Tory leader David Cameron, currently trying to show his party conference that he’s not the ‘novice’ PM Gordon Brown said he was, is in trouble over his ‘Leaders’ group, rich financiers who support the Tories with big cash injections.
A number of these are ‘hedge fund’ directors, investors who reckon they can make money when share prices go down as well as up. They do this by borrowing stock, selling it and then buying it back for less when the share price falls.
Some of these characters have made fortunes by chasing down the shares of troubled banks Northern Rock, Halifax Bank of Scotland and Bradford & Bingley. Unsurprisingly the voters, who stand to lose their houses and jobs through these nefarious (if quite legal) activities, are singularly unimpressed by this.
Cameron stoutly maintains that he might take the hedgies’ money but doesn’t listen to anything they say.
Which may be correct but all the good work he’s done to distance the Tories from their old image of sleaze-ridden fat cats may be undone by this association.
That other fat cat, McCavity Gordon Brown (after TS Eliot’s cat that’s never there when there’s trouble) will be wearing a Cheshire Cat-like grin.