Taxi Driver Online

Quite a good article, long but worth reading.

Cameron, Osborne, their glamorous chum and the great Uber stitch-up: The disturbing links between No.10 and the online taxi firm as it's revealed one of its major investors now has the ex-Chancellor on its payroll
Boris Johnson moved to regulate Uber in 2015, calling them 'bumptious'
The then London mayor faced a barrage of messages urging him to keep clear
Some of the messages are believed to have come from Osborne and Cameron
An investigation has revealed the links between Cameron's chum-ocracy and Uber's top bosses

The run-up to Christmas 2015 was hectic for David Cameron and George Osborne. It involved a tense Commons vote on Syrian air-strikes, crucial pre-referendum negotiations with EU leaders and a state visit by the President of China.
Behind the scenes at Downing Street, however, something very different was providing them with food for thought; and it had nothing much to do with the usual day-to-day business of British government.
In late September that year, Boris Johnson, then the Mayor of London, had threatened to curtail the activities of modish Californian internet company Uber.

The firm runs a smartphone app that allows users to hail a minicab at the click of a button. It then sends a named nearby driver to their exact location using GPS (usually in minutes), calculates the cost of the subsequent journey using an algorithm so you have a good idea of what it will cost before you start and collects payment via the user’s credit card.
Uber tends to be between 30 and 40 per cent cheaper than traditional black cabs. But its drivers are relatively unqualified, and unlike their counterparts, have not acquired the ‘Knowledge’ of London’s streets, relying instead on satnav directions.
So although the firm achieved huge success after launching in our capital in 2012 (hundreds of thousands of users swiftly signed up, and by 2015 London had more Uber drivers than black cabbies), there were growing fears that its ultra-cheap fares were putting traditional taxis out of business.
Uber was also being blamed for an explosion in the number of minicabs on London’s streets from 55,000 to 89,000, which critics believed was increasing congestion, air pollution, illegal parking, and accidents.


What’s more, the conviction of Samson Haile, an Uber driver from Brentford in West London, who was jailed for eight months for sexually assaulting a woman in his vehicle, had also crystallised public concern about the firm’s ability to keep passengers safe.
Police figures showed that rape or assault claims were being made against Uber’s London drivers at a rate of one every 11 days.
With these issues in mind, Johnson launched a Private Hire Regulations Review which would consider new policies to curb the web giant’s aggressive business model.
They included limiting the total number of mini-cabs in the city, and requiring all drivers — many of Uber’s operators are foreign-born — to pass a written English test.
Crucially, the Mayor also wanted to force all private hire firms, including Uber, to wait at least five minutes between accepting a booking and picking up a customer.
That would render the internet company, which prided itself on fulfilling requests in an average of three minutes, significantly less attractive to customers.
Johnson said the move to regulate what he called the ‘bumptious’ Uber was justified because, in his words, it had been breaking taxi licensing laws ‘in lots of minor ways’.
Clearly feeling threatened, Uber swiftly launched a petition, claiming that Johnson’s ‘bureaucratic’ proposals would make it harder, and more expensive, to travel around the capital.
Then something very unusual happened. Within hours of the petition being announced, the Mayor and senior aides began to be bombarded with angry messages from Downing Street.
Some came straight from the top. George Osborne and David Cameron are believed to have sent forthright texts to the Mayor’s mobile phone.
Others came via special advisers and senior members of the No 10 policy unit, who began writing stern emails and making shouty telephone calls. Still more originated from the offices of Cabinet ministers, including Business Secretary Sajid Javid.
Strangely, all of these extremely powerful figures from the top of Britain’s Government were demanding exactly the same thing: that the Mayor drop each and every policy that might threaten the finances of Uber.

