Boris Johnson

GB News Owner’s Hedge Fund Has $2.2 Billion Fossil Fuel Investments

Spread the love

Original article by Sam Bright and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

One of the owners of GB News runs a hedge fund that has a major financial stake in more than 100 oil and gas firms, DeSmog can reveal. 

This news comes after former prime minister Boris Johnson was announced as a new presenter on the television broadcaster on Friday.

An investigation by DeSmog in May found that one in three GB News presenters had spread climate science denial on air in 2022, while more than half had attacked climate action. GB News presenters have used their platforms to urge the UK to “drill, baby, drill” for more coal, oil and gas.

Paul Marshall is the chairman and chief investment officer of Marshall Wace, a London-based hedge fund that he co-founded in 1997.

Marshall Wace is now one of the world’s largest hedge funds – an investment vehicle that bets on rising and falling share prices – with around $63 billion (£51.9 billion) in assets under management.

According to DeSmog’s analysis of Marshall Wace’s filings with the US financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), his fund owns shares worth $2.2 billion (£1.8 billion) in fossil fuel firms. This includes companies that specialise in extracting, refining, transporting and distributing fossil fuels.

In its latest SEC filing, for the quarter ending 30 June 2023, Marshall Wace reports a $213 million (£175.6 million) shareholding in the oil and gas supermajor Chevron, as well as stakes in Shell, Equinor, and 109 other fossil fuel companies. 

The value of Marshall Wace’s stake in Chevron, the world’s eighth largest fossil fuel company, has more than doubled from $105 million (£86.6 million) to $213 million (£175.6 million) in two years, even though its total number of shares and equity options has increased over that period by just 35 percent. 

The hedge fund’s stake in Chevron appears to be one of its top 50 most valuable investments, among the thousands of companies in which it currently holds shares.

This reflects the soaring value of fossil fuel companies following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which pushed up the price of fossil fuels and therefore the profits of suppliers. At the end of June 2021, Chevron’s share price stood at $107.30 (£88.27), rising to $157.35 (£129.45) by June 2023.

Marshall Wace held shares in 112 fossil fuel companies as of June 2023. Two years earlier, in June 2021, the hedge fund held shares in 50 of these firms. The value of the stakes in these 50 firms almost trebled over the period, from $565.4 million (£466.1 million) to $1.4 billion (£1.15 billion). 

“I’ve always wondered why anyone would invest in comically inept, loss-making GB News,” said John Nicolson MP, a member of Parliament’s influential Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee. “Step forward one major investor who makes bundles of cash from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, a disturbing number of GB News presenters question climate science. I’m beginning to see a connection.”

Marshall Wace has 22 partners and its latest company accounts, for the period ending February 2022, show that they shared bumper profits of more than £720 million as the firm’s annual turnover jumped 62 percent to more than £1.5 billion. The average salary at Marshall Wace is £561,000 a year.

Paul Marshall, who is one of these partners, is also a lead investor in the startup broadcaster GB News, holding a 45 percent stake. Marshall, estimated to be worth £800 million, reportedly invested £10 million in GB News when it first launched two years ago. In August 2022, he joined the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum Group in a £60 million capital injection and buyout of GB News’s other major investor, Discovery. 

On the announcement of the buyout, Marshall said: “This is more than a financial investment. As investors we’re proud of what GB News [sic] doing for media plurality in the UK, bringing fresh perspectives to the national conversation on issues that matter to real Britain.”

Marshall also owns UnHerd, a publication founded in 2017 that claims to give a platform to marginalised views. UnHerd has published multiple articles and videos critical of climate action, including an interview in July with Bjorn Lomborg about “how global warming will save lives”.

Marshall is involved in other projects that are linked to key opponents of climate action. He is one of the directors of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a new group established by the backers of GB News. The ARC advisory board features a host of individuals who have denied climate science, downplayed the extent of the climate crisis, and attacked net zero policies. A number of these advisers are speaking at a conference hosted by ARC in London this week, alongside Cabinet ministers Michael Gove and Kemi Badenoch.

It has been reported that Marshall is preparing to expand his media investments and is “readying a bid” for the right-wing Telegraph newspaper and Spectator magazine, with both expected to be put up for sale in the coming weeks.

