Buried deep in the Sunday Times is the Tories’ answer to the problem that is Lord Ashcroft. James Tyler is a fund manager who has donated £250,000 to the Tory party since 2007. He is that rare creature: a multi-millionaire who is both resident and domiciled in merry old England. Tyler’s chief attraction for the Tories is his virulent opposition to what he terms ‘the morons’ – City Boys taking excessive risk and Gordon Brown’s culpability in the financial collapse. It was his subject in a speech to the Adam Smith Institute last year and he remains consumed by it. The Sunday Times reports:
‘His chief bête noire is the rampant creation of money and the inflation target of 2% set by the government. The system, he says, “loots pensions, savings, fixed incomes and the actions of the prudent” while rewarding “the biggest borrower of all: the government”. His secondary targets are the big banks that lend depositors’ money many times over, keeping just a tiny fraction in reserve. The system has created mountains of debt.’
The Tories are pushing Tyler, whose agreement with Cameron and Osborne’s radical plans for City reform is significant. But they mustn’t overdo it in the current political climate. Few things contain more joy than today’s Sunday Times. Stephan Byers personifying a dodgy minicab and Patricia Hewitt’s presumed right to sanctimony finally terminated – Britain, we’ve never had it so good. The New Labour triumvirate’s disgrace, coupled with the Ashcroft scandal, mean that the Tories must avoid anything that suggests yet more affluence for influence in British politics.
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