Andrea Leadsom - please stand for leadership!

[Millyonthefloss2]

Anyone agree?

She's been endorsed by Aaron Banks and Nick Griffin. Plus she has some serious fraud allegations hanging over her and seems to think being a mother makes her superior. Think I'll pass.

polibite.com/nick-griffin-endorses-andrea-leadsom-conservative-party-leadership/

Millyonthefloss2

It says a lot about where I think this country is now that I would still choose Teresa May over the lies of Andrea Leadstrom.

I can see why Theresa May would want to not give any negotiating point away for free, however, bluffs only work when the other side cannot see straight through you.
I think everyone agrees that until we leave the EU, any EU citizen living in the UK can stay in the UK on exactly the same terms they stayed here last year or the year before or the year before that etc., etc.
So, the only question is what happens the day after we exit the EU? And the answer is they become an immigrant like any other, subject to the same rules.
We will continue to have the Human Rights act that entitles people to family life, so anyone who has been here several years by then and has established a life here will be allowed to stay. Its the same rule that prevents us getting rid of hate preachers - the only difference being that we don't want to get rid of people who've already come here to live normal lives because its plain wrong.

Any EU negotiator will have taken legal advice and know this with 100% certainty, so May will look foolish if she actually tries to use it as a bargaining chip. TBH I don't know who she is trying to fool - maybe just some of the Tory party members who are a bit stupid??

So, LondonKiwiMummy it should be good news for you - your DH and DS are going nowhere!

Andrea Leadsom is an awful woman. Watching the final Referendum debate on TV, I remember commenting to my dh how pathetic she sounded, repeating the Brexit sound bites rather than crediting people with enough intelligence to give reasoned and intelligent answers to specific questions. I would far rather Theresa May than Andrea Smarmy and Not Remotely Sincere Leadson. I wouldn't trust Leadson as far as I could throw her and I would love to throw her somewhere extremely unpleasant. She's not the candidate to unite the nation!

roundaboutthetown - what do you like about Theresa May (other than she's not AL)?
She's not likeable in a friendly sense, but that doesn't matter unless you have to work with her.
She's clearly a political survivor as the life expectancy of a Home Office minister is usually measured in months, not years, but your TM has survived massively unpopular immigration, police dissent, the London riots, scandals about not even being able to count the number of immigrants arriving and departing. Is being a bit "teflon" a good thing though? Wouldn't it be better to have someone who takes responsibility for the bad outcomes as well as the good?

Maybe the appeal is something else, but i can't see it despite trying to be open-minded. Anyone??

There's nothing I like about Theresa May either, but then I never vote conservative. I just think Theresa May is the frying pan and Andrea Leadsom the fire. I also don't think Leadsom's history as a banker and her aggressive personal family tax avoidance measures will enamour her to the British public or result in the majority of the population trusting what she is negotiating with the EU.

I don't know anything about her personal family tax situation, but I do not a bit about how City firms paid their employees, especially the bonuses. There were all sorts of investment trusts and share schemes. Mostly they helped the firm manage its tax liabilities (back in the days when this was a pragmatic thing to do, rather than a dishonourable one). They were always about the company's tax bill, not the employees' and they weren't optional - most of us would have preferred, cold, hard, uncomplicated cash but I suspect that point will be lost in the media.

I could have written your post roundaboutthetown.

It's a rum day that Theresa May is our best hope as a leader, but it has come to that. I'd back her all the way over Leadsom.

The real problem with Leadsom is the fact that her Brexit trade model has nothing to do with reality. I posted detail about it earlier in the thread, so I won't repeat it here, suffice to say she doesn't have a viable plan.

Furthermore treasury officials report her as the 'worst minister we've ever had', commenting that she 'found it difficult to understand issues or take decisions.'

The fact that she has never held a cabinet position means she is totally inexperienced and un-tested.

vri, it relates to a property company her and her husband set up, not her bonuses when she was working in the city.

Like a company that owns a holiday home abroad?

or a buy to let business?

I've googled it.. its about inheritance tax management.

And bank loans raised via a tax haven.

Jersey? its off-shore but its not like the Caymans i.e. its relatively reputable

Off shore being the pertinent point.

but there's off-shore (red flag for money laundering type) and then there's off-shore ("semi-regulated").

I can see this being manipulated badly in the press. People won't be willing to receive a financial education (and why should they?). Instead AL will be tainted with a "where there's smoke, there's fire" type of judgement. Maybe AL's campaign is doomed before it really begins??

Nobody's suggested money-laundering - just very loophole-y tax arrangements. Technically not illegal, but the sort of dodgy, embarrassing tax evasion stuff the Treasury have been trying clamp down on - and that would be the reason she resigned from the board in 2014 (and installed her 18yr old son there instead) before joining the Treasury.

But the voters in this particular election are Tory MPs and then Tory members. Will they mind a bit of "inheritance planning"? Don't they all do it?

Yes, the voters in this election are all Tories.... It won't play well for the Conservative party in the long run, however. I don't see her performing very well in front of the "bureaucrats" of Brussels and heads of other EU countries with whom she would have to negotiate, either.

Not that kind of offshore 'inheritance planning'.

One of my old bosses told me it goes something like:
I tax plan, you tax manage, he tax avoids

Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind on Sky News... ouch!

ISAs - generally accepted tax avoidance. Complex trusts and arrangements that require vast amounts of wealth and expensive legal and other advice in order to make them worthwhile and are tolerated by lawmakers (who are often wealthy enough to benefit from them, themselves...), generally disliked by the general public. Complex arrangements that require QCs' opinions because they are clearly not what legislation ever intended to be possible, even if cunningly legal - generally loathed by the general public. Legislation becomes more and more complex, confusing and unfair precisely because of people who refuse to behave in a transparent and openly fair way. EU law enables the judiciary to prevent things which are not in the spirit of the intended legislation, unlike English law, which happily allows anything if the words accidentally permit it, even when absolutely everyone agrees that was never intended.

What about gifting your house to you children, then renting it back from them and crossing your fingers that its at least 7 years before you die? It was bought with earned income that was fully taxed and the purchase was subject to stamp duty, but ideally the treasury would like another chunk of it when you die and you'd rather your child had the benefit of it.

What is that: tax planning, tax management or tax avoidance?

Anyone seen that she is backing plans to scrap the minimum wage and maternity pay for small businesses? Still want her to win OP?

And the stripping if our rights begins...