Labour has been trying to make political capital out of Russian-linked donations to the Tory party. Sir Keir Starmer might play the cross-party card in the House but not all on his benches share that sense of magnanimity. Liam Byrne enjoyed taking a pop at Boris Johnson’s socialising with oligarchs yesterday while Rachel Reeves and David Lammy previously called for the Conservatives to return nearly two million pounds of donations made since Johnson took office in 2019.
Labour’s basis for this demand is that the donors ‘made money from Russia or have alleged links to the Putin regime’: quite the conflation between actual Kremlin cronies and those who have simply worked and made money there. Some of course, will have chosen to leave their homeland for political or economic reasons: all of these are either individuals registered on the UK’s electoral roll or UK registered companies. No shame though on Reeves and Lammy for smelling an opportunity in opposition.
But Mr S has discovered that the office run by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown was paid more than £100,000 ten years ago by a Russian bank that was sanctioned yesterday.
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