‘It was extraordinary,’ says a senior City Hall source. ‘Boris was at the time quite chummy with Cameron and Osborne, and they’d occasionally text him about stuff. But on this, they were basically ordering him about.’
A second source close to Johnson adds: ‘In politics, you get used to people shouting and throwing their weight around, but this was something else.’
‘We had special advisers screaming at us, ministers and their aides issuing threats. It was particularly outrageous because transport in London is the Mayor’s responsibility, and nothing to do with Downing Street or Westminster.’
Within days, I can reveal, the Deputy Head of Cameron’s policy unit, Daniel Korski, had been assigned to ‘lead’ secret crisis talks between the Mayor and his senior staff, and a range of ministers and Downing Street figures.
Kowski orchestrated a series of meetings about Uber during October, November and December, according to emails and other documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and obtained by the Mail this week.
At least one, on December 16, 2015, involved Johnson being hauled before Javid and top Cameron ally Oliver Letwin (Daniel Korski sat in). An official note of proceedings records, with notable understatement, that ‘different views were exchanged’.


‘I’ve never seen lobbying like it,’ adds the source. ‘Downing Street wanted to make absolutely sure that nothing was done to even vaguely upset Uber. And what’s more, the campaign worked.’
For in January 2016, the Mayor announced that he was dropping almost all the plans that Uber disliked, saying ‘we can’t turn our back on technological progress’.
The U-turn was hailed by the Californian web giant as a ‘victory for common sense’. But black cab drivers see things differently.
Steve McNamara, head of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, which represents London’s 24,000 traditional cabbies said: ‘The outcome of this so-called review was decided by Downing Street, who behaved like paid-up lobbyists for Uber.’
‘They leaned on Boris and Transport for London, and ended up getting exactly what they wanted. It’s a disgrace, a scandal.’
The U-turn also remains a huge bone of contention with Johnson’s political rivals.
‘The regulation of private hire vehicles must be transparent,’ I was told by Caroline Pidgeon, the Lib Dem chair of the London Assembly’s transport committee.
‘Sadly all the evidence from these freedom of information disclosures suggests key decisions were, in fact, made on the basis of personal connections and behind-the-scenes lobbying, carried out by key Downing Street staff.’


Today, as a direct result, there are roughly 120,000 mini-cabs on the streets of London, and Uber’s business model has been rolled out to 17 British cities, transporting customers on well over a billion journeys in the process. Traffic on main roads in the centre of the capital now moves at an average of just 7.8mph, one of the lowest recorded figures in a decade.
Uber is, for want of a better phrase, taking over the nation’s streets, with the Toyota Prius models favoured by its drivers now a ubiquitous sight.
The firm’s trick has been repeated across the world, too. For though its public image is increasingly tarnished (for reasons we shall explore later), the Silicon Valley firm now boasts operations in every continent apart from Antarctica, and is thought to be worth an astonishing £56 billion.
Yet behind this fairy tale of modern capitalism lie a number of troubling questions.
Among them: why did David Cameron, George Osborne, and a host of their most senior aides and ministers decide, in late 2015, to lobby Boris Johnson so extraordinarily hard on behalf of Uber — a controversial U.S. company squeezing the incomes of highly-qualified black cab drivers?

The answer, if it lies anywhere, may very well be found at the heart of the ‘chum-ocracy’ that defined their Downing Street machine. Specifically, it would appear to revolve around a woman called Rachel Whetstone.
A 49-year-old PR executive, she worked with Cameron at Carlton, and also with him and Osborne at Conservative HQ in the Nineties. Subsequently, she became an adviser to former party leader Michael Howard. She is also the wife of Steve Hilton, the flip-flop-wearing Downing Street Director of Strategy during the early Cameron years in office.
Being a personal friend of both Cameron and Osborne, she was also godmother of the former PM’s late son, Ivan. She and Hilton even bought a holiday home near the Camerons’ in the Cotswolds.


Why does this matter? Well, after leaving politics in 2005, Whetstone joined Google as its vice-president of global communications. During her stewardship, the tax-dodging web giant enjoyed what critics called ‘revolving door’ access to Cameron’s Downing Street.
Then, in early 2015, it was announced that she was moving to — you guessed it! — Uber.
Her salary is believed to be gargantuan. Pretty soon, the company began to benefit, with top executives granted privileged access to senior government figures.
In 2015 and 2016, Osborne met them twice to discuss ‘the UK economy’ and ‘developments in technology’, according to government records.


