Sam Bennett, Oxford Socialist Party
The Conservative Party is embroiled in another sleaze scandal, they barely seem to register now. It has been reported that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, when chancellor, did not declare a conflict of interest between his wife’s investments and his own government scheme, Future Fund.
Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, was a shareholder in several companies that received £2 million of taxpayers’ money from a fund designed to support start-up businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sunak did not report this in the ministerial interest register, which makes any financial benefits from government policy publicly known.
The commissioner for standards has been asked to investigate the matter but any investigation into Sunak’s conduct by a parliamentary commissioner will not, however, uncover the true rottenness of British capitalism and its representatives in Westminster.
The Future Fund scheme was one of many attempts by the government to prop up British capitalism during the lockdowns, including the ‘Eat out, to help out’ scheme. The latter helped to spread the virus, according to the government’s chief scientific advisor, Prof Dame Angela McLean. She later branded Sunak ‘Dr Death’, as the scheme may have killed thousands of people.
130 businesses that received support from the Future Fund have since gone bankrupt, three of them being part of Murty’s investments.
Keir Starmer’s successful attempts to erase almost all of Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto pledges from Labour’s programme show that there is no party in parliament serving the interests of working-class people.
The Socialist Party calls for MPs to receive only an average worker’s wage, and to be subject to recall from constituents. We fight for candidates who stand up for the working class and for a socialist society, with democratic workers’ control of production and a redistribution of wealth from the bosses to the masses. The Socialist Party is fighting to build a party made up of fighters like that today.
