The Tory hypocrisy is off the charts

All the Tory outrage over Louise Haigh is unbelievably hypocritical given the number of scammers and scumbags on the Tory front benches over their 14 years in power

The Tory party are desperately trying to whip up public outrage over Louise Haigh’s departure from Keir Starmer’s cabinet over a spent conviction over a decade ago.

Haigh pleaded guilty to fraud after mistakenly claiming that a work mobile had been stolen during a mugging.

Some time after her employers had issued her with a replacement mobile she found the work mobile that she thought had been stolen and turned it on, which drew police attention.

The decision was taken to charge her with fraud, despite there being no conceivable personal benefit to her from mistakenly claiming the phone had been taken. She pled guilty to avoid court and was given the lowest possible outcome of case discharged.

Keir Starmer was made aware of the spent conviction four years ago, before he appointed her to his cabinet, and he’s clearly just given into right-wing media pressure after a series of tabloid front pages.

It’s rumoured that the real reason for Haigh’s departure was her criticism of the Dubai-based company DP World over their outrageous tactics of firing 800 UK employees at P&O Ferries, and replacing them with overseas workers on much lower wages.

The Tories are frothing away, insisting that this long spent discharge demonstrates Keir Starmer’s poor judgement, with Grant Shapps decrying the lack of BBC coverage.

Now let’s consider some of the incredibly dodgy stuff senior Tory ministers were caught doing while they were actually in power (not over a decade before their appointments).

As Defence Secretary Liam Fox was caught red-handed allowing a "special friend" to sit in on classified meetings, which represented an extraordinary national security breech. Fox was allowed to continue as an MP and sit on the sidelines for a few years before being invited back into government as International Trade Secretary.

Rishi Sunak was caught red-handed pretending to be a full-time resident of the United States while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer (while his wife pretended to be a full-time resident of India for tax purposes). He was allowed to keep his job, and later went on to become Tory Prime Minister!

Priti Patel was caught red-handed acting as an agent of a foreign state while in government after concocting a scheme to divert British aid money to the Israeli military in a series of undocumented meetings with Israeli officials. She was later promoted to Home Secretary!

Nadhim Zahawi was caught fraudulently claiming the costs of heating his horses’ stables on parliamentary expenses and was later promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer, then he was made to pay £5 million in tax that he’d attempted to dodge through the use of an offshore company.

There’s a big difference between these issues and the Louise Haigh situation. These were all examples of outrageous Tory behaviour in office, while Haigh’s conviction happened long before she was even an MP.

Probably the most pertinent comparison can be made with Grant Shapps, especially after the way he’s been trying to whip up public outrage over Louise Haigh.

Before becoming mainstay of the Tory front benches, Grant Shapps was an Internet scammer behind a series of dodgy get rich quick "content scraping" schemes that involved ripping off other people’s work for clicks. His sites were eventually blacklisted by Google for violating their copyright infringement rules.

Shapps was also caught red-handed using a series of fake identities (Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath, Sebastian Fox) to promote his dodgy content stealing schemes.

Despite being a proven Internet scammer, Shapps was given multiple cabinet positions (Housing, Minister Without Portfolio, International Development, Transport, Home Secretary, Business, Energy, and Defence).

If Haigh’s conviction over her mistake represents proof of Starmer’s poor judgement, what do the multiple cabinet positions for a proven Internet scammer like Shapps say about the woeful judgement of the Tory Prime Ministers who appointed him? (Cameron, Johnson, Truss, and Sunak).

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