Matthew Hancock, a business minister, had a separate meeting.
In his 2015 Budget, the then Chancellor declared that Government staff would be required to use car-sharing apps (of which Uber is the largest) to cut costs. Hancock declared that the ‘Government is getting behind new online businesses’.
Then, in December 2015, at the exact time Cameron and Osborne were secretly lobbying Johnson on behalf of Uber, the duo and their wives attended an intimate Christmas party thrown by Rachel Whetstone at Sexy Fish, an exclusive sushi restaurant in Mayfair.
Also on the guest list was Tim Allan, a former PR man who now runs the lobbying firm Portland Communications.
At the time, Portland had as one of its most high-profile clients a firm called — you guessed it! — Uber.
As ever, when politics meets serious money, there are further wheels within wheels.
Fast-forward to last month and, after Osborne had been booted out of the Treasury, he took a job at the U.S. investment firm BlackRock, with a salary of £650,000 for 48 days of work per year.


By rum coincidence, Blackrock invested a reported £124 million in Uber in 2014, giving it a stake which is now worth nearly £500 million. Undoubtedly, it is in its interests for Uber to succeed.
Elsewhere, the architect of much of Downing Street’s Uber lobbying campaign, Daniel Kowski, was made a CBE in Cameron’s controversial resignation honours.
So why did Cameron and Osborne grant such extraordinary favours to the taxi firm?
Well, one way they may seek to justify them would be to argue that like any growing, entrepreneurial business, it helps to oil the wheels of the British economy.
That would be a fair point, were it not for the fact that, like so many rapacious internet firms, Uber pays almost no tax in the UK.
Instead, its finances are organised via a legal but morally wonky device known as a ‘double Dutch’ structure. This sees all revenues from fares paid by British customers routed to a firm in Holland called Uber BV.
Around 70 per cent is forwarded to individual Uber drivers. Almost all the remainder, totalling billions of pounds, ends up in the coffers of a related entity called Uber International CV, which has no employees and lists its HQ as the offices of a law firm in Bermuda.

The net result of this complex structure is Uber pays an effective tax rate of around 1 per cent on income from UK passengers. Its only official corporate presence in the UK revolves around two companies, Uber London and Uber Britannia. Based in swanky offices in Aldwych, central London, they employ around 100 people, and in the last year for which records are available paid a mere £400,000 in corporation tax.
So it goes that during an era of supposed austerity, Cameron and Osborne were advancing the agenda of a firm which goes out of its way to avoid paying its fair share to support the roads its business model depends upon.
At this point, some might also argue that Uber’s tens of thousands of self-employed drivers are contributing to the treasury via income tax.
But that’s by no means entirely true, either. Indeed, critics have argued that most earn such a paltry sum, they are reliant on tax credits and other benefits.
At present, all are classified as self-employed. Depressingly, this made them targets of the failed tax grab in Chancellor Philip Hammond’s recent Budget which, while targeting modestly paid self-employed people, did nothing to curtail tax-dodging by rapacious multinationals.

The circumstances of Uber drivers (many of whom earn so little that, according to a recent Bloomberg report, they are forced to sleep in their cars) was explored at an employment tribunal in London in October.
Nineteen British drivers successfully claimed they should be regarded as employees, rather than contractors, and paid the ‘national living wage’, sick pay, holiday pay and overtime.
The drivers said they earned as little as £5 an hour. Finding in their favour, the judges accused Uber of ‘resorting . . . to fictions [and] twisted language’ in court.
Uber is appealing the decision.
Meanwhile its tax affairs face a separate legal challenge from a campaigning group called The Good Law Project, which says it ought to charge 20 per cent VAT on fares — money that would go to the Treasury.
Uber dodges VAT by claiming it doesn’t actually provide taxable transportation services booked via its website. It says the ‘provider’ is the self-employed driver.
That’s not the only ugly litigation that the firm so beloved of our former PM and Chancellor is embroiled in.

