NADHIM Zahawi, the Tory Party Chairman and ex Chancellor of the Exchequer, has for months been avoiding questions about his tax affairs, but on Friday all this came to a head when the Guardian newspaper revealed that he had settled a tax bill worth millions while serving as Chancellor.
According to reports, the sum involved is in the region of £5 million and includes a seven figure-penalty, in effect a fine, by HM Revenue and Customs at a time when as Chancellor he was in charge.
According to the Guardian, stories about Zahawi’s tax affairs surfaced last summer.
At the time he dismissed them as ‘smears’ but this changed, and in a statement issued on Saturday Zahawi insisted that there was ‘confusion about my finances’ that had now been cleared up, and it was a result of being ‘careless’ over his tax affairs and ‘not deliberate’ and he had paid what was due ‘so that I could focus on my life as a public servant.’
Despite this denial of any wrongdoing, yesterday morning Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was forced to tell reporters that there were ‘questions that need answering’ over the case although he was quick to assure the public that he was ‘confident’ that Zahawi had ‘acted properly throughout’.
Sunak then announced that he had asked his independent ethics advisor to look into Zahawi’s tax affairs to ‘provide advice to me on Nadhim Zahawi’s compliance with the ministerial code.’
When Sunak was imposed as Prime Minister in October last year, he made great play about governing with integrity and professionalism in an attempt to distance his government from the sleaze and corruption allegations that engulfed the Boris Johnson era.
But what has emerged, not just over Zahawi’s ‘carelessness’ over millions of pounds of tax payments, is a continued stream of accusations of sleaze and corruption.
Johnson himself was back in the frame as claims emerged that the chairman he appointed to run the BBC, Richard Sharp, has been involved in securing an £800,000 loan for the then Prime Minister in late 2020.
Sharp confirmed he had introduced Johnson to Sam Blyth, an ‘old friend’ who provided Johnson with the loan ‘having become aware of the financial pressures’ on him just weeks before Johnson recommended Sharp for the job.
Johnson has, of course, denied any wrongdoing.
What about the financial pressures on workers who are struggling to pay their energy bills and to put food on the table for their children – the millions of low-paid workers like nurses who have to rely on food banks while Tory ministers brazenly confess to making ‘careless’ mistakes over millions of pounds of tax payments.
The stench of corruption and entitlement that defined the Johnson government did not go away when Sunak became Prime Minister – it is alive and kicking and pervades Parliament.
Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner said Zahawi’s position is ‘untenable’ and called for Sunak to show his strength by sacking him, while Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary Johnathan Reynolds complained that ‘it undermines the confidence people have in the political system.’
The working class are demonstrating through mass strike actions that they have no confidence in the political organisation of a capitalist system that provides massive wealth for the ruling class and nothing but poverty for the mass of workers and youth.
The demand for a general strike is reaching a crescendo amongst workers who are fighting a Tory government determined to slash wages and use new laws, backed up by increased police powers, to break strikes and smash trade unions.
Now is the time to not just dump one Tory minister but to deal with the entire cesspit of Parliament by forcing the TUC to call an indefinite general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government and socialism through the nationalisation of the banks and major industries under workers’ management and control.
Only socialist revolution can end the rule of the millionaire ruling class and provide a future for workers and youth free from poverty.
Join the WRP and Young Socialists to build up the revolutionary leadership to carry out the British socialist revolution.
