Luca Brecel staged a brave fightback to stay in his World Snooker Championship semi-final against Si Jiahui in one of the most exciting sessions witnessed at the Crucible.
The Chinese world No 80, who has wowed fans over the last two weeks with his brilliant attacking game, looked on course to win the match with a session to spare when he won the first three frames of the evening session, extending his lead from 11-5 to 14-5 with breaks of 90, 132 and 97.
But Brecel, the world No 10 from Belgium, came from 10-6 behind to defeat the defending champion and world No 1, Ronnie O’Sullivan, 13-10 in the quarter-finals. He summoned up the same fighting spirit that secured that memorable victory with a display of virtuoso attacking snooker.
Si seemed to wilt when Brecel produced some audacious potting and break-building, as the Belgian forced his way back into the match in dramatic fashion, winning five straight frames including a break of 108. It was exhibition stuff, particularly an outrageously thin cut on a red near the pink spot into the middle pocket that drew gasps of admiration from the crowd.
In the final frame of the night, it looked as if Brecel was on course to reduce his arrears to four frames when he made a break of 53, only to miss the final red to give Si a chance. But the 20-year-old surprisingly missed a straightforward attempt at green and thumped the table in frustration, a rare show of annoyance.
Brecel had fought back to 14-10 to give himself a chance when play resumes on Saturday afternoon, with Si needing three more frames for victory.
Mark Selby plays a shot as Mark Allen watches on in their semi-final. The match was played in a jovial spirit despite the dour nature of the snooker. Photograph: Zac Goodwin/PA
In the other semi-final it was a different story, as Mark Selby, the world No 2, and Mark Allen, the No 3, laboured for more than three hours to complete only five of their scheduled eight frames, with Selby establishing a 7-6 overnight advantage.
Selby is well known for his obdurate approach and his tactical game which is second to none, and which has helped him win four world titles. Allen is traditionally an aggressive, attacking break-builder but has recently reined in his natural instincts to great effect. He has won three ranking titles this season, including the UK Championship, and is miles in front as No 1 on the one-year ranking list.
So a tough, gruelling battle was very much on the cards. Even so, it was perhaps more gruelling than many had expected.
Stephen Hendry, for one. He criticised the two players, saying they had cast a “dark cloud” over the Crucible. The seven-times world champion, a pundit for the BBC, said: “A dark cloud came over the match table at the Crucible. It was not pretty.
“It’s not the snooker that I want to watch, but I understand that snooker has to be played in different ways. It’s almost like they’re trying to be too precise, too exact in their matchplay. Just play the ball sometimes.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The president’s “no negotiations” playbook comes after more than a decade of hostile debt fights, during which Biden was often an influential dealmaker. When Democrats fired up bipartisan talks upfront, like in 2011, it ended in major spending cuts and economic fallout. When they wouldn’t engage from the beginning, like 2013, House Republicans eventually unraveled their own ultimatums.
Having lived that history, Biden now continues to goad House Republicans to show they can rally around a plan for fiscal reforms, as the nation approaches the threat of a summer default on its more than $31 trillion debt.
If the past is prologue, the strategy is still a setup for an economically bruising impasse that ends with some budget concessions. Over the last decade, Democrats were often willing to eventually agree to more minor fiscal changes than the deep spending cuts their colleagues initially sought.
“If the president looks back at recent history and is fair-minded about it,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), “what he will see is that it’s always a negotiation process.”
Many Democrats argue there are two significant but nuanced differences between the current debate and past debt-limit deals: first, that the party demanding concessions hasn’t made an offer; second, the growing concern that, this time, Republicans would let the nation default on its debt if they can’t extract their tradeoffs.
“If they’re willing to actually pull the trigger, then that’s the difference,” said Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
Here’s how negotiations went down the last 10 times Congress acted on the debt limit:
Ceiling at the time: $28.4 trillion
How it went down: Just as they’re doing this year, Republican lawmakers insisted in 2021 that they wouldn’t vote to raise the debt limit without major changes to the federal government’s spending habits.
But things were different from the current standoff in one big respect — Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House at the time, giving them the power to raise the limit on their own. But they made a concerted decision not to.
With slim majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats could have used filibuster protections afforded by congressional budget rules to hike the nation’s borrowing limit without any Republican help. Instead, they zipped up their budget measure without any mention of the debt limit, effectively challenging Senate Republicans to help them avert a disaster.
