Labour’s Thanet East general election candidate Polly Billington has been making great play of her supposed environmental credentials to attract support in the forthcoming general election. But don’t be taken in.
Billington’s claims are in my view, a big fat green con-trick aimed at deceiving voters, who might otherwise have supported the Green Party or the LibDems, into voting for her.
Her doubtful claim to be green is based on company called UK100, which Billington set up in 2016. She was the company Chief Executive and listed by Companies House as a “person with significant control” of UK100 until 2023. She remains on UK100s board of directors and is probably the company’s largest shareholder.
The company works within local government to promote NetZero and climate change initiatives which, for environmentalists like myself, is highly commendable. But scratch the surface and things get ethically smelly.
According to UK100’s annual accounts, in 2021 UK100 received a grant of £456,000 from the IKEA Foundation - the charitable wing of the international furniture giant. In 2022 UK100 received another grant of £350,000 bringing total IKEA funding over two years to a huge £806,000.
Its widely believed by environmentalists throughout the world that the IKEA Foundation acts as a reputational green-washing machine for a company which has a long and utterly appalling history of damaging the environment and abusing human rights across the globe.
A quick check on Google will bring up literally hundreds of references to IKEA having made use throughout its supply chains of prison slave labourers and child labour. Union bashing and illegally spying on trade unionists also seems to be another of IKEA’s side lines as is decades of tax dodging on an astronomic scale.
But whilst horrendous in their own right, all these countless crimes and misdemeanors pale into insignificance when compared to the damage and destruction IKEA is said to have caused in its ceaseless global efforts to secure cheap timber for what is the biggest furniture maker in the known universe.
So extensive and prolonged is IKEA’s exploitation and ransacking of the natural world that experts say that the extent and impact of the damage it has caused is incalculable. Yet knowing full well about IKEA’s terrible track record, Billington was more than happy to take almost £1million of its ethically tainted cash.
Billington’s cash grab is made all the worse when the business principles and values of the company she established and managed for seven years say that:-
We act with integrity on behalf of our members, doing what's right, even when it's difficult. We align our actions with our values in all interactions, both internally with colleagues and externally with funders, partners, and the public.
I’m sure that most people would agree that a company whose work is clearly environmental, should never take money from an international environmental vandal. To do so would be hypocrisy of jaw dropping proportions.
Most people would also agree that for a parliamentary candidate who has declared that she supports “protecting working people’s rights” and who wants to “crack down on tax avoidance”, to take cash from one of the biggest tax dodgers and a known procurer of slave and child workers indicates a total lack of judgment and a terrible lack of morality and humanity.
As some people have told me the main purpose of UK100 is not “ to support a local-led rapid transition to Net Zero and Clean Air” but to selfishly raise the profile of Polly Billington, in order to ensure that she was selected and eventually elected as a Labour MP.
To keep her self-promotional UK100 show on the road, and her profile politically visible, money from even the most disreputable of sources appears to have been welcomed by Polly.
It is only because IKEAs grants were so large that UK100 was forced to disclose them in their accounts, otherwise we would have never known. I wonder what other environmentally dodgy companies may have given grants. I asked this, and many other questions, to UK100 in 2023 and now. Needless to say I have received no reply.
My advice to the voters of Thanet East is do not vote for Labour’s Polly Billington. In my opinion, and on the basis of the evidence I have presented here, she has shown herself, to be dishonest and hypocritical. These are not the standards of behaviour I would expect from someone who seeks to be elected to high political office.
Shoutout if you any information about election candidate Polly Billington her electors should know please contact me in the strictest confidence. 07866588766 ianddriver@yahoo.co.uk
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