On 13th February 2020, Jon Trickett, Labour politician and Cabinet Office minister, filed an official complaint regarding Boris Johnson’s ‘free’ Caribbean holiday from a mystery donor with a private address. This is the first time in British History a serving Prime Minister has been investigated by commissioners, who’s responsibility is to regulate MPs’ conduct and propriety. The MPs’ code of conduct requires members to provide the name of the person or organisation that actually funded a donation.

Over the New Year, Boris Johnson and his girlfriend stayed in a villa on the island of Mustique valued at around £15,000-£20,000 for a 10 day stay. Johnson declared the cost of the villa he stayed in was paid for by Mr David Ross, Tory party donor and co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, who also owns a property on the island. However this was later contradicted by Ross who denied any involvement in paying for the holiday, or owning said villa. Ross simply said he had only “facilitated accommodation for Mr Johnson”. Lest we forget in 2019 Carphone Warhouse was fined £29.1m by U.K. courts for mis-selling mobile phone insurance to customers. So the PM has some lovely friends.

Later, the actual owners of the villa spoke out and confirmed they had received payment for the PM’s stay. They had no idea who covered the cost of it as it was “covered by a private management company on the island”, and also refused to say how much the stay amounted to. This only adds to the confusion and uncertainty of who actually funded this lavish trip for newly elected, Boris Johnson. People have campaigned and argued for British territories such as British Virgin Islands (cough cough, Mustique) to join Oman, Cayman Islands, US Virgin Islands, Fiji, Guam, Vanuatu, Trinidad and Tobago, Samoa, Panama and Seychelles on the EU tax haven blacklist (non-cooperative jurisdictions). You only get on that list if, according to the EU you are failing to clamp down on tax fraud or evasion, tax avoidance, money laundering and abusive tax practises.

If you don’t already know, The Panama Papers which is known as history’s biggest data leak, exposed over 40 years worth of documents in 2016, showing the cash flow of billions of pounds from all over the world in offshore accounts. A lot of recognisable names in British politics were included in the 11.5 million documents published, such as: Ian Cameron (David Cameron’s father, while he was PM), Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Leadsom, Theresa May’s husband (while she was PM), Lord Edmiston (donated to Vote Leave and Grassroots Out during the Brexit campaign), Brexiter Arron Banks and Nigel Farage, the list continues. A lot of “Britons based in tax havens” also donated to Theresa May’s campaign before the 2017 general election. You know, just as we’re hearing news of unnamed donors who paid nearly £100,000 for two games of tennis with Boris Johnson at the 2020 Tory auction, as well as the former minister of Vladimir Putin, who between him and his wife, have donated more than 1.6 million to the Conservatives. Dinner at the Carlton Club (secret Tory club, also Tory donors) with Health Secretary Matt Hancock sold for £3,000. While a weeks holiday in the, you guessed it, Cayman Islands sold for £10,000. It seems that this, along with Boris Johnson giving £100k+ benefits grant to Jennifer Acruri and the prolonging of the Russian Interference Report, are serious grounds for criminal investigation. For those that argue, innocent until proven guilty – then release the Russia Report.

On the live 2019 leaders debate, Boris Johnson promised angry audience members when confronted about the Russia Report, that he would release it and that “everything is fine”. If that is the case, and there is nothing to hide, release the document! Of course they do have a lot of things they want to hide, but prolonging the release of the report in the hope we all forget, and go about our daily business won’t make them look anymore innocent. Since then, he’s appeared on tv and interviews claiming there’s ‘no Russian interference’. He also visited an engineering company in Stockton-on-Tees where he claimed “There’s absolutely no evidence that I’ve ever seen any Russian interference in U.K. democratic processes, and as for that particular report, I saw no reason whatever to change the timetable for publications and reports just because there was a general election going on”. What he meant was, he’s not going to release the report about foreign interference in our previous election, as we head in to vote for another one. It’s not like we’re a democracy or anything. This behaviour shows you how much of a careerist Boris Johnson is, and how much he disregards the political process, truth, justice and accountability in his few months as PM.