In the end, both sides caved a little, joining forces to punt for two months and then to create a one-time filibuster loophole that allowed Senate Democrats to raise the cap with a simple majority vote.
Concessions: No major fiscal changes were tied to the deal. But it delayed some cuts to Medicare and other health programs.
How close? The brinkmanship rattled Wall Street for almost three months, exacerbating stock volatility as the Treasury Department came just one day away from defaulting on U.S. debt by the time Congress finally acted.
Ceiling at the time: $22 trillion
*The limit was waived for two years, allowing $6.4 trillion in new debt.
How it went down: Donald Trump didn’t want a market-rattling debt crisis a year before his reelection bid. Steven Mnuchin didn’t want to be the first Treasury secretary to lead the nation through a default. And lawmakers in both parties were keen on ensuring the debt limit wouldn’t plague them right before the 2020 elections.
With that common interest, Mnuchin and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi conducted high-stakes talks for weeks, as the Treasury chief led negotiations for the White House. Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff at the time, and Russ Vought, then the White House budget chief, were also in the mix, both unsuccessfully pushing to freeze federal spending.
Mnuchin and Pelosi ultimately hammered out a two-year budget deal that provided a bigger funding boost for domestic programs than it did for the military, in a win for House Democrats. Trump even took to Twitter to whip Republican support in the House, with limited success.
Only 65 out of 197 House Republicans ended up voting for the measure, with most rejecting the pleas from Trump and their own leadership.
Concessions: The two-year deal raised spending caps by about $320 billion. If the two parties had not struck a deal, $126 billion in sequestration cuts would have set in, ravaging every discretionary account in the federal government.
How close? Trump signed the bill about a month before the U.S. was expected to default.
Ceiling at the time: $20.5 trillion
*The limit was waived for 13 months, allowing $1.5 trillion in new debt.
How it went down: What started as a classic bipartisan budget deal devolved into a brief government shutdown.
After months of closed-door negotiations, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and then-Minority Leader Chuck Schumer locked in a plan to raise spending caps, increase the debt limit and fund the government.
Then-President Trump gave his blessing, and the deal enjoyed bipartisan support in both chambers. But Rand Paul wasn’t happy, and the Kentucky Republican temporarily blocked the bill from passing the Senate, demanding a vote to strip the debt limit increase from the package and keep the government under strict budget caps.
There was drama in the House, too. Then-Minority Leader Pelosi tried to whip her caucus to oppose the bill, protesting Republican inaction on honoring legal status for young undocumented immigrants and delivering an eight-hour floor speech on the issue. But the California Democrat failed to tank the vote, with 73 Democrats supporting passage.
Concessions: The bipartisan agreement raised military and non-defense spending caps by about $300 billion over two years and provided nearly $90 billion in disaster aid.
How close? The debt-limit suspension came about a month before Treasury was set to fully exhaust its borrowing authority.
Ceiling at the time: $19.8 trillion
*The limit was waived for three months, allowing $700 billion in new debt.
How it went down: In a move that shocked Hill Republicans, Trump unexpectedly sided with Democrats to back an offer that waived the debt limit and extended government funding for three months, while providing disaster relief for Hurricane Harvey.
Trump’s support for the hurricane and fiscal relief patch dealt a blow to the rest of his party. Fellow Republicans saw him as abandoning any shred of GOP leverage while Democrats pushed to negotiate a high-stakes year-end government funding and debt-ceiling deal, in addition to an immigration overhaul, all in quick succession. The GOP had originally hoped to extend the debt limit through the 2018 midterm elections.
Concessions: The package provided $15 billion in emergency funding to aid recovery from Hurricane Harvey, the storm that made landfall in Texas and Louisiana that summer, killing more than 100 people and causing well over $100 billion in damage.
How close? The deal was signed into law just weeks before the U.S. was forecast to default on its loans.
Ceiling at the time: $18.1 trillion
*The limit was waived for about 16 months, allowing $1.7 trillion in new debt.
How it went down: The debt ceiling suspension was part of a closely held, last-minute budget deal Republican congressional leaders struck with then-President Barack Obama, as much of Washington was distracted by then-Speaker John Boehner’s resignation announcement.
Just 12 days before the U.S. was set to default, Boehner and McConnell told Obama they couldn’t pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase, with Republicans demanding entitlement changes and Democrats pushing for more domestic spending.