The Conservative Party has also received funds from Marshall, who donated £500,000 in 2019. 

GB News lost more than £30 million during its first year on air and has been hit by multiple scandals over its use of Conservative MPs as presenters, its alleged lack of impartiality, and its habit of platforming of conspiracy theories. 

The broadcast regulator Ofcom ruled in March that Mark Steyn had broken its rules on harmful content by claiming on GB News that the third Covid vaccine was causing higher infection, hospitalisation and deaths. Steyn’s claims were “potentially harmful and materially misleading,” Ofcom ruled. Steyn, who has also questioned the existence of climate change, resigned from the channel in February after GB News reportedly demanded he personally pay the fines issued if found in breach of the broadcasting code.

Ofcom currently has 12 open investigations into GB News. Its TV output reached 2.87 million viewers in December, while its website had a UK audience of 5.7 million in April. 

Paul Marshall’s investments in GB News and UnHerd have been made in a personal capacity and there is no evidence that Marshall Wace’s investments have influenced the editorial output of either outlet. 

Marshall Wace claims on its website that “sustainable investing is an organisational focus” and that the firm is “committed to achieving positive social and environmental impact”.

GB News and UnHerd did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment. Marshall Wace declined to comment.

‘State Control Over Your Life’

Since it launched in June 2021, GB News has been a prominent mouthpiece for individuals who support more fossil fuel extraction and oppose the UK’s target to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050.

The UK’s 2050 net zero target is legally binding and is backed by the world’s top climate scientists. They agree that rapidly cutting carbon emissions is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, including drought, famine, and ill health.

On 5 November last year, GB News host Neil Oliver used his show to attack “net zero [and] the green agenda”, which he claimed was part of “a hellish potpourri of policies guaranteed to condemn hundreds of millions to death by poverty, death by starvation”. 

Host Nigel Farage – who has a long record of opposing climate action – used his GB News platform to launch a campaign for a Brexit-style referendum on net zero. 

GB News host and Conservative MP Philip Davies was one of five MPs to vote against the Climate Change Act in 2008. Fellow presenters and Tory MPs Jacob Rees Mogg, Lee Anderson and Esther McVey are all supporters of the anti-climate action Net Zero Scrutiny Group of backbench Conservative MPs. 

This opposition to net zero is often tied to a denial of established climate science, which has been expressed repeatedly by GB News presenters. 

During last summer’s record UK heatwave, on 16 July 2022, then GB News host Calvin Robinson accused the Met Office of “alarmism”, adding: “Man-made climate change, I don’t buy it, because how much of an impact do we really make if we’re talking about carbon levels?”

Five days later, presenter Beverley Turner called summer heat warnings “fear mongering” in order to “facilitate state control over your life”.

The IPCC has warned that false and misleading information “undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency” of cutting emissions.

Several GB News hosts have also been vocal about their support for policies that would maintain and even extend the UK’s reliance on oil and gas. 

Flagship presenter Dan Wootton argued on 10 March 2022 that the war in Ukraine meant “for now the rush to net zero must die”. He urged the government to “frack, frack, frack” for shale gas. Wootton has recently been suspended by the channel.

In a 9 December show, host Mark Dolan praised plans to open a new coal mine in Cumbria. He said the UK should “drill, baby, drill” for coal, oil and gas,  adding: “I think the push for net zero here is another element of liberal progressivism which is infecting the West.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that any new fossil fuel projects would be incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5C.

‘Genuinely Independent Thinking’

Marshall has defended GB News’s output on the basis that “in a world of too much groupthink”, the broadcaster provides a “space for genuinely independent thinking”. 

However, Marshall appears to share the opposition to net zero, and support for more fossil fuel extraction, expressed by a number of GB News presenters.

In July, Marshall shared a post on X (formerly Twitter) from Reform UK Leader Richard Tice, on the subject of Norway’s approval of new oil and gas projects worth $18 million. Tice’s post claimed that these fossil fuel resources are “essential to Europe’s energy security” and that the UK “could have these jobs and prosperity. But selfish wallies in Westminster want to make us poorer and colder with net zero”.

