Latest news with #LizTruss
Belfast Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Business
- Belfast Telegraph
Former NI Secretary of State ‘thrilled' with new job away from politics
Mr Heaton-Harris first entered politics when he became a member of the European Parliament in 1999. A self-described 'fierce Eurosceptic', he served in Brussels before standing down in 2009. The following year he entered the House of Commons in what was his third attempt to win a seat. He served for a time as the Government's chief whip, Minister of State for Transport and Minister of State for Europe. Mr Heaton-Harris also chaired the European Research Group, a Eurosceptic group of Conservative MPs. He garnered controversy in 2017 when he wrote to UK universities, asking for the names of professors who taught courses on Brexit. When Liz Truss became Prime Minister in September 2022, the MP for Daventry was elevated to the post of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, a role he retained under Rishi Sunak when he entered 10 Downing Street in October 2022. The post has long be seen as one of the less glamorous Cabinet positions. Mr Heaton-Harris was not without his critics during his time as Northern Ireland Secretary, with much of his tenure covering a period when the Executive was down. He was frequently accused of kicking the can down the road when it came to efforts to get Stormont back up and running, calling an election, and cutting MLA pay. He chose not to stand for re-election in last July's General Election and, since leaving office, launched Oak Communications, a consultancy firm offering 'straightforward insight in a changing world'. It is understood Mr Heaton-Harris, a licensed football referee, also unsuccessfully applied to chair the new Independent Football Regulator in November 2024. Now the former MP has added another job to his CV by joining M2 Recovery as a senior advisor. According to the company's website, the firm's team 'comprises seasoned professionals with decades of combined experience in cybersecurity, blockchain technology, and financial services'. 'Collectively, we have many decades of experience working with the highest-profile clients on the most complex cases involving insurance, crypto asset recoveries, and crypto legal expenses insurance,' the website reads. Mr Heaton-Harris said he was 'thrilled' to join the firm. 'In my years as an MP, I dealt with many constituents devastated by the impact of fraud and witnessed the evolution of digital threats facing consumers,' he said. 'M2 Recovery's pioneering approach to restoring trust in the crypto space is exactly what this moment demands and I'm excited to be contributing to the company's rapid growth and continued success.' Neil Holloway, founder of M2 Recovery, said: 'Chris's unparalleled governance experience, from challenging financial malfeasance in Europe to steering critical political negotiations, aligns perfectly with our ethos of accountability. 'This will strengthen our ability to protect victims of increasingly personalised crypto scams, ensuring M2 Recovery remains at the vanguard of this vital sector.'
The Independent
5 hours ago
- Business
- The Independent
Stark poll shows Nigel Farage could become Prime Minister
Electoral Calculus forecasts Nigel Farage would secure a 74-seat majority if an election were held tomorrow, as Reform UK gains traction. The forecast indicates Labour would drop to 136 seats, while the Conservatives would plummet to 22. A Techne UK poll for The Independent shows Reform at a record high of 31 per cent, surpassing Labour at 22 per cent and nearly doubling the Conservatives' 16 per cent. Experts caution against over-interpreting polls, noting that geographical vote distribution is crucial, but others suggest Reform has reached a critical point. Keir Starmer has intensified attacks on Farage, warning his policies would be as damaging as Liz Truss 's, while Reform dismisses these claims as 'project fear 2.0'.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Nigel Farage claims Keir Starmer's attacks on his economic plans are 'Project Fear 2.0' as Reform leader faces questions over £85bn cost of 'fantasy' policies
Under-pressure Nigel Farage hit back at Sir Keir Starmer and other critics of his economic policies today as he was accused of having 'fantasy' policies. The Reform UK leader reheated one of his attacks from the 2016 EU referendum campaign as he accused the Prime Minister of launching 'Project Fear 2.0' by suggesting he was economically akin to Liz Truss. Sir Keir this morning warned voters they cannot trust Mr Farage with their 'future, mortgages or jobs' in a speech deriding his economic literacy. The Prime Minister joined the Tories in questioning Reform's maths after it unveiled plans for a spending splurge if it wins the 2029 election. Mr Farage has sought to woo working class Labour voters by leaning left with support for scrapping the two-child benefit cap and fully reinstating winter fuel payments. But he simultaneously backs a series of tax cuts, which left experts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies saying there could be an £85billion hole in their plans. That would dwarfs the £45billion of unfunded tax cuts announced by former Tory Prime Minister Liz Truss in her disastrous 2022 mini-Budget. Speaking in Warrington Sir Keir said: 'He set out economic plans which contains billions upon billions of completely unfunded spending. Precisely the sort of irresponsible splurge that sent your mortgage costs, your bills and the cost of living through the roof. It's Liz Truss all over again.' But tweeting from Las Vegas, where he is speaking at a conference to promote bitcoin, Mr Farage accused him of 'resorting to dirty tricks borrowed from the 2016 referendum campaign to attack me', adding: 'This is Project Fear 2.0.' The Prime Minister joined the Tories in taking aim at Mr Farage's economic literacy today after he unveiled plans for an £85billion spending splurge if Reform wins power. However, even Reform supporters raised eyebrows as the cost of the package announced by Mr Farage. Commentator Tim Montgomerie, founder of the Con Home political website, said: 'The sums don't add up.' Reform wants to raise the tax-free income allowance to £20,000 and pledged a transferable marriage tax allowance if his party wins the next election, aimed at incentivising marriage and encouraging people to have more children by making it more affordable. It would exempt one spouse from paying any tax on the first £25,000 of their income, as revealed by the Mail. Speaking at an event at a business in north-west England, the Prime Minister said Mr Farage would not have protected jobs in industries subject to tariffs from the