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| Rishi Sunak Former Chancellor (Photo: HM Treasury) |
UPDATE (9/12/22)
ITV News is reporting financial regulation is to be cut in a "major banking shake-up". They write:
"Jeremy Hunt is set to launch a major reform of the UK’s financial sector, with plans to rip up red tape and replace reams of EU regulations...
While promising to protect consumers, the government is also set to announce changes to ring-fencing rules, which currently require large banks to separate retail and investment arms."
Two years ago, The Guardian was writing that we do not need to worry, because of Rishi Sunak's background in finance. They wrote that :
"(Rishi Sunak) has a history of staying up all night worrying about his charges’ financial wellbeing."
Now, after such a background, Sunak is Prime Minister and is relaxing the regulation of finance and banking. As ITV reports, critics say about this relaxation that:
"the reform risks forgetting the lessons of the financial crisis"
(The financial crisis that occurred under the last Labour Government of Gordon Brown). Are you reassured?
Or is it Labour or Tory, and the same old story?
UPDATE (24/10/22)
The BBC's Political Editor Chris Mason says today:
"September's loser appears on the verge of becoming October's prime minister.
With the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson out, the firm favourite to be the new prime minister is Rishi Sunak."
ITV's Political Editor Robert Peston reports on Boris Johnson "dropping out" of the race to be Prime Minister, but also comments that Johnson had no evidence of 100 MPs supporting him.
Co-founder of Southampton Independents and former Independent Councillor, Andrew Pope says:
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| Andrew Pope |
"I predicted that Sunak would become Prime Minister last week. It was clear to me that the Conservative Party had already decided that this would happen. I listened carefully to what Conservative MPs in the 1922 Committee said and what they did.
And I saw what they did not do, which is to find someone good enough to be Prime Minster and lead our country out of the serial disasters created by the Conservatives themselves.
Rishi Sunak lost to Liz Truss, who was the best the Tories could do.
So what we have now is someone who could not beat the disastrous Liz Truss.
Nothing has changed about his suitability to be Prime Minister since he lost to her, apart from Truss bringing our country to its knees and costing people their mortgages and their standards of living, when they are already suffering a crisis with bills.
And nothing has changed with the attempted image cleansing of Sunak and his cronies - what we have published below is the tip of the iceberg. Mr Sunak wondered why his private education meant he knew nobody who was working class. It doesn't take a genius to work that out, but he could not.
What a disastrous situation our country faces. I very much hope that the local media in Southampton and national media too now begin to look properly into Rishi Sunak's background, because it is in the national interest that they do.
We must have a General Election now. The winner needs to be our country, not more Tory failure bringing our country into disrepute."
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UPDATE (9/8/22)
Amongst Conservative MPs, Rishi Sunak was the leading candidate to become Leader of the Conservative Party and therefore Prime Minister, following his resignation from being Chancellor and from Boris Johnson's Government.
But survey after survey has shown that Sunak's popularity amongst Conservative Party supporters does not match the enthusiasm of Tory MPs. The latest one here reported by The Independent, showed that Tory supporters prefer Truss.
"Liz Truss extends polling lead over Rishi Sunak in race for prime minister."
Also differing from the Tory MPs views are Tory Party members. Southampton Independents understands - from the contacts it has with Conservatives (admittedly not very friendly, but we do have channels) - that Conservative Party members prefer Truss to Sunak.
Sunak is seen by Conservative Party members as the one that "knifed" Boris Johnson - despite the fact that Sajid Javid resigned from Johnson's Cabinet on the same day as Sunak. Javid's bid for PM faltered early on.
Perhaps also a factor is the image washing that Sunak has been engaging in - before his meteoric rise - and even before he became a Parliamentary candidate, the PR pretence over Sunak began. Read on for our original article.
We have more information, but we are not publishing it yet.
Why? Because we expect the Daily Echo, local BBC, the Local Democracy Reporter and national news organisations to be big enough and brave enough to investigate Sunak and to report the full truth about Rishi Sunak. Maybe they will, maybe they won't - until it's too late?
More important than the views of a tiny minority - the Tory Party, its MPs and its members - are the views of the people of the United Kingdom, and YouGov polling shows that the public do not trust Truss or Sunak!
The public view Sunak as more out-of-touch than Truss, which given Truss' loose connection with the truth and reality, is remarkable. This is despite Sunak's image cleansing campaign.
It is now less than a month before we know which of these two people become Prime Minister. It's yet another change of Prime Minister mid-term.