Tice has recently been hired by GB News.

A month later, Marshall claimed in a post that “The public are still being shamefully ill informed by the BBC about differing views on climate change policy”. This post linked to an article by Charles Moore, which argued that “Voters can see the disparity between the highly speculative and distant achievement of global net zero and the concrete and imminent prospect of becoming colder and poorer”. 

In fact, the UK government’s failure to implement green reforms has added an estimated £2.5 billion to domestic energy bills due to the rising costs of fossil fuels and poor energy efficiency in homes. A reliance on gas has also cost the UK an additional £50-60 billion since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, equivalent to around £1,000 for every adult.

Original article by Sam Bright and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingGB News Owner’s Hedge Fund Has $2.2 Billion Fossil Fuel Investments

Boris Johnson said Covid was ‘nature’s way of dealing with old people’

Spread the love

Original article by Finlay Johnston republished from Open Democracy.

Former prime minister said he agreed that ‘we should let the old people get it’, today’s Covid inquiry heard

Boris Johnson thought Covid was “nature’s way of dealing with old people”, the official Covid inquiry heard today.

Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, made the comments in his diary on 14 December 2020, amid a huge Covid wave that led to the third national lockdown and killed 1,000 people a day at its peak.

Vallance claimed Johnson said that a lot of his party “thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them”.

The following day, Vallance wrote that the then Conservative chief whip, Mark Spencer, said “I think we should let the old people get it and protect others.” Johnson backed this statement, according to Vallance, allegedly responding: “A lot of my backbenchers think that and I must say I agree with them.”

The comments were made on the same day Johnson hosted a ‘Christmas quiz’ for staff in Downing Street and four days before he issued London and the south-east of England with a ‘stay at home’ order, banning social gatherings.

In an earlier diary entry from 28 August 2020, Vallance wrote that Johnson was “obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going.”

Rishi Sunak’s efforts to bolster the economy also came under fire at today’s hearing.

Lee Cain, Johnson’s former director of communications, criticised Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme, which encouraged people to enjoy discounted meals in restaurants on certain days between 3 and 31 August.

Cain told the inquiry today he was critical of the scheme at the time, feeling that the government was “indicating to people that Covid’s over… crowd yourself onto trains, go into restaurants and enjoy pizzas with friends and family”.

He continued: “That’s fine if you are intent on never having to do suppression measures again but from all the evidence we were receiving, from all of the advice that we were receiving it was clear we were certainly going to have to do suppression again, we knew we were going to do that.”

The inquiry continues. openDemocracy is fundraising to pay reporters to cover every day of the public hearings. Please support us by donating here.

Original article by Finlay Johnston republished from Open Democracy.

Continue ReadingBoris Johnson said Covid was ‘nature’s way of dealing with old people’

Revealed: Cummings’ misogynistic slur about top civil servant in text to PM

Spread the love

Original article by Finlay Johnston republished from Open Democracy.

Boris Johnson’s top adviser complained that he was having to ‘dodge stilettos’ from UK’s most senior female civil servant

Dominic Cummings called the UK’s most senior female civil servant a “c**t” in a misogynistic WhatsApp message sent to Boris Johnson and Lee Cain in August 2020.

He was referring to deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara, who had commissioned a report into poor behaviour within the Cabinet Office.

The message in full reads: “If I have to come back to Helen’s bullshit with PET [propriety and ethics] designed to waste huge amounts of my time so I can’t spend it on other stuff – I will personally handcuff her and escort her from the building. I don’t care how it is done but that woman must be out of our hair – we cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that c**t. [sic]”

Cummings was asked by Hugo Keith, counsel to the inquiry, whether he treated “individuals in Downing Street with offence and misogyny”.

“Certainly not,” the former chief adviser to the PM responded.

“Was that aggressive and foulmouthed and misogynistic approach the correct way to manage fellow professionals?” Keith asked.

Alluding to the ongoing chaos regarding changes in the Cabinet Office at the time, Cummings said: “My language about Helen is obviously appalling and actually I got on with Helen at a personal level. But a thousand times worse than my bad language is the underlying issue at stake.”

