Tories go to the highest bidder

You might be feeling the cold chill of austerity but super-rich Tory backers have been flashing the cash to help buy the next election. Naturally they were slumming it in a posh hotel in Park Lane, Mayfair.
It’s an obvious choice as Mayfair is where many of the hedge fund set have their hovels.With Tory tax giveaways to hedge funds amounting to close to £200m, they have plenty in their wallets.

The hedge funders, bankers and other beneficiaries of multi-million tax breaks paid up to ÂŁ15,000 a table to dine with Tory cabinet ministers, and rub shoulders with the Prime Minister. But the truly big dosh came with the auctions, with items put up by Tory supporters. The pamphlet setting out the items was a glimpse of how the super-rich live.

There was a week in Majorca. Not our type of self-catering package holiday for a few hundred quid each. It went, according to reports, for an eye watering ÂŁ220,000. But you do get your own helipad, large fortress, five houses and two swimming pools.

Or a private jet to a five star hotel on a Greek Island. A holiday in a luxury private villa in Barbados.

Or a week in a luxury ski chalet in Switzerland, another in France, yet another in the US.

Fancy deer stalking? Or perhaps shooting 500 pheasants?

Chancellor Osborne insists no one buys Tory policy. But why only buy a policy when you can buy the whole party?

Don’t expect the Tories to claw back their tax breaks for the hedge funds. Expect them to oppose the mansion tax. And for the tax dodgers using off-shore tax havens? Labour wants to clamp down, Osborne made clear this weekend that the Tories won’t.

Labour wants to clamp down on tax avoidance, where large companies ship profit made in Britain to countries where they will be taxed less. Its legal, but it stinks and leads to less tax revenue to pay for public services.

Meaningless

The Tories won’t clamp down on tax avoidance, only “aggressive” tax avoidance which is meaningless. But it is meant to be meaningless.

One item in the Mayfair auction tells you everything you need to know about the Tories. They sold off a David Cameron signed copy of the 2015 manifesto. And when it’s printed they will be toasting it in Mayfair.

But Cameron is thinking about you. He stole the slogan for the TUC organised march last October and told business leaders that “Britain needs a pay rise”. He’s woken up to the fact that workers are £1,600 worse off since he took power. That this will be the first Parliament for nearly a century where people will be worse off at the end of it, than when it started. That real wages – what they can buy – have seen the biggest drop since Gladstone was Prime Minister. But his call for higher pay does not apply to those he employs in public services.

And he does not need to call for higher pay for the rich, they have helped themselves. But he has stepped in when their pay is challenged. For the first time a British government is making a challenge in the European courts on behalf of the wages of a group of British workers. Yes, the Tories have launched a very expensive bid – while cutting legal aid to the poorest – to protect bankers’ bonuses.

Len McCluskey, Unite general secretary hit out at Cameron’s conversion to pay rises. He said, “David Cameron’s empty rhetoric won’t fool the millions of people whose wages have fallen at a rate not seen since the Victorian era. On his watch there’s been an explosion of zero hour low paid jobs, while more and more people are working harder but getting poorer.

“If Cameron was serious about giving Britain a pay rise then he’d put his money where his mouth is and immediately boost the minimum wage by at least £1.50 an hour with the promise of a living wage. Instead we have empty words, which don’t put food on the table or pay the rent.”

Cameron is serious about winning the next election. And he is rattled. The clock is ticking down to polling day, less than 90 days now.He has the backing of the rich and the powerful who will pay to keep their privileges.

But on polling day they only have one vote like the rest of us. And that’s what worries them.