Sunak’s texts make the “complex and confusing” Greensill story a lot clearer

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“I have pushed the team to explore an alternative with the Bank that might work,” Rishi Sunak texted David Cameron in April last year. “No guarantees, but the Bank are currently looking at it and Charles should be in touch.” Labour is calling for an investigation after a Freedom of Information request revealed that the Chancellor did not ignore the former Prime Minister’s lobbying for Greensill, the unregulated finance giant that has now collapsed. The opposition says Sunak may have broken the ministerial code, as the messages published yesterday “suggest that Greensill Capital got accelerated treatment and access to officials, and that the Chancellor “pushed” officials to consider Greensill’s requests”.

The Greensill story is “complex and confusing”, as Labour’s Bridget Phillipson has noted. But it has just become a whole lot clearer: despite suggestions to the contrary, Sunak is involved. A minister this morning claimed that the Chancellor was “probably just being polite” and pointed out that Greensill was not given access to these cheap Covid government loans administered by the independent Bank of England. The company was later, however, the only non-bank financial firm to be chosen by the government to administer emergency coronavirus loans. This put “hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer cash at risk”, Phillipson says.

The details may seem complicated and even boring, but it is common sense for voters to wonder whether an ex-PM should be allowed to text the Chancellor for favours and get a reply, when businesses and self-employed people across the country were struggling and going under without Sunak’s phone number in their contacts. Alongside questions over the 10 Downing Street flat refurbishment, Priti Patel not having to resign despite being found to have broken the ministerial code, the protection equipment contracts handed over to “VIPs” and other examples of what the opposition calls “cronyism” in government, it paints a mucky picture that serves to illustrate Labour’s ‘one rule for them’ attack line.

On LabourList today, Jake Richards looks at how Labour can embrace the use of technology in its promise to renew our public services after the pandemic. “The challenge for policymakers is not to attempt to put the genie back in the bottle,” he writes. We also have my exclusive interview with Labour’s Hartlepool candidate Dr Paul Williams, who tells me he has “no desire” to rejoin the EU despite previously being a People’s Vote campaigner. He also responds to the Survation poll and confirms that Labour activists from outside the region aren’t being invited to doorknock in Hartlepool – but can help by phonebanking using Dialogue.

Have a great weekend.

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