The inquiry heard yesterday that MacNamara had commissioned a report into the culture at Number 10 in May 2020, which – according to the lead counsel to the inquiry Hugo Keith KC – had painted a picture of “misogyny” and a “macho” culture.

The report, titled ‘How can No.10 and the CO [Cabinet Office] better support the PM in the next phase’, says that “bad behaviours from senior leaders [are] tolerated” and “No.10 [is] always at war with someone”.

The report also singled out misogynistic behaviour including “junior women being talked over or ignored”.

The report paints a chaotic picture of what No.10 was like in the first months of Covid. MacNamara wrote that it was “not clear what we are trying to achieve”, “no one listens to anyone else” and that it was a “superhero bunfight”.

Cummings had touched on this behaviour in his evidence earlier in the day.

Discussing the Cabinet Office, which he described as a “dumpster fire”, he said: “There was a core problem, which is that private secretaries in the PM’s office are generally quite junior officials. Quite a few of them are young women and, at that meeting on 15 May and on other occasions, some of the young women in the private office said to me that they thought there was a serious problem with senior people in the Cabinet Office not paying attention to what they were saying, talking over them – generally just a bad culture of a lot of the senior male leadership in the Cabinet Office, which is something I agree with.”

Cummings also told Johnson in August 2020 his authority was “seriously damaged”. Cummings referred to cabinet ministers as “feral” and “useless fuckpigs”.

In a WhatsApp message on 23 August 2020, Cummings urged Johnson to sack health secretary Matt Hancock and Gavin Williamson.

“I also must stress I think leaving Hancock in post is a big mistake – he is a proven liar who nobody believes or shd [sic] believe on anything, and we face going into the autumn crisis with the cunt in charge of the NHS”, Cummings wrote.

Cummings also said: “Don’t think sustainable for GW [Gavin Williamson, then education secretary] to stay.” Boris Johnson responded saying: “Agree”. Williamson remained in post for over a year after this conversation.

The inquiry also heard yesterday that Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty, the country’s top scientific and medical officials respectively, resisted attempts by top political advisers to “strongarm” them into appearing at the Covid news conference on the same day Cummings was answering questions on the Barnard Castle scandal in the Downing Street garden.

Cummings had been accused of breaking lockdown regulations by driving his family to Durham in March 2020 while his wife had suspected Covid, before taking a family trip to the town of Barnard Castle days later. At the time, all non-essential travel was prohibited and people were allowed to take one short trip outside each day for the purposes of exercise. Cummings claimed at the time that he had been testing his eyesight ahead of the drive home, a suggestion that was widely ridiculed.

Vallance wrote in his diaries: “All highly political and dwarfed by DC [Dominic Cummings]. We tried to get out of it by suggesting that it was not the right day to announce new measures.”

The inquiry continues. openDemocracy is fundraising to pay reporters to cover every day of the public hearings. Please support us by donating here.

Original article by Finlay Johnston republished from Open Democracy.

Continue ReadingRevealed: Cummings’ misogynistic slur about top civil servant in text to PM

Boris Johnson’s indecisiveness led to lockdown delays, Covid inquiry hears

Spread the love

Original article by Finlay Johnston and Indra Warnes republished from Open Democracy.

The prime minister’s ‘oscillating’ was partly to blame for a 10-day delay in announcing a national lockdown

Boris Johnson’s inability to make decisions “significantly impacted the pace and clarity of decision-making” in the early days of the pandemic, his former communications director told the Covid inquiry today.

Lee Cain, who worked for Johnson in 2020, said the then prime minister “oscillated” over whether to lock down for ten days after a meeting between senior government figures decided it was both essential and inevitable.

Attendees to the meeting, which took place on 14 March 2020, included Cain, Johnson, and Johnson’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings.

In his written evidence to the inquiry, Cain said: “The collective agreement in the room was that a full lockdown was the only strategy which could suppress the spread of Covid-19, save the NHS from collapse and ultimately buy the government more time.”

He continued: “It was only a matter of when, how hard, and how long the lockdown had to be.”

Johnson announced the first national lockdown on 23 March, ten days later. One factor in that delay, suggested Andrew O’Connor KC, counsel to the inquiry, was “indecison on the part of the prime minister”.

