In 2021 we bid many things farewell: Philip Green’s retail empire, England’s Euro chances and Donald Trump’s presidency. And now, joining them on the ash heap of history, appears to be David Cameron’s short-lived career as a lobbyist, after months of damning revelations about his multi-million pound efforts for Greensill Capital. After the conclusion of the Brexit wars, the onetime Prime Minister might have harboured some hopes of a retrospective rehabilitation but the collapse of Greensill and the release of the Old Etonian’s accompanying cringe-worthy texts has put paid to that.
It’s not just Greensill that suffered in 2021 of course: since leaving office Cameron has acquired something of the reverse Midas touch. Last month he was forced to quit his role at the software company Afiniti after a 23-year-old former employee accused the firm’s multimillionaire founder of sexual assault. It ends a rotten year for Cameron, whose lowest point was probably when MPs on the Treasury select committee concluded that his persistent lobbying to have Greensill included in a government-backed Covid loans scheme had ‘demeaned’ the position of the prime minister and left his ‘reputation in tatters.’
And it seems that Cameron has tacitly accepted that judgement, as he has now quietly begun proceedings to wind up his eponymous unlimited company, filing a first gazette notice for compulsory strike off to commence on 4 January next week. The ‘Office of David Cameron’ was launched in October 2016, a month after the ex PM stood down as MP for Witney, and boasted an impressive £873,000 in net equity when it last filed accounts in April 2019. The company’s one director is Laurence Mann, Cameron’s Chief of Staff who was referenced and copied into the leaked Greensill emails splashed across the Sunday Times earlier this year. He previously served as Cameron’s Political Secretary and Political Private Secretary during his six-year premiership.
Still, given Cameron made £7 million from Greensill and has claimed almost half a million in the ‘public duty cost allowance’ which former premiers get after leaving office, doesn’t look like he’ll be short of a few bob anytime soon.
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