The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #168430   Message #4133388
Posted By: DMcG
23-Jan-22 - 01:53 AM
Thread Name: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
This seems a strange diversion into personal taxation arising from a comment of Bonzo2Legs, when we had been talking about MPs potentially being 'blackmailed'. Admittedly we only got there after queries about the most aesthetically way of phrasing it, rather than the substance.

The current state of play is that the MP concerned, Christian Wakeford, has told the Sunday Times that the threat came from Gavin WIlliamson, then Education Secretary. Quoting the article:

In October 2020 the footballer Marcus Rashford vented his despair at MPs voting down proposals to extend free school meals during holidays. He was not the only one.

Christian Wakeford, then Conservative MP for Bury South, a few miles north of Rashford’s Manchester United home ground, Old Trafford, was also appalled by the move. The 37-year-old, who had been elected to the Commons the previous year, told friends it was mean-spirited and the opposite of what red wall MPs were elected to do.

Yet rather than voting for the opposition motion on school meals, and against the government, he abstained. His decision was informed by a conversation he had had with a colleague shortly before the vote.

Wakeford says Gavin Williamson, then education secretary, pulled him out of the Members’ Dining Room of the House of Commons and threatened to cancel plans for a new school in his constituency if he did “not vote in one particular way”. He first made the allegation, without identifying the culprit, last week.

Asked today who threatened to scrap the school, he said: “It was Gavin Williamson.”