Restore leader Rupert Lowe is the latest wealthy right-wing politician to play a familiar card. Not the race one, the benefits one or the patriotic one – although he’s a card shark at all three – but the martyr one. As in, I only chose to become a political messiah who leads his followers out of the broken-bordered wilderness, for love not for money.
“If I wanted to make money I would not be in politics,” he harrumphed after a newspaper revealed he was on course to earn as much from posting anti-immigration rants on his political soulmate Elon Musk ’s X as he does as an MP. Since January, the former banker has trousered, on average, £932-an-hour by “monetising” his posts on X, thanks mainly to the notoriety he has garnered from, as he proudly puts it “dragging mass deportations into mainstream politics”.
We’ve heard the same moan from Nigel Farage. In 2017 he claimed politics had left him “skint” when at the time he belonged to an exclusive bank where you had to “maintain at least £1million in investments or £3million in savings” had two EU pensions, a five-figure radio presenter’s salary and a £4million house in Chelsea. Oh, to be that skint. Maybe his friends drop him £5million gifts so he can put some coins in his gas meter.
Many MPs are not in it for the money, don’t have outside jobs or snaffle up freebies, but many more make a cushy living out of their Westminster fame thanks to the lucrative perks of the job. They can earn fortunes from public speeches, advances on books that nobody reads, TV and radio appearances or sitting on company boards. Those elevated into the Lords can claim £371 every day for turning up and nodding off.
Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Boris Johnson filled their post-Downing Street boots with corporate gold and Tony Blair ’s fortune is up there with the Middle Eastern sheikhs he breaks bread with. Like all former PMs, Liz Truss is guaranteed £115,000 a year for life to cover “office costs,” even though she was barely in the No10 office long enough to open every drawer.
It’s not just former PMs. In her year out of the Cabinet, Angela Rayner earned £104,000 from public speaking and a £61,500 advance on a memoir. As well as a salary that puts MPs in the top 4% of UK earners due to they repeatedly voting for pay rises way higher than the norm, as Brits struggle to keep their heads above water.
In 2012 an MP’s salary was £65,738; today it’s £98,599. That’s a rise of £32,861 when UK average salaries went up by £12,539 over the same period. With more inflation-busting rises guaranteed, their salaries will rise to £110,000-a-year by the end of this parliament. The least us taxpayers, most of whom don’t even receive pay rises that keep up with inflation, deserve, is that anyone who stands to be our MP should vow that representing our interests will be their only job. Just as Rayner had previously called for. Otherwise how can we not laugh in their faces when they say they’re not in politics for the money, when it looks like that is exactly what they are in it for?
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