So the trio embarked on speedy talks that resulted in a two-year budget accord, ultimately ending years of bitterly partisan fiscal battles exacerbated in part by the rise of the Tea Party. The agreement took the debt ceiling off the table for the rest of Obama’s presidency and capped Boehner’s career in Congress, after the Ohio Republican’s long struggle to keep his conference in line.
Concessions: Both sides emerged from the breakneck talks claiming wins. Democrats lauded domestic spending increases and some tweaks to Social Security and Medicare, and Republicans celebrated more money for the military and changes to entitlement programs. Democrats and Republicans were also able to relax the discretionary spending caps that had been put in place years earlier, squeezing priorities on both sides of the aisle.
How close? Obama signed the bill one day before the government was set to max out its borrowing authority.
Ceiling at the time: $17.2 trillion
*The limit was waived for about 13 months, allowing $900 billion in new debt.
How it went down: The White House and congressional Democrats refused to accept anything but a “clean,” one-year debt limit increase. Boehner, unable to rally enough support from within his GOP ranks for any kind of debt hike, ultimately had to rely on Democrats to push the measure through the House.
Boehner was forced to capitulate despite his prior insistence that any debt ceiling increase must be accompanied by “significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt.” Senate Republicans also didn’t protest the measure; they were more concerned about getting out of town before a snowstorm than getting mired in a fiscal fight. With only 45 seats in the Senate, Republicans also weren’t in a position to drive policy.
Boehner had floated a number of policy sweeteners in an effort to win support from House Republicans, including Obamacare changes and a reversal of cuts to military pensions. But rank-and-file Republicans rejected each offer, and several dozen hardline conservatives refused to raise the borrowing limit no matter what.
Concessions: No strings attached this time.
How close? Treasury was expected to run out of cash-conserving tricks in less than a month.
Ceiling at the time: $16.7 trillion
*The limit was waived for about four months, allowing $500 billion in new debt.
How it went down: Boehner promised a “whale of a fight” as debt limit talks heated up that summer. It was, and he lost.
Similar to this year’s dynamic, Democrats made a pact to negotiate nothing until Republicans helped waive the debt limit and fund the government. One assumption underpinned that strategy: House Republicans, even with a hearty majority, couldn’t pass any debt limit remedy on their own thanks to conservative resistance.
And indeed, Republicans insistent on killing Obamacare ended up crushing every idea Boehner proposed for handling the debt limit and funding the government. The House impasse spurred a 16-day government shutdown and took the nation to the brink of debt default.
Throughout the protracted fight, interpersonal drama erupted within both parties. Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was mad about concessions Biden had made during previous debt-limit negotiations and shut the then-vice president out of direct negotiations with lawmakers. Many Senate Republicans turned on Sen. Ted Cruz as the Texas Republican led the anti-Obamacare push.
Finally, a bipartisan deal born in the Senate ended the government shutdown and staved off debt default. Not a single House Democrat voted against the plan, while 144 of the chamber’s Republicans — more than 60 percent — opposed the bill despite urging from their leadership. Across the Capitol, 81 senators voted yes, with 18 Republicans opposed.
Concessions: The deal included a plan for House and Senate leaders to appoint negotiators to hash out a budget agreement by mid-December that year, while giving Congress formal power to disapprove of the debt-ceiling increase.
How close? Congress got the debt-limit suspension to Obama’s desk with one day to spare before Treasury expected the government would default.
Ceiling at the time: $16.4 trillion
*The limit was waived for about four months, allowing $300 billion in new debt.
How it went down: Republicans began with demands for dollar-for-dollar spending cuts to match any increase in the nation’s borrowing cap. Democrats wanted the debt limit waived past the 2014 midterms, an election that ended up relegating them to the minority in both chambers.
In the end, the two parties agreed to much less on both fronts.
Concessions: Along with suspending the debt limit for about four months, Congress passed a “no budget, no pay” plan, barring lawmakers from getting paychecks if they didn’t pass a budget by mid-April of that year.
How close? The deal came together just weeks before Treasury was expected to default.
Ceiling at the time: $14.3 trillion
How it went down: With its vivid imagery of a “fiscal cliff,” this standoff is remembered as the most economically devastating debt limit brawl in U.S. history thus far. It also marked Republicans’ biggest win on demands for new spending controls. And two familiar faces are credited with saving the day: then-Vice President Joe Biden and McConnell, who was Senate minority leader at the time.
