It has been revealed that the new Prime Minister Liz Truss received £100,000 as a donation for her leadership campaign from the wife of an ex-BP executive – somewhat buried in the news due to the death of Elizabeth II. In total, the amount of money her campaign received was £420,000 and apparently consisted of 21 different donations – those being the ones she declared.
The largest amount came from Fitriani Hay – the wife of James Hay, who has a luxury goods empire and is a former BP executive. She donated £100,000 to Truss. Other donations included from the Tory peer Greville Howard and Michael Spencer also donated £25,000 to Truss at the beginning of August, one week after gifting the same amount to Rishi Sunak and two weeks after doing the same for Penny Mordaunt, another failed candidate in the leadership contest. Truss also received £20,000 from Jon Moynihan, a former prominent member of the pro-Brexit Vote Leave campaign along with £10,000 donated by a smoked salmon firm run by former Brexit party MEP Lance Forman.
Another detail revealed in the release by parliament on Thursday was the £23,853 cost for Boris and Carrie Johnson’s wedding party in the summer, paid for by Anthony and Carole Bamford. The two of them run JCB who have gifted Liz Truss with £5,316 worth of transport costs at the start of August. Rishi Sunak managed to amass £449,570 for his leadership campaign.
But of course, the most significant donation here is the £100,000 from a wife of an ex-BP executive, which definitely stands out when we consider Truss allowing the energy price cap to remain so high while ordinary working-class people will struggle to get by and keep themselves warm, fed and housed this coming winter. It is also alarming for anyone who cares about the environment and the alarmingly out of control climate. Truss’ plans for fracking are also very worrying for the environmental harm that will cause, as well as the absurd cost of fracking. And of course, it seems very relevant that Truss used to work for Shell, which is of course why she is so against taxing the enormous profits of the energy companies. But yet again this is another blatant example of the us and them problem built into this capitalist system and its magic money tree for the ruling class while we have to suffer worsening precarity and fuel poverty, another clear reason why we so need to fight back against capitalism and abolish it.
AnarCom Network 