Tagged with Chuka Umunna

Now Chuka Umunna accepts £2,500 from tax dodger advisers

Chuka Umunna as artful dodger1As is reported in the Times (£) today, Labour’s shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna,  accepted and received a fortnight ago a donation of £2,500 for the running of his personal office from chartered tax advisers Signature Tax whose website describes its services as “a progressive tax planning boutique delivering tailored tax solutions to individuals and organisations internationally“.

According to their website, Signature Tax provides specialist advice on off-shore tax arrangements such as those Chuka has previously advised Barclays bank to close down, to clients who are subject to HMRC investigations, and on structures designed to avoid HMRC’s Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Schemes regulations.  Continue reading →

Chuka Umunna takes on the Blair mantle

Most newspapers and the BBC this morning carried a story based an in interview with Chuka Umunna in GQ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly) – “Brown ‘cuts’ denials hurt Labour’s credibility” as BBC News put it. As I write this, the issue of GQ is not yet out (as I embarrassingly discovered after wasting £2.50 on the September issue) so it was clearly widely trailed. The Guardian‘s spin is widely repeated:

Gordon Brown dealt a blow to Labour’s economic credibility by wrongly giving the impression in his final year as prime minister that the party failed to understand the importance of tackling Britain’s unprecedented peacetime budget deficit, the shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, has suggested.

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How Labour could still save the Royal Mail from privatisation

Royal Mail stamps, pic by 123rf.comIt was all quite a shock. On Friday, as the government announced that potential shareholders in the privatised Royal Mail were already lined up, campaigners were pre-occupied with the ballot for an anti-sell off postal workers strike. A strike that will now come after the post has been privatised, if the government has its way.

But there is one last chance to save the post from a privatisation the public do not want. Step forward, Ed Miliband.

In Brighton last week, Labour conference delegates voted unanimously to bring Royal Mail back into public ownership should Labour win the next election. Hurried press briefings that this would not bind the leadership were followed by shadow business secretary Chuka Ummuna yesterday clarifying that such a pledge would be “irresponsible”. Continue reading →

Blue will never be the new Red

The “Blue Labour” agenda associated with Maurice Glasman has generated considerable discussion, and the recent interview with Progress shows that there is an element of iconoclasm from Glasman himself, where he expresses deliberately provocative positions, for example lamenting that the current generation of trade union leaders don’t match up to Sir Ken Jackson, or suggesting that EDL supporters could be embraced by Labour. Continue reading →