Zac Versus Sadiq: The fight to become London Mayor by Dave Hill

Author:Dave Hill [Hill, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Zac goldsmith, sadiq kahn, london, london mayor, mayoral elections, tories, labour, Corbyn, election, campaign, election campaign, government and politics, politics, government, boris johnson, ken livingstone, mayor
ISBN: 9781911079217
Publisher: Double Q
Published: 2016-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Six

March

The town of Sevenoaks in Kent is not as lampooned as a wellspring of Little England attitudes as its neighbour Tunbridge Wells, but its reputation is similar. The MP for Sevenoaks since 1997 has been Conservative Michael Fallon. In 2009, Fallon become caught up in a scandal surrounding expenses reclaimed by MPs. The Daily Telegraph reported that between 2002 and 2004 he had overcharged the public purse in relation to a flat he’d bought in Westminster to the tune of £8,300.

“Mr Fallon regularly claimed £1,255 per month in capital repayments and interest rather than the £700-£800 for the interest component alone,” the paper said. Fallon said it was a mistake, for which he accepted responsibility. He repaid part of the money to which he had not been entitled and was allowed to offset the remainder against other expenses relating to the flat for which he had not previously claimed, such as legal fees and utility bills.

Fallon had paid £243,000 for the flat. In 2005, he reclaimed £499 he’d spend on a television for it, plus £69.50 for a digibox. In 2006, he claimed £126 for repairs to the flat’s boiler, £170 for repairs to tiles in its bathroom, £282 for electrical repairs and £225 for carpet cleaning. In December 2006, he sold the flat for £295,000, making a profit of £52,000, and reclaimed legal fees of £1,774,50.

He then bought another flat in Westminster for £728,000 and reclaimed £1,500 for the cost of new curtains, nearly £1,000 for a freezer and laundry white goods and £1,795 for a bed, although the bed claim was reportedly later reduced to £1,000. The interest on the mortgage for Fallon’s new flat was around £2,100 a month – almost three times as much as on his old flat. He reclaimed it. The Telegraph added that Fallon also owned what it described as mortgage-free “large house” in Sevenoaks, which is less than 30 miles from Westminster.

At the time of these disclosures, Fallon was a member of the Treasury select committee, which keeps an eye on the expenditure and administration of Her Majesty’s Treasury, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Bank of England. Earlier in the year he had been critical of the excesses of the banking industry. Three years later, apparently without irony, David Cameron made him his minister for business and enterprise. By July 2014 he had promoted him to Secretary of State for Defence. In April 2015, the month before the general election of that year, Fallon wrote an article for the Times accusing Ed Miliband of stabbing his brother David in the back in order to become Labour leader and of being willing to do the same to the United Kingdom. It was regarded by connoisseurs of Lynton Crosby’s methods as an example of his “dead cat” tactic: feeding compliant media outlets a lurid “story” about your opponent by way of a stooge to distract attention from your own candidate’s shortcomings.

In early February 2016 Fallon attended an arms trade banquet whose organisers thanked him for his “tremendous support”.

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