In January, for example, Uber paid £16 million to America’s Federal Trade Commission to settle allegations it was luring people to become drivers with false claims about prospective earnings.
The case revolved around complaints that drivers would lease or buy new vehicles to drive while working for Uber, only to find that the company would then cut fares in a bid to cement its market dominance.
Many drivers have been forced deep into debt by such cuts, and believe Uber (which has never made a profit) is keeping fares artificially low in a bid to drive rivals out of business and so create a monopoly.
This issue sparked a PR disaster last month when the firm’s chief executive Travis Kalanik (net worth around £5 billion) was filmed arguing with an Uber driver who’d complained the firm’s pricing policies were bankrupting him.
‘Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own s**t. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!’he told his less fortunate driver.


After the video became public, he emailed the firm’s staff, telling them: ‘To say that I’m ashamed is an extreme understatement . . . I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up.’
Some would argue this admission was too long coming. Indeed, the corporate culture at Uber (which 40-year-old bachelor Kalanik once joked should be renamed ‘Boober’ because it improved his romantic prospects) is widely regarded as toxic.
A month ago, for example, a former engineer at the firm called Susan Fowler went public with multiple claims of rampant sexism and harassment inside the firm.
They included the observation that on her first day in the job, her boss used the company messaging system to tell her he was in an open relationship and ‘looking for women to have sex with’.
Uber boss Kalanick said her experience was ‘abhorrent and goes against everything Uber stands for’. He launched an ‘urgent investigation’ into claims of harassment at his company.
And this week, there was a dramatic new development when Uber’s president, a respected corporate figure called Jeff Jones, quit, saying: ‘The beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber.’
These, remember, are the ‘beliefs and approach’ of a firm which David Cameron and the most senior figures in his government chose to proactively support.
And it is a firm which continues to affect the lives of millions of Londoners who struggle through gridlocked traffic virtually 24 hours a day.
As for Mr Osborne, his new role as editor of the Evening Standard means he will have to make the journey from his West London home to the newspaper’s Kensington offices in the early morning rush hour.
So will he take the Tube to beat the jams — or just call an Uber?




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and in what universe is that acceptable

the big problem with all this is that there is little we can do about it but if Uber comes crashing down then questions will be asked but uber is about to get a stock market listing and once that happens politicians the world over will protect them to avoid a stock market crisis

PS you forgot to change someone's name to ven to get him to read it

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and theres more

Cameron aide's Uber 'cover up': Downing Street accused of withholding emails about its secret campaign to help online taxi firm and stop Boris regulating it in London
The ex-PM allegedly told aides to lobby Boris Johnson against curbs to Uber
No 10 adviser swapped emails with senior staff working for then London mayor
Downing Street had failed to divulge details of the alleged lobbying operation
Transport for London officials released the details of the correspondence
By Larisa Brown and Guy Adams for the Daily Mail

David Cameron's Downing Street was accused of a blatant cover-up last night over failed plans to crack down on Uber.
The ex-PM and George Osborne allegedly told aides to lobby Boris Johnson against curbs on the online taxi firm.
The Daily Mail revealed on Saturday that a No 10 adviser swapped emails with senior staff working for the then London mayor.
The ex-PM and George Osborne allegedly told aides to lobby Boris Johnson against curbs on the online taxi firm

Yet last night it emerged that Downing Street had failed to divulge details of the alleged lobbying operation when asked to do so under freedom of information laws.
Officials insisted – a year ago – there were no records of any exchanges. This later proved untrue when Transport for London officials released details of the correspondence.
Calls were made yesterday for an inquiry over both the alleged cover-up and the Government's links to the US taxi firm.
Opposition politicians pointed out that Rachel Whetstone, a senior vice-president at Uber, is a personal friend of both Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne.
'This blatant cover-up by 10 Downing Street must now lead to a formal inquiry,' said Caroline Pidgeon, the Lib Dem chairman of the London Assembly's transport committee.