While Obama and then-House Speaker John Boehner sealed the final deal, Biden’s longtime connection with McConnell led to the breakthrough, according to lawmakers, congressional staff, administration aides and Democratic officials familiar with the talks.
After the House speaker rejected an initial spending-cuts plan, McConnell paused talks with Biden, giving Boehner breathing room to appease his caucus with an attempt to pass their own debt-limit plan (it failed). Then, when the time was right, McConnell dialed up Biden with an idea for a workaround — and it worked.
Still, the Republican majority in the House wasn’t united enough to carry the vote alone, and GOP leaders called for help across the aisle. Then-House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and then-Minority Leader Pelosi swallowed their objections to the plan and whipped their own as the vote remained open. The final House count: 174 Republican ayes, 66 Republican nays. Democrats split evenly, 95 on each side.
Concessions: The deal created a decade of spending caps for both military and non-defense programs, with the aim of saving more than $900 billion over that time. It also set up the threat of across-the-board cuts. The Pentagon, domestic programs and Medicare would all face the chopping block if Congress didn’t act to prevent that slashing.
How close? The talks got so intense and dragged on so close to the brink of default that the Standards and Poor’s credit rating agency downgraded the nation’s status as a borrower — the only time the U.S. has lost its A+ badge as a firmly trusted debtor. Even rumors of a downgrade that year caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to swing by more than 400 points.
Just before the final deal came together, Obama privately braced for the possibility that then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner would need to prepare the country for a market crash.
Ceiling at the time: $12.4 trillion
How it went down: In another echo of the current debt fight, fiscal conservatives made it tough that year to rally enough votes to raise the borrowing limit. But back then, in the pre-Tea Party era, it wasn’t Republican conservatives causing the most trouble — it was Democrats of the Blue Dog persuasion pushing hardest for spending restraint.
Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, and still it took them weeks of negotiations among their own party leaders to lock in a deal that narrowly cleared both the House and Senate.
Coming off the so-called Great Recession, then-President Obama and congressional leaders were prepared for years of red ink amid waning tax revenue. And moderate Democrats were demanding new fiscal controls.
Democratic leaders even called on former President Bill Clinton, nearly a decade after his tenure in the White House, to sell the caucus on the idea that new spending restrictions would remind voters their party “had a better record on fiscal discipline” than the GOP. Biden, as the lead proxy for Obama, worked his Senate ties.
Following Senate passage, without a vote to spare, then-Speaker Pelosi whipped alongside House Blue Dog leaders, prevailing 217-212 to raise the debt limit despite 37 defections.
Concessions: The deal reinstated “pay-go” budget rules similar to those credited with helping rein in deficits in the 1990s. Obama heralded the restraints, describing them as “a simple but bedrock principle: Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere.”
To win over moderates in the Senate, including then-Budget Chair Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Obama also promised to create an 18-member fiscal commission to recommend more steps to reducing the deficit.
How close? Federal debt could have exceeded the limit in less than a month if Congress hadn’t acted then.
Nancy Vu and Beatrice Jin contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
You might call Gonzales a political rarity, wading into the kind of huge policy fights that would terrify most swing-district members — but he’s been like this for a while. The Navy veteran and father of six has flouted GOP orthodoxy time and time again as his sprawling border district makes national news for the darkest reasons possible.
Before the smuggled migrant deaths came the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, which hit as another part of his district dealt with a refugee crisis of 12,000 Haitians fleeing political turmoil back home. And now the 42-year-old is clashing with conservatives on immigration, crusading against a draconian immigration bill from fellow Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy, while also warning his party against big spending cuts that could hurt military bases like those in his district.
“Whether I want it to or not,” Gonzales said of his district, “it has been at the epicenter.”
That’s not set to change anytime soon. His latest intraparty tension is spiking over an immigration bill that Gonzales fears would effectively ban asylum claims outright — an interpretation that Roy fiercely disputes.
“The bill is the bill, and it ain’t rocket science. Three pages. You either support enforcing laws and ensuring that the American people are protected and migrants are protected and that in fact, asylum is preserved — which the bill does — or you don’t,” Roy said in a brief interview. His proposal would severely curtail migration by seeking to bar illegal border crossings.
While Roy said the two Texans have had some “long conversations” about the bill, initially slated for early action in the new GOP majority, he said he’s still waiting to hear a “substantive” disagreement beyond “broad brush statements in the press.” (Gonzales, for his part, called Roy’s bill a “bad idea” and delivered a jab to non-border members: “While some people may parachute in and parachute out, we live it every single day.”)
