C is for Conor da Gangsta
Week C | Thursday | Tory Time: Conor Burns
I was going to profile Jonathan Gullis today, but it’s been … a wee bit busy, non? My week included dashing down to Pestminster to sing Bye Bye Boris with national hero Steve Bray and his merry band of activists. So I’m just going to post a profile I’ve tweeted previously, but update it. This is one grubby, grubby MP.
Conor Burns, born 1972, another proof of my hypothesis that being a Tory 🛎🔚 is dreadfully ageing. MP for Bournemouth West since 2010, because there are a fair few addled old Tories living thereabouts. He’s had, shall we say, A CHEQUERED HISTORY. Bournemouth: genteel reputation. Conor? Straight up gangsta.
PPS to Secretary of State for Northern Ireland 2010-12; resigned in opposition to House of Lords Reform Bill. PPS to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson until the latter’s 2018 resignation. Minister for Trade Policy after Johnson made PM. Conor resigned that in 2020, after getting caught being a … you know. More on that anon.
Despite that finding, Conor was appointed Minister of State for Northern Ireland in the 2021 reshuffle. Are there no RULES & STANDARDS as to who can be in cabinet and/or termed ‘Right Honourable’?! Ha ha, I kid, I kid, of course not.
Conor should’ve been barred from high office.
It took ages for Conor to get elected in the first place. He failed to get on Southampton City Council for 5 years, was finally elected in 1999. In 2002, the whole council was up for re-election: he lost yet again. He tried to be an MP in 2001 and 2005, but couldn’t even get on Hedge End Town Council in 2005.
Loser.
How does that saying go? ‘If at first you don’t succeed, use your connections and the party machinery to bag a safe seat’? I think that’s how it goes. Conor was chosen as Tory candidate for Bournemouth West because he was on the party’s candidate A-List, despite being such a proven loser.
The A-List, aka Priority List, was David Cameron’s idea, drawn up by Conservative Central Office in 2005, allegedly to increase the number of minority and/or women MPs, possible peers, MEPs, etc. The whole thing was quietly dropped in 2012, but by then Conor had a seat at last.
He looks SO minority woman, yeah?
Andrea Leadsom, Louise Mensch, Zac Goldsmith, Esther McVey, and Priti Patel were other beneficiaries of the list. Fuck you, David Cameron. For this too, I mean, not just doing a huge Brexshit then walking away whistling and leaving the place reeking. You didn’t even flush.
Another saying comes to mind about Conor: ‘Walk softly and carry a big stick’. I’ve met people who have experience with him. They say he speaks softly in person, to the point you can barely hear him. This truly shocked me as I’d just examined his history.
Let’s look at the line of looty.
I mean, we don’t need to see Conor’s voting record, do we? As #TheyWorkForYou says, ‘Conor Burns is a Conservative MP, and on the vast majority of issues votes the same way as other Conservative MPs.’ Aka pro-Tory pals, anti-struggling people.
Conor was vice-president of Anglo-American ‘training and education’ organisation the Young Britons' Foundation. It gave him its Golden Dolphin award for ‘stoic support’. Jon Cruddas called YBF "a Conservative madrasa" due to i.e. its opposition to the NHS, support for waterboarding.
Yes, this is real. Down with the kids.
Let’s return to Conor’s main scandal. He resigned as trade minister in May 2020, after the Commons standards committee found he’d breached the code of conduct by using parliamentary privilege to “further his family's interests”. He was suspended from Parliament for seven days. The committee’s scathing report said Conor used his position to “attempt to intimidate” a member of the public and their firm over a financial dispute involving Conor’s father. It added that he “persisted in making veiled threats” even during the course of the investigation.
A Christian. Also pictured: Conor Burns.
Conor used House of Commons notepaper to make an “implied threat” against the firm, writing, “My role in the public eye could well attract interest especially if I were to use parliamentary privilege to raise the case [in the Commons].”
Stupid. Arrogant. Careless. Tory 🤷🏻♀️
Jacob Rees-Mogg made slimy supportive remarks regarding Conor nonetheless. The Crime Minister sent him a thank you letter. A good piece about why that piece of shite Conor should have resigned.
Famously, in January Conor defended the Crime Minister’s unlawful lockdown birthday party by arguing that he’d been “ambushed with a cake”. Conor knows he was an eejit, later saying, “It’s not often you get to write a line in your own obituary live on national television.”
Later that same week Conor backtracked: “I’m told under some authority, indeed from him, that there actually wasn’t a cake.” We have as many words for ‘liar’ in English as the Inuit have for ‘snow’. This situation’s something I like to term ‘lying inception’; Conor seems to have it as his hobby, especially on behalf of BloJo.
Conor chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Bahrain, and has written articles defending its human rights record, had all-expenses paid trips there. Its record is described by Human Rights Watch as ‘dismal’. Torture and forced disappearances are common, pro-democracy protests repressed.
In recent months, Conor attacked other Tory MPs calling for the Crime Minister’s resignation. He told BBC Radio 4 Today, “There are a number of colleagues across Parliament who have never really supported the Prime Minister … [if he] stepped off Westminster Bridge … [a girl can dream] … and walked on top of the water they would say he couldn’t swim. That is a fact.” What a lickspittle toady. And he’ll get nowt for it. He’s never going to fuck you, Conor. He’s just not that into you.