Labour MP Wes Streeting also called for Theresa May to launch a probe into the issue. 'It is pretty clear that, in contrast to the openness and transparency of Transport for London, that Downing Street under David Cameron tried to cover up its cosy relationship with Uber,' he said.
'Under David Cameron, Downing Street was clearly acting as the lobbying arm for Uber which is extraordinary.'
When Mr Johnson was mayor of London in September 2015 he threatened to curtail the activities of Uber, a smartphone app that allows users to hail a minicab.
There were fears the web giant was putting traditional taxis out of business and contributing to congestion, air pollution, illegal parking and accidents.
Police figures also showed that rape or assault claims were being made about Uber's London drivers at a rate of one every 11 days.

Last night it emerged that Downing Street had failed to divulge details of the alleged lobbying operation
Mr Johnson wanted to force all drivers to pass a written English test. He also wanted to force all private hire firms to wait at least five minutes before accepting a booking and picking up a customer.
In response, Uber launched a petition, claiming that Mr Johnson's 'bureaucratic' proposals would make it harder and more expensive to travel around London. Within hours of the petition being launched, the mayor and senior aides began to be sent messages from Downing Street. Even Mr Cameron and George Osborne were understood to have sent texts to the mayor's mobile phone.
Daniel Korski, the deputy head of Mr Cameron's policy unit, was assigned to 'lead' talks between the mayor and his senior staff.
Email exchanges released by Transport for London under freedom of information laws, and revealed by the Mail on Saturday, showed how he offered alternative proposals on how to deal with congestion and pollution. Last night, it emerged that Mr Cameron's former assistant private secretary, Nicholas Howard, had also been asked for details of any email exchanges between Mr Korski, and either TfL or the Mayor of London's office.
But when Mr Howard responded a month later, in March 2016, he said only: 'We do not hold information in relation to your request.'
Mr Korski had in fact exchanged at least seven emails regarding proposed Uber legislation with both TfL officials and senior mayoral staff.

Labour MP Wes Streeting also called for Theresa May to launch a probe into the issue
Last night a No 10 spokesman said: 'Any suggestion of a cover-up is categorically untrue. Anyone who is dissatisfied with an FoI response is advised that they have the right to request an internal review about its handling.' However no further explanation was provided.
Mr Korski said he had no knowledge of the freedom of information request and had no input into No 10's misleading response to it. He also denied lobbying on behalf of Uber, saying the idea was 'fanciful'. He added: 'The idea that I acted inappropriately because of a relationship between the then PM and Rachel Whestone is even more absurd.'
But Steve McNamara of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association said: 'This affair, and the cover up, is nothing short of a national scandal and the LTDA is therefore calling for a parliamentary enquiry to establish what went on and who was responsible.'

The emails No10 said didn't exist
Just over a year ago, Downing Street was served with a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act.
It came from Christopher Morris, a political aide working for the Liberal Democrats in the London Assembly, and it sought to get to the bottom of a sensational rumour sweeping City Hall.
Mr Morris had been reliably informed that David Cameron and George Osborne had overseen a vigorous secret lobbying campaign to stop Boris Johnson from seeking to tighten regulations on the taxi firm Uber.
According to his sources, the pair had tasked Daniel Korski, deputy head of the prime minister’s policy unit, with ensuring that London’s mayor did nothing whatsoever to upset the Californian web company.
Back in September 2015, Mr Johnson had announced a ‘Private Hire Regulations Review’ in which he floated a number of potential policies designed to rein in Uber, which runs a mobile phone app that allows users to hail a minicab at the push of a button.