Asked about the Gonzales-Roy disagreement on Thursday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters that “a lot of members have a lot of different positions” on immigration and that any legislation will ultimately go through committee: “I know members are working together to try to find a place to get there.”
Gonzales has long pushed the GOP to adopt a more nuanced view on its single most politically explosive issue. As he’s ferried over 100 fellow lawmakers to his district since 2018, the self-described border hawk has implored other Republicans to look beyond headlines and consider an immigration system that also “welcomes those through the front door.”
One of Gonzales’ strategies: Set up meetings for his colleagues with tough-talking sheriffs whom he’ll later reveal are Democrats, or conservative ranchers whom he’ll point out later actually support loosening some immigration laws.
After eking out perhaps the most shocking victory of the 2020 midterms, he’s warned other Republicans that if they want to hold onto their threadbare majority in two years, they need to protect battleground seats.
“We can’t just throw bombs and rhetoric and expect people to reelect us over and over again,” he said.
Several of his colleagues say they understand and are willing to listen to his perspective on bills like Roy’s.
“Nobody wants to put him in a difficult position,” said GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who also hails from the Lone Star State. “We understand that our border reps are in a more difficult political situation. If they have concerns, let’s hear them out.”
Sometimes, though, the rest of Gonzales’ party can’t abide his particular breed of bipartisanship.
Gonzales appeared alongside Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar during the anti-abortion centrist Democrat’s fierce fight to hold his seat in November’s midterms. That display of camaraderie irked some senior Republicans who were dumping money to oust Cuellar. His GOP opponent, Cassy Garcia, even conveyed her frustrations to Gonzales, according to two people familiar with the exchange who addressed it candidly on condition of anonymity.
Cuellar later won reelection by over 13 points. (Gonzales won by 17.)
“He’s not a political guy,” Cuellar later said, speaking broadly about his South Texas neighbor. The two became fast friends after they realized they attended the same school in Camp Wood, Texas (population 700), roughly two decades apart. “He’s willing to take certain stands that are right, and sometimes might not be the most politically expedient thing to do, but he’s willing to do that.”
Gonzales is still speaking out as his party starts to govern with the smallest of margins. This week, he criticized the party’s removal of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee, despite ultimately voting for it. Last month, he was the sole Republican to oppose the GOP rules package after McCarthy made an agreement with conservatives over concerns about potential defense cuts.
“It may not make them right, but at least he’s got the courage to say, ‘Hey, here’s my perspective on this,’” Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) — a fellow battleground Republican and Navy veteran — said of his colleague’s party-bucking tendency. “A lot of people would just kind of roll over and go with the herd.”
So far, despite his rebelliousness, Gonzales has mostly remained in good standing with McCarthy and his team.
Gonzales and fellow battleground Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) were the only two freshmen to land on the coveted House Appropriations Committee when they first arrived on the Hill in 2021. They were also tapped to co-lead the House GOP’s “Young Guns” program to work with top campaign recruits.
But Gonzales has also inserted himself into leadership races that risked major consequences after his preferred candidate lost. Late last year, he threw himself behind Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.) in the GOP whip race, despite clear signals that McCarthy opposed the chief deputy whip’s campaign for that position.
Gonzales shrugged off any possible blowback from his party, on that and other matters: “I’m a big boy. This is a big institution. You’re gonna make friends. You’re gonna make enemies. That’s part of the deal. I’m not worried about it.”
It’s perhaps that attitude that propels Gonzales’ work on various bipartisan groups, including the Problem Solvers Caucus. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), who co-led that group’s immigration talks last year, said of his Texan counterpart: “I think if there’s anybody that can really help bridge the divide, and come up with reasonable, decent immigration policy that both parties can work on, it’s Tony.”
And even though few in either party are counting on much immigration action this Congress, lawmakers might be forced to move anyway. The Supreme Court is set to rule this spring on a pair of presidential orders — Trump’s pandemic-era border expulsion policy and Obama’s “Dreamers” protections — that previous Congresses have punted on.
“In this Congress, five votes equals 100,” Gonzales said on possible action on immigration issues. “There’s opportunity there for those that want to govern and not allow the place to get hijacked.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Nadhim Zahawi was battling to save his political career on Saturday night after he finally admitted reaching a tax settlement with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) following an “error” over a controversial multimillion-pound shareholding in the polling company YouGov.