In early May, Conor gave fresh warning that the UK could unilaterally suspend parts of the Withdrawal Agreement re. post-Brexit trading arrangements with Northern Ireland, after the Financial Times reported that legislation was being prepared to create powers to rip up the NI Protocol. Less than two weeks before the NI Assembly election. The shadow Northern Ireland secretary said, “This is … incredibly damaging … Boris Johnson negotiated, his team drafted the … Protocol; they presented it to the EU, they negotiated it into the deal.” If it’s broke you fix it, not breach it.
Let’s get into the weeds, where real Tory dirt is usually found: by following the money, henny. Start by reading this thread, then the article it links to, about Platinum Skies. I know, I know, The Times. Still. In summary:
💩 Another leasehold scandal, linked to Tories, little transparency so we can’t explore them deeply.
💩 Yet more financial strain on those who can least afford it, due to nothing more than rampant venality.
@nthoward made v. interesting replies that went largely unnoticed:
Now take a gander at this redacted Freedom of Information request from 3-4 months earlier. ‘Homes England does not hold the information detailed … The FOIA does not oblige a public authority to create information to answer a request if the requested information is not held. The duty under section 1(1) is only to provide the recorded information held.’
In Toryland, the way to keep things secret is just to keep no records in the first place.
Journalist Andrew Ellson was careful with his wording re. Tory connections. Nonetheless, as he notes, a legal challenge was mounted to stop publication of the article. Evidence of consciousness of guilt in some legal jurisdictions.
Platinum Skies paid Conor £12,500 for 36 hours of 2019 consultancy. Where was his due diligence? Why do you pay someone £347 an hour? When they're your MP? What would you expect to receive if you paid someone that much? This is why MPs should have no other jobs. You had ONE JOB.
Conor consulted for Trant Engineering, £10k a quarter for 10 hours a month. 10 grand for 30 hours = £333 an hour. Also a consultant for real estate developers the Quantum Group: 6 hours a month, £6,250. 1042 AN HOUR. Higher going rate if he can get it. For doing what, exactly?!
February 2019 to July 2019, consultant to The Affordable Housing and Healthcare Group, 170 Charminster Road, Bournemouth: advised on key worker housing and elderly care provision using underutilised land. £12,500, 6 hrs a month. This was a late registration rectified in June 2020.
Encore, Quantum, Platinum, Affordable Housing and Healthcare Group: all the same people, same Bournemouth address. ‘[S]tate-of-the-art care homes and high quality, shared ownership urban retirement communities’, eh?
Five years ago Quantum partnered with US real estate investment trust Welltower, giving it the power to buy £250m of Quantum’s assets, to be operated by Encore Care Homes.
We’ll never get to the bottom of all these people, will we? One day we’ll wake up and everything will be run for inhuman profit by American and Russian and Chinese interests and we’ll wonder what the hell happened. Boiling frog syndrome.
Nice work if you can get it.
I was raised Catholic. I’m [col]lapsed for many reasons, including my family suffering one of THOSE priests; disbelief in use of repetition; but primarily the hypocrisy. The lofty self-righteousness on a Sunday, then shafting the poor the rest of the week.
I SEE YOU CONOR BURNS
Conor and Johnson
Sitting in a tree
M-I-N-T-I-N-G it
First comes cake
Then comes peerage
Then comes the downfall of a nasty sociopathic bumbler and all his hypocritical, dishonourable hangers on.
But seemingly not yet, alas.
A few new tidbits about Conor before you head off and take that bleach shower. Yes, he’s still standing by his beloved Boris. Yes, this is curious and frankly rather dank, given it was Conor who walked in on Carrie On Spending giving Bunter a blowie on an FCO sofa. Not least, it implies that if Conor visits Spaffer, he doesn’t usually knock.
And then, this week: the Northern Ireland Office defended Northern Ireland Minister Conor after it emerged that he’d provided a reference for loyalist leader — some would say ‘terrorist’ — Winston ‘Winkie’ Irvine, effectively intervening in a bail hearing. Winkie’s car was stopped in the Shankill area of Belfast in June and a holdall containing guns and ammunition was found in the boot. He was granted bail as his DNA wasn’t found on the holdall of guns he was transporting in his vehicle.
The Northern Ireland Office said the letter was dated December 2021 and was about ‘maintaining dialogue’; wasn’t intended for use in criminal proceedings. The Assistant Chief Constable involved in the matter confirmed regular contact between the pair, though not in relation to this court case.
The company you keep, hey?
Last week: Penny Mordaunt
Next week: who can say, given *gestures wildly* all this.
This takes a long time to do, but in the age of being bombarded with information and scandal so we can’t possibly keep up, I feel it’s important for knowledge about one public person to be put into one place. If you find it to be a public service but don’t want a paid, repeating newsletter subscription, you could help me get a new protest outfit together one time only. The old one is covered in Tory tears.
Week A: Andrew ‘Stinker’ Bridgen. Links to previous dissections on Twitter can also be found at the foot of that one. Eventually I’ll transfer them all over: I think it’s easier for you to read them here than in long, disjointed Twitter threads.