Leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt was on resignation watch from her job as Trade Minister last week after she spoke out against a proposed £1.2 billion underwater electricity cable project backed by an oligarch and major Tory donor.
Mordaunt opposed Aquind’s plans to build the channel interconnector between Normandy (where she is an MP) and Portsmouth.
Temerko, who previously ran a firm producing weapons for Russia’s military, and Aquind have given more than £1 million to the Tories and the oligarch has regularly featured in photos at fundraisers with Prime Ministers and their Cabinets.
According to government sources, Mordaunt said he was willing to quit if it was approved for the cable.
Mordaunt strongly opposed Aquind’s co-owner Alexander Temerko to build an interconnector under Channel between Normandy & Portsmouth. (Her home city is where she is an MPP).
Although the project was rejected on Thursday, her ‘#StopAquind’ tweet hasn’t gone unnoticed.
‘There goes her leadership campaign!’ quipped a Tory MP who’s no stranger to the Temerko rouble – adding that Mordaunt’s leadership campaign war chest will now be a little lighter.
This is in contrast to Jeremy Hunt, who is also ‘on manoeuvres’ and a regular recipient of Aquind largesse which, like Temerko’s, is pure, selfless magnanimity.
Speaking of MPs on manoeuvres, a surprise name joined the ‘Blue Collar Conservatives’ last week. According to sources, most of the WhatsApp group consists Red Wall MPs who campaign for working-class issues. Last week, Tom Tugendhat joined the ‘Blue Collar Conservatives’ WhatsApp group. He is the Cambridge-educated, privately educated son of a High Court judge, and nephew of an peer. ‘He’s more ermine than blue collar,’ one ragged-trousered member said of 48-year-old Tugs, who, cynical minds might think, was expanding his support base ahead of a leadership contest.
Partygate, the new ‘Us and Them’ Government scandal, didn’t stop the spinners wheeling out a Tory Party donor-made-peer to defend Boris Johnson on BBC2’s Newsnight.
Lord Marland described Downing Street as ‘the most oppressive place on Earth’. Adding, apparently oblivious to the Carrie Antoinette No 10 refurb brouhaha: ‘You wouldn’t want to live there.’
After the orchestrated intervention from the peer (who lives in Wiltshire’s manor), there was an item on rising energy prices and an interview with someone who stated that their family has been living without enough food to heat their homes. This sounds almost like Winter is coming to the House of Johnson.
The opening salvo in the internal Tory battle for a place in The Dictionary Of Quotations came from ex-SAS man David Davis, who invoked Oliver Cromwell via Tory MP Leopold Amery when telling Boris: ‘In the name of God, go.’
The PM’s allies responded by deploying words used by Margaret Thatcher (borrowed from Roosevelt’s daughter) to slap down Michael Heseltine. They said Davis ‘always wants to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral’.
Who’ll end up the political corpse – DD or double-D fan Boris – remains unclear.
Katharine Braddick who was until recently the Treasury’s head of financial services, has received the go-ahead to take up a job with Barclays Bank. Acoba, the toothless watchdog, accepted there was a ‘risk [she] has privileged insight and influence that could be seen as offering an unfair advantage’, but dismissed concerns one of the Treasury’s most senior officials was involved in policy areas directly affecting her new employer.
Braddick was responsible for City-related policies and had frequent meetings with Barclays. She was also ‘heavily involved’ in the post-Brexit regulation of financial services. Former mandarin, who became money-maker in the 1980s, resigned as her director general in September. The Treasury on December 31 was also vacant. Barclays will be joining Barclays in March. Acoba argued this ‘passage of time’ would resolve any unfair advantage worries and, in any event, has warned her she mustn’t lobby the Government. As if that’s why Barclays hired the Treasury insider…