Reform UK and Scottish Greens have nothing to offer Scotland
A HOWL of righteous indignation from the right-wing commentariat rose to defend Lord Malcolm Offord last week after he’d crowed about the extent of his personal wealth. During an exchange with Ross Greer in the STV leaders’ debate Mr Offord had boasted of having “six houses, five cars and six boats.”
Reform UK’S Scottish leader was trying to make a point about the rewards of hard work and the benefits accruing from our once-great education system. “I don’t say this to boast,” Mr Offord said, “but to ask you this question, Mr Greer: in your Scotland, do you want more people like me or fewer people like me?” Mr Greer replied: “Fewer people like you.”
This response elicited some spluttering among Mr Offord’s media lickspittles. We should all be celebrating this man; not denouncing him, they said. All of them chose to miss the point, of course. No-one was begrudging Mr Offord his wealth and success. Rather, they were repelled by the arrogant conceit of the man and mocked him accordingly. To brag loudly about unimaginable wealth in a country where social inequality and multi-deprivation rages, is proof of profound defects in character.
Two of my closest school-friends,
Steven and Gary, also took the road to London in the 1980s and rose to become CEOS of global entities. On their rise to the top they were helped by natural charisma, their God-given abilities and some sharp communication skills, all of which had been refined by their education in the west of Scotland comprehensive school sector. I suspect their personal wealth runs to several millions, but they would rather have their arms cut off than boast about this in the manner of Malcolm Offord.
Their values remain rooted in the communities that reared them. To them, the thought of brandishing their material wealth in the faces of those who helped nurture them would be an anathema. I know other quiet Scottish millionaires whose wealth is glimpsed when a local deserving cause requires some funding, and then only discreetly. They would be appalled by Mr Offord’s grubby exhibition of preening braggadocio.
None among their own is envious of their success or the material rewards it’s wrought. I’m very proud of Gary and Steven’s achievements and love listening to their tales of dealing with international power-brokers. When they recount their anecdotes they do so with a fierce pride in their Scottishness. Everyone gathered round their global high tables knows that they’re Scottish; that they hail from working-class families and that their values have been shaped by these.
The way they’ve conducted themselves is a credit to Scotland’s education system and the old Scottish values of hard-work, circumspection and discipline. The conduct of Mr Offord and his cheerleaders is an affront to these values.
Last month, I had a brisk exchange of views with Mr Offord following his speech at a rally in Aberdeen, where palms were cast at the feet of Nigel Farage. Mr Offord had devoted much of his speech to his slightly perplexed audience warning them about the cost and dangers of “illegal” asylum-seekers and refugees in Glasgow. Afterwards, I’d suggested to him that if some of the multibillion-pound tech giants operating in the UK paid the same rates of tax as the people sitting beside me in the audience it would dwarf the cost of housing asylum-seekers.
He replied that these global behemoths were “wealth-creators” whom we needed to woo with a more relaxed tax regime. It was a reasonable point, mildly expressed. It’s just that even as we discussed this we both knew these outfits were finessing technology that would make employing actual people obsolete.
Mr Offord’s CV is a road-map through the temples of capitalism. It includes his stints at Lazard, the multi-national asset management firm, the Bankers Trust New York and Charterhouse Capital Partners. Presumably the wealth he accumulated from these jobs allowed him to donate £147k to the Tories who later gave him a peerage and an unelected ministerial post.
There is nothing to suggest that his
personal work at these companies was anything other than legal, decent, honest and truthful but the firms themselves operated in the sewer of capitalism. Lazard acted as the UK Government’s independent adviser on the Royal Mail flotation, during which alarms were raised by senior MPS around conflicts of interest. This is when it became known that Lazard’s asset management arm was chosen as a ‘priority investor’ and accrued an £8m profit in one week. They were also involved in the Greek Sovereign Debt scandal of 2015 when it acted as debt adviser to the Greek government during its catastrophic negotiations with European creditors.
In 1999, Mr Offord’s former employers at the Bankers Trust New York were found to have illegally kept more than £15m in unclaimed funds from customer accounts between 1994 and 1996, by treating them as income to inflate profits.
In themes explored by 2015’s The Big Short, the Trust was found to have mis-sold derivatives and was accused of misleading corporate clients about the risks and valuations in these instruments of financial necromancy. The firm continued to lend to Donald Trump in the 1990s after other major institutions had turned off the taps.
This is not to impugn Mr Offord’s personal integrity: merely to illustrate that his riches were accrued in a sector often found knee-deep in financial brigandry. There is hard work which rewards honest endeavour. And there is soft work which preys on it.
There’s been some absurdly naïve commentary about the impact of both Reform and the Scottish Greens in the Holyrood election. Behold them, their cheer-leaders trill: aren’t they so refreshing? “They have principles.” It’s just that these are most evident in punching down upon and intimidating people whom they both consider to be easy targets.
The Greens specialise in creating a hostile atmosphere for women by subordinating their rights to the whims of biological men who claim to be women. They march to a drum-beat of antisemitism and would sacrifice the working futures of entire communities to the middle-class caprice of Net Zero. It’s a Thatcherite approach reminiscent of the 1980s when working-class communities were tossed aside in the interests of the pitiless world which made the fortunes of Malcolm Offord and Nigel Farage.
Reform UK and the Scottish Greens are, quite literally, good for nothing and so very alike. There is little in their messaging that’s uplifting, optimistic or noble. They each represent the very worst of Scotland.