The revelations about the questionable links between the British government and the business community are piling up at an increasingly embarrassing rate for Boris Johnson. In the fall of 2020, suspicions of “cronyism” in the award of contracts for the supply of masks at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, had started to make the headlines of the national media. For the past month, the fierce lobbying of the former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron with the British Treasury and the Bank of England to save the company Greensill Capital, in which he had shares, from bankruptcy, has been in the headlines. From now on, it is private exchanges between the Prime Minister himself and the industrialist James Dyson, which confirm the disturbing proximity.
Tuesday, April 20, the BBC revealed the content of exchanges on WhatsApp between Boris Johnson and the inventor of the famous bagless vacuum cleaner, a fervent Brexitor who has yet relocated the headquarters of his company to Singapore. “I’ll settle this tomorrow!” We need you, it sounds fantastic! “, the Prime Minister texted the Prime Minister to James Dyson after the latter wrote to the UK Treasury to find out whether his employees risked being taxed if they returned to the UK to participate in the government’s tender for emergency manufacturing of thousands of respirators. At the time – March 2020, the first pandemic wave had just swept through the country – it was panic at the top of the state and at the NHS, the British public hospital, which lacked this equipment.
“Rishi [Sunak, le chancelier de l’échiquier] says it’s settled, we need you here! “, Mr Johnson added to the British boss a little later. And as Mr. Dyson still seems to doubt, the leader insists: “James, I’m in charge of the treasury, so you can take it for granted that we’re going to support you.” “ Two weeks later, the Chancellor of the Exchequer confirms, during a parliamentary hearing, that the tax status of people who have come especially from abroad to provide assistance during the pandemic will not be affected.
Internal investigation
The disclosure of these texts, at a time when the government is telling the British to stick together, was immediately exploited by the Labor opposition, which demanded a parliamentary inquiry, the exchanges between MM. Johnson and Dyson showing according to his boss, Keir Starmer, that the leader was ready to offer “Tax exemptions to a buddy”. “I will not apologize for having moved heaven and earth” to find medical equipment to help the sick “And to save lives”, plagued Boris Johnson, Wednesday April 21. Has the Prime Minister violated the “ministerial code”, the code of conduct for members of the British government, which requires the presence of a third person and / or a recording when he is in a work conversation?
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