Sneering peer Daniel Moylan brings Lords and Boris Johnson cronyism into disrepute with jibe about Yorkshire’s ‘leftist whingers’ – Tom Richmond

Here, Tom Richmond takes a look at Lord Moylan’s background and track record.

THE sneering Tory peer Daniel Moylan was oblivious to the irony when he branded Yorkshire as a county of “leftist whingers begging for handouts” ahead of a short break here.

How hypocritical peer Lord Moylan’s jibe about Yorkshire and ‘leftist whingers’ exposed Boris Johnson over levelling up – The Yorkshire Post says

What the ex-merchant banker did not declare is that he received nearly £50,000 for attending the House of Lords on 155 days during his first year in the Upper House – the equivalent of £4,100 a month.

A Valentine’s Day love letter to Lord Moylan

And, given how Moylan’s registered address is a maximum of six Tube stops from Parliament, it is little wonder that his snideness and hypocrisy sits so uneasily in Yorkshire where the average median salary for a full year’s work last year was a mere £28,000 by comparison.

After all, Moylan owes his privileged status to the dissolution honours that Boris Johnson distributed after the 2019 election – his one attempt to be elected as MP ended in an inglorious defeat in Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 landslide win.

If he had any self-awareness, Moylan would apologise for his arrogance and crass attempt to deter The Yorkshire Post from challenging the probity of Johnson’s sleaze-infested London Government. Yet this would be out of character from a Trumpian-type buffoon whose influence helps to explain why Britain is one of Europe’s most unequal countries and why people in the real world hold all politicians in such low regard.

For the record, Baron Moylan is a former deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council and among those accused by survivors of the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy of being “at the heart of a culture that held residents in contempt”.

Images continue to circulate on social media of him appearing to nod off at a meeting in the aftermath of the inferno and Moylan stood down from the council in 2018 to the palpable relief of victims.

The former deputy chair of Transport for London when Johnson was mayor of the capital also served as a director of Crossrail – the east-west rail line that is billions over budget and years late in construction. He was also appointed by Johnson in February 2016 as the first chair of Crossrail 2 – a body that explored the merit of a new north-south rail line to serve the capital while this region was striving to make the case for Northern Powerhouse Rail.

The anti-North Moylan was also Johnson’s aviation advisor when the then mayor was pursuing the bizarre concept of a ‘Boris Island’ airport in the Thames Estuary – a flight of fancy that was a resounding success when it came to wasting both time and money.

At present, he’s a board member of Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, paid between £5,000 and £10,000 a year, to help the area to make the most of opportunities arising from its location on the high-speed rail line through Kent.

The irony when Northern Powerhouse Rail has been downgraded and the eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds effectively scrapped...

And, despite this, he still has the brazen temerity to mock Yorkshire’s hardworking families for “begging for handouts” when all they seek is a fairer distribution of Whitehall funding.

Sorry, Lord Moylan, the likes of you are the problem, and not the solution, and your own record in the Lords, and disdain for democracy, demonstrates this.

The most recent records show Moylan attended the Lords on 155 days between October 2020 – he used his maiden speech to liken his career to “a series of happy stumbles” – and September 2021, accruing £49,099 in attendance allowances at over £300 a day. Hansard shows that Moylan has taken part in 225 divisions in this Parliament – multiple votes do take place on the same day – and has made 151 oral contributions.

But the frivolousness of some of his interventions will leave many perplexed that such an individual is among those given the ultimate honour – a peerage – and the right to determine the laws of the land when many others who have contributed so much more to society, and still have so much to give, are denied a bog standard BEM.

He’s been continuing to press for the ‘Boris Island’ airport as well as an “underground Maglev rapid transport system” between the North’s cities. The fact that this technology is in its infancy for overground rail, and his wheeze would involve boring under the Pennines and National Parks, seemed immaterial.

And, most recently, his reaction when his fellow peers questioned Ministers over the ‘partygate’ scandal – Moylan remarking that the “sound of the wolf pack in your Lordships’ House is particularly disedifying”.

I could go on – but I’ll resist the temptation to embarrass him further. What I will say after he described The Yorkshire Post as a “sad, chippy cesspit” is that it has never been more important to hold the powerful to account, challenge their motives and correct the record when they distort the truth.

And, if Baron Moylan, Boris Johnson and others do not understand this, they’re unfit to hold any public office – elected, or in Moylan’s case, unelected.

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Tom Richmond is Comment Editor of The Yorkshire Post. He tweets via OpinionYP.

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