More and more, with every false promise and attempt to launder both Sunak's and Truss' images, it is becoming a Hobson's Choice between proven failure and potential disaster.
We will leave you to work out which is which.
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Rishi Sunak is making much of his Southampton background. Sunak was selected for a far-away Parliamentary candidacy in October 2014, according to ConservativeHome. Earlier that year, key business details relating to his parents' Sunak Pharmacy business, changed. Those business details were changed even before he was selected as a candidate.
Were these decisions related? We leave it for readers to decide for themselves on whether it was pure coincidence, or a matter of sequence, or neither.
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are involved in the Conservative Leadership
contest due to the resignation of Boris Johnson, in whose Cabinet both
of them served.
One of them will become Prime Minister in September 2022.
During the BBC's lamentable "Our Next Prime Minister" programme on 25th July 2022, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and MP for Richmond (Yorkshire) Rishi Sunak mentioned Southampton several times.
Live on air, Mr Sunak mentioned the Sunak Pharmacy in Southampton, which his mother was involved in. He claimed to have worked in the pharmacy and even have done the accounts.
So we looked into the relationship between Mr Sunak, his family and the pharmacy.
It is in clear public interest that Mr Sunak's background is examined. And for Southampton Independents, it is even more so, now that he has mentioned Southampton and made much of his connections with our City.
Mr Sunak's father was a GP ("doctor"). Mr Sunak's mother was a pharmacist ("chemist"). This has been documented widely, including by investigations and reports by Channel 4, by The Mirror and in a book by Michael Ashcroft, the well-known Tory. There is much controversy over Sunak's background.
Sunak's Pharmacy was located at the top of Hill Lane in Southampton.
But if you go there now, you will see that it is not called Sunak's Pharmacy any more.
It is now called Bassett Pharmacy, as shown on the NHS website.
The mighty Highfield Residents Association noticed a name change in April 2020, saying on its website:
"The Bassett Pharmacy at the top of Hill Lane was formerly the Sunak pharmacy.
It was run by the mother of our Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak. His father was also a local GP. Rishi is a Saints supporter and his favourite player is Matthew Le Tissier."
It is an interesting message. Note their use of "our" instead of "the Chancellor", which might be significant.
So when did the name of the pharmacy change? Many years before the HRA noticed.
And what was the connection with Rishi Sunak's family?
Public records at Companies House show that aspects of the business were changed in 2014:
- the name of the business
- its registered business address
- who its people were, plus
- other details of the business
These changes preceded, by a year, Rishi Sunak becoming a Member of Parliament ("MP").
Rishi Sunak was first elected to Parliament in 2015. This was not in Southampton but almost 300 miles away in the Richmond (Yorkshire) constituency. It was former Conservative Leader William Hague's Constituency. Sunak was selected for the candidacy in October 2014, according to ConservativeHome.
Hague was unsuccessful at leading the Tories to a General Election victory in 2001.
Perhaps the same fate awaits Rishi Sunak, if he beats Liz Truss in the Conservative Party members' vote and becomes Leader of the Conservatives?
Time will tell.
In the meantime, it is worth considering that ConservativeHome described Sunak as follows:
"A businessman who co-founded a large multinational investment firm and now invests in small and fast growing British businesses, Sunak is also a Governor of the East London Science School and runs Policy Exchange’s BME Research Unit. He went to Oxford and did an MBA at Stanford University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He recently came second in the Hertsmere selection."
No mention is made of Southampton in this brief biography.
Earlier in 2014, Sunak lost the Hertsmere selection to Oliver Dowden. Dowden is now the former Conservative Party Chairman, after he recently resigned from that role following the Conservatives' disastrous by-election results in June 2022. Those results contributed to the votes of no confidence in Boris Johnson, Sunak's resignation, the apparent Cabinet mutiny, and Johnson's resignation speech in Downing Street.
Sunak attended Oakmount School, then Stroud School and Winchester College. All of these require private payment, as documented by OpenDemocracy.
The NHS pharmacy and Rishi's father's role as a GP - itself a highly-paid NHS role - must have contributed in some way to their son's attendance fees. Sunak also has two siblings. Both of them are mentioned in records at Companies House.
It could be argued that Rishi Sunak himself is a public-private partnership (PPP), with public money from the NHS funding his private education, via an NHS GP and NHS pharmacist.
While he remains a public figure and is aiming to be Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak's background must be examined in more detail, as must be Liz Truss. But Liz Truss has not claimed any connections to Southampton that we are aware of.
Southampton Independents may be providing further information in the public interest.
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