I fully agree with John Tippler’s thoughtful letter (V Mail, June 28) inviting readers to reflect on the people actively promoting Brexit.
John mentions two of four tax-avoiding, anti-EU press barons, namely Lord Rothermere and the Barclay Brothers. However, we should also remember Richard Desmond (Express and Star) and Rupert Murdoch (Sun and Times).
Richard Desmond is reportedly the 46th richest person in Britain (net worth c.£2.5 billion).
He created most of his wealth as a publisher of porn and celebrity magazines, owned the Express and Star newspapers for 17 years, and, as the Guardian said, “took [The Express], a newspaper with a long history – once the biggest selling daily paper in the world – and turned it into an object of ridicule and pity.”
Desmond’s two main holding companies, Northern & Shell Group Ltd and Portland Investments Ltd, are owned by trusts based in the tax haven of Guernsey.
Rupert Murdoch is arguably the world’s most successful, tax-avoiding media owner – search online if you disbelieve me.
The UK currently loses up to £120 billion a year in tax avoidance and evasion. Compare this with only c.£1.2 billion lost in benefit fraud, offset by c.£20 billion in benefits unclaimed.
John Tippler mentions Jacob Rees-Mogg MP and his firm Somerset Capital Management.
However, we should also remember John Redwood MP, yet another arch-Brexiteer who tells Leave voters Brexit will be brilliant for them, while doing something completely different for his own financial self-interest.
Beyond his salary as an MP, John Redwood moonlights as Chief Global Strategist for the financial firm Charles Stanley on a reported salary of £180,000 pa.
In this role, he has recently been widely criticised for advising Charles Stanley clients – in a video freely available online – to move their investments out of the UK, owing to predictable adverse impacts of Brexit, and, instead, invest in the Eurozone.
Our nation, admired around the world for centuries for its exceptional sense of ‘fair play’, is now being led towards the greatest ever example of national self harm by a clique of selfish, self-interested people.
Alan Meekings
via email