US, and compared him to Ms Truss. Sir Keir said: 'We protected those jobs. Would Nigel Farage have done the same? Absolutely not.' Mr Farage insisted the pledges were 'credible' and could be paid for by scrapping the Net Zero agenda, which he claimed was costing £45billion a year. Mr Farage praised Liz Truss's mini-Budget in 2022 - which triggered a market meltdown. He said an extra £4billion annually could be saved from ditching accommodation for asylum seekers by deporting them and £7billion by ending the public sector's diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) drive. A further £65billion could be saved over five years by cutting quango bureaucracy by 5 per cent, he added, giving an average saving of £69billion annually overall. But experts said raising the basic rate of income tax threshold to £20,000 could alone cost up to £80billion. At present, workers pay the 20 per cent rate of income tax on everything between £12,570 and £50,270. Lifting the two-child benefit cap would cost an extra £3.5billion and reinstating the winter fuel allowance £1.5billion. The eagerly anticipated speech was the most policy-heavy since Reform won four million votes and five seats last July. The Conservatives last night branded the package 'fantasy' economics and 'Corbynism in a different colour' because of the 'billions in unfunded commitments'. Asked if he had a 'magic money tree', Mr Farage admitted his sums were 'slightly optimistic' but added: 'We can't afford Net Zero, it's destroying the country; we can't afford DEI, it's actually preventing many talented people from succeeding; and we certainly can't afford young undocumented males crossing the English Channel and living in five-star hotels. 'You can argue about numbers adding up. You can probably argue that at no point in the history of any form of government has anybody ever thought the numbers added up.' The Conservatives last night branded the package 'fantasy' economics and 'Corbynism in a different colour' because of the 'billions in unfunded commitments'.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Starmer says Tories ‘sliding into abyss' and Reform is main challenger
The Conservatives are 'sliding into the abyss', Keir Starmer has said, as he described Nigel Farage and Reform as the main challengers to his Labour government. Making a hastily arranged visit to a glass factory in St Helens, the prime minister castigated Farage as a fake defender of working people and compared him to Liz Truss as someone whose fiscal plans would crash the economy. In a media Q&A after his speech, Starmer was asked why he was focusing so much attention on Reform, and whether he believed they were the main threat to Labour. 'I do think that the Conservative party has run out of road,' Starmer said. 'Their project is faltering. They're in the decline. They're sliding into the abyss. It's very important, therefore, that we say that and identify that.' 'And the choice at the moment is between the choice of a Labour government that thinks stable finances are at the heart of building better lives for working people, or Nigel Farage and Reform, who only this week said they would spend billions upon billions upon billions, tens of billions of pounds, in an unfunded way, which is an exact repeat of what Liz Truss did.' With recent polls consistently showing Reform ahead in national polling and the Conservatives a distant third – or in one case fourth – Starmer used Thursday's event in Merseyside as a direct riposte to Farage's event in London on Tuesday, in which the Reform leader tried to argue his was the party of the working classes. However, much of Farage's focus was on tax and spend plans that thinktanks have said could cost many tens of billions of pounds a year, which Starmer compared directly to Truss's hastily unwound mini budget in 2022. Reform was committed to 'billions upon billions of completely unfunded spending', Starmer said, calling this 'Liz Truss all over again' and 'Liz Truss 2.0'. He said: 'We're once again fighting the same fantasy, this time from Farage – the same bet in the same casino that you could spend tens of billions of pounds on tax cuts without a proper way of paying [for] it, using your family finances, your mortgages, your bills as the gambling chip of this mad experiment.' Starmer also took personal aim at Farage for arguing that he spoke for working people, contrasting the public school-educated Reform leader's upbringing with his own background. 'Unlike Nigel Farage, I know what it's like growing up in a cost of living crisis,' Starmer said. 'I know what it's like when your family can't pay the bills, when you fear the postman, the bills that may be brought. 'I know what it means to work 10 hours a day in a factory, five days a week, and I know that because that is what my dad did every single working day of his life, and that's what I grew up with. So I don't need lessons from Nigel Farage about the issues that matter most to working people in this country.' He also condemned Farage for saying Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) 'deserved' to go bust after a controversial marketing rebrand. He said: 'I would challenge him to go to JLR, stand in front of the workforce and tell them that his policy for JLR is they should go bust. I [would] very much like to see the reaction. 'This is a company at the absolute forefront of British engineering, and he says they deserve to go bust. Can you trust him? Can you trust him with your future? Could you trust him with your job? Can you trust him with your mortgages, your pensions, your bills? He gave the answer – a resounding no.' Asked about whether he would back moves to end the two-child limit on some benefits, reportedly being considered, Starmer avoided the question twice before giving a slightly non-committal answer. 'I'm determined we're going to drive down child poverty,' he said. 'One of the proudest things that the last Labour government did was to drive down child poverty, and that's why we've got a taskforce working on this. 'I think there are a number of components. There isn't a single bullet, but I'm absolutely determined that we will drive this down, and that's why we'll look at all options, all ways of driving down child poverty.'
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Nigel Farage is ‘Liz Truss all over again', says Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer has launched a series of attacks on Nigel Farage, telling the public they cannot trust the Reform UK leader. Speaking at an event at a business in north-west England, the prime minister said Farage would not have protected jobs in industries hit with tariffs from the US, and compared him to the former prime minister Liz Truss
