The UK’s recently appointed Transport Secretary has resigned over the revelation she has a past conviction for misleading the police, having appeared before a court over a fake theft just months before she was first elected.
Louise Haigh tendered her resignation as Transport Secretary Thursday night after it was revealed she had reported a mobile phone stolen to police which was later discovered to still being in her possession.
The minister, who has not been in government long enough to become known for much besides her unconventional choices in hair dye has been a dogmatic activist of nationalisation of the United Kingdom’s train operators. Despite the British experience the last three times the railways were nationalised, either by law or practice, many — particularly on the left — believe it will work this time.
In her resignation letter Haigh essentially denied all conscious wrongdoing, making implicit her view that the legal matter had arisen from a mistake.
Labour leader and now-UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer appeared to accept this position totally in his written response, which made no reference to the reasons for resignation whatsoever, remarking only “I know you still have a huge contribution to make in the future”.
Yet reports in several British news outlets make assertions which appear — superficially at least — to challenge Haigh’s narrative of events. An exposé by broadcaster Sky News states Haigh had reported a mobile phone stolen to Police in 2013, and that the handset had been issued to Haigh by her employer, the insurer Aviva. After she was convicted of making a false report to police, Haigh was sacked by Aviva, questioning whether they considered the matter an innocent mistake.
Further, the broadcaster reported:
Three separate sources claimed to Sky News that she made the false report to benefit personally, with two of the sources alleging she wanted a more modern work handset that was being rolled out to her colleagues at the time.
Newspaper of record The Times is even more strident in its claims, stating:
The Times has been told that the company launched an investigation after Haigh said that company mobile phones had been stolen or had gone missing on repeated occasions. Aviva referred the matter to the police and Haigh was prosecuted in 2014.
Haigh, who was Policing Minister under the former Shadow Cabinet of hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and who had previously been a Police ‘Special’ Constable has never made this episode public before and was elected to Parliament just six months after the 2014 conviction. Yet her senior colleagues were aware, it is stated, because as part of the normal security vetting process that takes place when politicians take senior jobs it emerged when she entered the then-Labour opposition’s top team.
The fact Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer knew about this, even if the conviction is now ‘spent’, has inevitably lead to questions about hsi judgement. Tory-friendly newspaper The Daily Telegraph cites a Conservative Party spokesman who said to this: “In her resignation letter, she states that Keir Starmer was already aware of the fraud conviction, which raises questions as to why the Prime Minister appointed Ms Haigh to Cabinet with responsibility for a £30bn budget? The onus is now on Keir Starmer to explain this obvious failure of judgement to the British public.”
