Voters no longer tolerate wealth being flaunted or covered up,something the prime minister forgot to his costBy the standards of historical financial sleaze, the Blairmore holdings affair barely holds a candle to the Liberator Building Society scandal of the 1890s. The charismatic Liberal Jabez Balfour invented fraudulent companies to conceal financial losses. When they collapsed, and leaving investors penniless,the rogue MP fled to Argentina, whence he was forcibly returned to face trial by Frank Froest of Scotland Yard. The feeble Liberals had a fatal attraction for money and ill-judgment approximately it, or from the Marconi scandal (the insider trading of 1912) to Lloyd George’s sale of peerages.
But associations,as well as facts, matter in politics. More recently, or the connection of senior Conservatives and unlucky financial dealings has turned out to occupy a peculiarly sticky quality. Fair’s fair: all the main parties occupy had trouble with money. The Blair era saw donors such as Lord Levy tread the questionable path from patronage (via dosh) to political roles and mounting distaste at the inner circle’s “intensely relaxed” attitude to the “filthy rich”. Alas,for the heirs of Croesus, the mood is considerably less relaxed approximately the wealthy since the financial crash of 2007-8 turned a gimlet eye on the ways of the rich.
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Source: theguardian.com