Quitting the day job

Tweet Tory MPs are rushing to quit their lucrative day jobs before 1st July, when they will have to publicly declare their earnings. Apparently as many as 40 of Cameron's top team have other jobs as well as being MPs, and there is some concern that they may find themselves embarrassed when the details emerge.

Interestingly, it seems that about 10 of these people hold directorships of hedge funds. It's been public knowledge for some time that the Tory Party has been benefiting from the activities of these funds, but I hadn't realised that so many of their MPs were active participants as well. It's no great surprise that none of these MPs were particularly keen to discuss their roles.

Whilst there is scope for debate as to how far the activities of hedge funds caused – rather then merely benefited from – the collapse of the banking system, there is no doubt in my mind that short-selling financial stocks on a large scale was a contributory factor.

I don't know which MPs held these directorships or with which hedge funds; perhaps that will become clearer over the next two weeks. But there is surely something very wrong when an opposition party can benefit financially from the collapse of the financial system – and it's even worse if some of them may have had a direct involvement in causing it.

I'd like to think that any members of Cameron's top team who are found to have been involved in short-selling shares in British banks would rapidly find themselves as ex-members of the team – but I'm not holding my breath.