclear where it went and considering her husband was also a Tory MP in John Penrose who farcically was also the Tories anti corruption chief, the comedy just wrote itself.
But it seems Labour are going one further as on the face of it, it’s very easy to interpret a party donor who made a large donation to a key Labour figure in Rachel Reeves, being made a literal civil servant very shortly afterwards in her department, the Treasury, becoming one of the people who actually do the stuff of running government, it’s extremely worrying if donors can buy themselves into such positions, especially when they are bankers like Reeves and even more so when they are now influencing essentially the actions of the Treasury. Is he getting paid or is Reeves going to get another donation? Is he paying her, or is that already the deal done? How might he benefit himself being in that position? Has he had to set aside his business interests to take this role? How can we hold him to account?
The guy in question is Ian Corfield, who over the course of the last nine years has donated £20,000 to Rachel Reeves, he’d also been a big time donor to the odious Tom Watson, and on the face of it, it appears he’s been rewarded for that, alongside the fact he had been working as a senior business advisor to Labour since the beginning of this year, because bankers advising governments on business never ends badly does it? Reeves is a former banker herself of course, I’m sure bringing in another can’t possibly make matters worse.
Anyway, Corfield’s LinkedIn page helpfully outlines the man’s experience and track record and maybe gives an insight into what his role within the Treasury might be, his job title of Director at HM Treasury does not tell us a lot.
Corfield’s background is very much rooted in the credit industry. From 2007 to 2012 he served as the Chief Executive of Australian bank BankWest, before moving onto becoming CEO at another bank in Australia called, imaginatively, Aussie where he stayed for just a year before heading to the UK and taking up the post of Chief Commercial Officer at NewDay. For anyone who has perhaps had poor credit issues in the past, you might well know all about NewDay, who offered poor credit credit cards like Aqua or Marbles in order to supposedly help people rebuild their credit, with cards that have very high interest rates as you’d expect for bad credit, but limit rises are very easily obtained and offered – substantial ones at that - a lot of junk mail comes your way from them and back in 2016, during Corfield’s time there, NewDay fell afoul of the Financial Conduct Authority over unfair charges on store cards it offered, the likes of Debenhams and Topshop for example, where redress of some £4m between some 180,000 customers was agreed.
So Corfield is something of a specialist in the bad credit banking scene it seems fair to say, certainly according to his LinkedIn it is where the vast majority of his banking experience appears to come from.
So why does Rachel Reeves want such a person? Did he just buy his way in as the optics of the situation invite opinions of, or is there a specific purpose she needs his help with? My concern here, is that Reeves might be looking for some kind of banker type answer to the cost of living crisis, where banks, their investors, shareholders whatever could look set to make bank so to speak off the backs of people struggling financially due to circumstances beyond their control – low wages, high bills and rather than deal with the underlying causes of all of that, she’s looking for a sticking plaster to cover it up instead and a credit line to the poor, for consolidation perhaps, small, long term lower interest credit, not necessarily low, just lower, to help people feel better off, rather than actually becoming better off. I’m looking for a reason for Reeves to choose to employ this guy and this is, based on what I’ve found about him, the conclusion I’m coming to. The alternative of course is that he did just buy himself a job.
However, you might be thinking by this point, Damo, government appointments like this have to pass muster, how can a donor possibly be allowed to be appointed like this, doesn’t Whitehall have to check these things off and ensure candidates to jobs are suitable and you’d be right, they do, however there is no rule precluding a donor from becoming a civil servant, no rule has been broken in this appointment, which seems shambolic, but here’s an excerpt from Politico, that explains what has happened here and why this has been allowed to happen:
‘The government must meet stringent requirements when appointing senior civil servants, including holding a transparent and fair process that’s open to competition. The civil service watchdog, the Civil Service Commission, must also approve senior appointments.
But the watchdog also has an "exceptions" rule. It allows appointments to be made outside the usual process, and can apply in the case of temporary hires, secondments, or if an individual has highly specialist skills. The Civil Service Commission told POLITICO Corfield's hire was approved under this rule.
"This temporary appointment was approved by the Commission, recognising the need for the Civil Service to quickly bring in relevant skills for a fixed term. All appointments by exception are reminded of their responsibilities under the Civil Service Code to act with impartiality, objectivity, integrity and honesty," the Civil Service Commission said in a statement.’
So Corfield was allowed in via the exceptions rule because of his particular skill set then? A skill set that seems to be based upon the bad credit banking industry. It’s also a temporary appointment. I don’t know whether being put through the correct checks can make that permanent later, but presumably it could. Other than that, Corfield is only wanted for a short time, it can be argued that this is because the Labour government is still very early days in and genuinely needs what it sees as the right people to get going, or it can be seen as I’ve seen it, this guy’s skill set is in bad credit, is there a move to help people short term by potentially lumbering them with more debt long term? That’s my fear. For what I postulated a moment ago, there has to be a return on the investment, so the debt burden would have to grow with the interest applied to see that happen.
Whether Corfield has been brought in for a particular task, as his appointment being approved via the exception rule implies, or he’s just a banker mate of Reeves and longtime donor not so much brought in as bought in, just the mere fact another banker is now involved in the Treasury aside from Reeves herself will bother many people and certainly comment on this story on social media implies as much.
Former Green Party parliamentary candidate Sharmen Rahman said:
‘Wow. If a Conservative government had done this there would have (rightly) been uproar . . . So far very little given how controversial this appointment could be in terms of impartiality.’
Twitter user Katie quoted a piece from the Politico excerpt in her response:
‘"There is no suggestion any rules have been broken by Corfield, Reeves, or the Labour Party, however, his appointment does throw a spotlight on civil service impartiality" Does anyone still believe the Civil Service is impartial?’
Certainly the civil service is supposed to be seen as such, but appointments like this certainly don’t encourage confidence in the public that that is true does it?
And Timothy Barnes wrote:
‘So Labour complains about Conservatives working too closely with donors and then appoints one of theirs to a senior job in the Treasury - which is way beyond anything they ever caused Tories of doing! Double standards.’
And therein lies the rub of course. Labour would have slammed the Tories for doing this, yet have invited the Tories to now lay into them over this. Fundamentally nothing changes though, when both of these parties pull the same cronyism stunts, yet one or the other always gets returned to power, so where is the pressure upon them to do differently? To be better? They will only ever get worse because they have no fear of anyone acting contrary to that.
Reeves needs to be made to explain this appointment in detail and we need to keep an eye out for mentions of Corfield going forward because as much as Labour may well be getting slammed amongst those who know about it for to all appearances having sold a Directorship in the Treasury, I think there’s more to it and given Corfield’s background, it won’t be to the benefit of ordinary working class people, who Labour are meant to represent.
Of course even if Reeves were to come out and explain Corfield’s precise role, theirs is always the matter of believing her. After all, she’s lied through her teeth about a certain £20bn shortfall in the nations finances, claiming she didn’t know about it – well we all did, so where was she? Get the details of all of her dishonesty on that story, set to herald more Tory style cuts and tax rises on us instead of the rich in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.