In a carefully worded statement, Zahawi appeared to confirm that HMRC had carried out an investigation into his financial affairs while he was serving as chancellor last summer. Zahawi, now the Tory party chairman, said that the tax authority had concluded that he had made a “careless but not deliberate” error.
“So that I could focus on my life as a public servant, I chose to settle the matter and pay what they said was due, which was the right thing to do,” he stated. Tax experts said the statement was a tacit acknowledgment that Zahawi had paid a penalty.
The admission raises questions for Rishi Sunak over what he knew about the settlement and when. It comes with the prime minister already under pressure after being fined for not wearing a seatbelt, with MPs also unhappy over his rejection of tax cuts and the government’s allocation of levelling up funds. In an attempt to protect Sunak, Zahawi added: “When I was appointed by the prime minister, all my tax affairs were up to date.”
Zahawi’s tax affairs were thrown into the spotlight last summer when he was appointed chancellor by Boris Johnson, the day before Johnson was forced to resign. The Observer reported that civil servants in the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team had alerted Johnson to an HMRC “flag” over Zahawi before his appointment, but it had been ignored.
Zahawi faced scrutiny on a tranche of shares in YouGov, the polling company he co-founded, which were held by a Gibraltar company, Balshore Investments, and sold for about £27m between 2006 and 2018. It was estimated by the thinktank Tax Policy Associates he may have avoided £3.7m capital gains tax on the sale of these shares.
Saturday’s statement immediately set off new demands for Britain’s most senior civil servant and parliament’s standards commissioner to launch separate investigations into the affair, after questions over whether Zahawi has made the correct declarations to officials and parliament concerning his financial interests.
Zahawi has still not disclosed the size of the HMRC settlement or confirmed he paid a penalty. It follows a Guardian report that he paid about £5m in relation to the sale of shares in YouGov.
Unlike his YouGov co-founder, Stephan Shakespeare, Zahawi took no shares in YouGov. However, a 42.5% shareholding was held by Balshore Investments, an offshore trust controlled by Zahawi’s parents. As YouGov grew in value, Balshore sold all the shares by 2018.
Zahawi said his father took shares “in exchange for some capital and his invaluable guidance”. He added that while HMRC agreed that his father was entitled to shares, it “disagreed about the exact allocation. They concluded that this was a ‘careless and not deliberate’ error.”
Zahawi said HMRC had agreed he had never set up an offshore structure, including Balshore Investments, and that “I am not the beneficiary of Balshore Investments”. When asked on Saturday night, his team would not comment on whether he had ever benefited from Balshore Investments in the past.
Dan Neidle, a tax lawyer and founder of Tax Policy Associates, said: “When I first reported this, he denied it, threatened to sue me and said throughout his tax affairs were in order. It is a disgrace.”
Opposition parties are now demanding the publication of all of Zahawi’s correspondence with HMRC. They are also calling for independent investigations into whether Zahawi made the necessary declarations to officials and parliament.
Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, is facing calls to oversee an investigation into whether Zahawi should have declared any links relating to YouGov or Balshore under the ministerial code. The Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader, Daisy Cooper, has written to Case, calling for his intervention.
Cooper said: “Zahawi and his Conservative cabinet colleagues are arrogantly trying to brush this under the carpet. There are facts that still need to be established so there must be an independent investigation to get to the bottom of this. The British public has lost all faith in Conservative ministers to tell the truth after years of scandal.”
Meanwhile, Labour has also written to Daniel Greenberg, the new parliamentary commissioner for standards, asking whether Zahawi should have declared Balshore Investments in the public register of members’ interests.
Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, said Zahawi’s new remarks raised more questions. “This carefully worded statement blows a hole in Nadhim Zahawi’s previous accounts of this murky affair,” she said. “He must now publish all correspondence with HMRC so we can get the full picture. In the middle of the biggest cost of living crisis in a generation, the public will rightly be astonished that anyone could claim that failing to pay millions of pounds worth of tax is a simple matter of ‘carelessness’.”
She added: “Nadhim Zahawi still needs to explain when he became aware of the investigation, and if he was chancellor and in charge of our tax system at the time.”
Several senior ministers have defended Zahawi, including the prime minister. At prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Sunak said Zahawi had “already addressed this matter in full and there’s nothing more that I can add”.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