Quoting from Cain’s written evidence, O’Connor said: “The system works at its best when there’s clear direction from Number 10 and the prime minister, these moments of indecision significantly impacted the pace and clarity of decision-making across government.”

The inquiry was shown a WhatsApp message sent from Cain to Cummings on 19 March 2020, in which Cain complained he was “exhausted” by the prime minister. Asked by O’Connor why he was felt this way, Cain described Johnson as “challenging”.

Cain said: “Anyone who’s worked with the prime minister for a period of time will become exhausted with him sometimes. He can be quite a challenging character to work with, just because he will oscillate, he will take a decision from the last person in the room.”

O’Connor went on to ask Cain if he felt Johnson was “up to the job” of being prime minister in March 2020.

“It was the wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skillset,” Cain said, adding: “If you look at something like Covid, you need quick decisions and you need people to hold the course, and you know, have that strength of mind to do that over a sustained period of time and not constantly unpick things.”

In an earlier WhatsApp, Cummings had described Johnson as being in “jaws wank mode” in a meeting with Sunak, a reference to Johnson’s frequent statements that he did not want to be compared to the mayor who closed the beaches in the film Jaws.

Cummings added: “I’ve literally said the same thing ten fucking times and he [Johnson] still won’t absorb it”.

The inquiry also saw messages from 3 March 2020, in which Cain told Cummings that Johnson “doesn’t think [the pandemic] is a big deal and he doesn’t think anything can be done and his focus is elsewhere, he thinks it’ll be like swine flu and he thinks his main danger is talking economy into a slump”.

The inquiry continues.

Original article by Finlay Johnston and Indra Warnes republished from Open Democracy.

Continue ReadingBoris Johnson’s indecisiveness led to lockdown delays, Covid inquiry hears

Boris Johnson took no Covid updates during February 2020 half-term break

Spread the love
Image of Tory idiot Boris Johnson
Lazy Tory idiot and former part-time UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Original article by Ruby Lott-Lavigna and finlay johnston republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Boris Johnson did not receive any updates about the escalating Covid crisis during a school half-term break just weeks before he announced the first lockdown.

The Covid inquiry today heard that over ten days between 14 February and 24 February 2020, the prime minister received no information from his staff, including from the two COBRA meetings that took place.

Johnson spent the break – during which parliament was in recess – at Chevening House, a grace-and-favour Kent mansion. He was labelled a “part-time prime minister” by then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and accused of “sulking in a mansion” while coronavirus unfolded and large parts of the UK were devastated by flooding. Johnson insisted the government had been working “flat out”.

When asked today why he did not update the PM with any information on Covid, Johnson’s former parliamentary private secretary (PPS) Martin Reynolds said he “could not recall”.

Hugo Keith, chief counsel to the inquiry, told him: “There were no emails. There were no notes put in his red box. You don’t appear to have been in touch with him about coronavirus, or anybody else.”

“To what extent did you think to yourself we’ve got…emails about a viral pandemic coming our way? Why was nothing done in terms of keeping the prime minister in the loop in those ten days?” he asked.

Reynolds responded: “I cannot recall why and whether there was any urgent business to transact over that period with the PM.”

When asked whether it was because it was half-term, Reynolds said he was “happy to accept it was half-term”.

The day before the PM’s ten-day information blackout, a cabinet reshuffle had taken place that saw the resignation of chancellor Sajid Javid, who was replaced by Rishi Sunak.

By 27 February, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies had discussed the “reasonable worst case scenario” in which 80% of the UK population became infected, with a 1% fatality rate – which would mean up to 500,000 deaths.

The PM’s top aide added he “probably should have done more” to keep the prime minister updated on the biggest crisis since the Second World War.

Reynolds agreed that “little had been done” between the middle of February and early March.

He also agreed that the ten-day gap in pandemic planning was an “untoward delay” which contributed to the virus being “out of control” by 13 March.

The inquiry continues.

Original article by Ruby Lott-Lavigna and finlay johnston republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingBoris Johnson took no Covid updates during February 2020 half-term break