He wanted, among other things, to ease congestion, increase passenger safety, and protect the livelihoods of traditional black cabbies, who were being driven out of business by the low cost rival. But in January 2016, the mayor announced that almost all of the proposals were to be dropped.
The big question is: why? Mr Johnson insisted the climbdown followed a public consultation.
But Mr Morris had been told that the move came after the mayor was summoned to meetings at which Mr Korski and senior ministers, including Business Secretary Sajid Javid, had personally ordered him to lay off Uber.
He believed that Mr Korski had also bombarded officials at Transport for London, which was in charge of the review, with calls and emails and met with them to water down any regulations.
Some of the phone calls and other messages circulated during this campaign had, he was told, been very hostile indeed.
That was the rumour, at least. To see whether it might be true, Mr Morris asked Downing Street in late February to send him details of ‘all correspondence since January 1st 2015’ between Mr Korski and either the mayor’s office, or TfL.
On March 30 last year, Downing Street responded, in a letter sent on headed notepaper and signed by Nicolas Howard, assistant private secretary to Mr Cameron.
It was short, unequivocal, and to the point: ‘We do not hold information in relation to your request.’

In other words, the prime minister’s office was saying it had no record, whatsoever, of any correspondence between Mr Korski and officials who worked for either TfL or for Mr Johnson. No emails, copies of letters, or notes of phone calls existed.
The letter was sent under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which requires government officials – who are, of course, servants of the public – to answer all requests truthfully.
However as the Mail revealed on Saturday, several emails were in fact sent from Mr Korski’s government email account to senior figures working for both Johnson and TfL during the period in question.
They emerged courtesy of a second freedom of information request, this time submitted to Transport for London by Mr Morris, asking for any correspondence involving Mr Korski and its officials.
In response to the request, TfL had produced a dossier of emails, including three that the Downing Street aide wrote in October 2015, and four that were sent to him around the same time.
Two were sent by Mr Korski to Leon Daniels, the managing director of surface transport at TFL, and carried the subject: ‘Regs review – follow up.’ They revealed that the Downing Street aide had met and corresponded extensively with Mr Daniels to ensure that Mr Johnson’s review was headed in what he called ‘a sensible direction’.

Mr Korski’s other email was sent to Isabel Dedring, Mr Johnson’s deputy mayor in charge of transport as part of the same email chain, setting up a meeting to discuss ‘options’ to resolve the disagreement between No 10 and the mayor’s office.
The cache of emails also revealed that Mr Korski had sat in on a meeting held on December 16, 2015 at which Mr Johnson discussed Uber with Sajid Javid, and Cameron ally Oliver Letwin.
An official note recorded that ‘different views were exchanged’.
Since these messages would all have been sitting on Downing Street’s email servers, at the time Mr Howard wrote his March 30 letter to Mr Morris, it’s hard to understand how they were not found and disclosed.
After all, a search Mr Korski’s email account would have instantly turned them up, at the push of a button.
Downing Street last night formally denied any cover up in relation to the FoI inquiry, and we must of course at this stage take them at their word.
Yet what cannot be denied is that both Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne, not to mention Mr Korski, had plenty of reasons for wanting their advocacy work on behalf of Uber to remain firmly out of the public domain.
The American internet company pays almost no tax in the UK, funnelling its British revenues to the tax haven of Bermuda, via the Netherlands. As such it makes a peculiar organisation for Downing Street officials, not to mention a British chancellor and prime minister, to be lobbying for.

Since London transport is fully devolved to the mayor, it’s also a policy area that they are supposed to have no responsibility for.
Yet – crucially, perhaps – the firm also happens to have since early 2015 employed one of Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne’s closest personal friends, 49-year-old Rachel Whetstone, as one of its most senior UK executives.
The godmother of Cameron’s late son Ivan, and a chum of both men’s respective wives, she and her husband Steve Hilton (the ex PM’s former director of strategy) even bought a holiday cottage near the Camerons’ country seat in the Cotswolds.
In other words, the then prime minister’s lobbying on behalf of Uber could have given an appearance of serious impropriety – leading to allegations that he was granting special favours for a friend.
For Mr Osborne, the picture looks doubly awkward, since one of Uber’s major investors, US finance house BlackRock, recently employed him on a salary of £650,000 to work 48 days a year as an adviser.
Quite how the duo intend to justify their secret lobbying for the Californian technology firm remains a mystery: neither has yet commented on it. Exactly why Downing Street failed to disclose its record of this lobbying campaign, in apparent contravention of the Freedom of Information Act, is also unclear – though it should be noted that Mr Howard was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in Mr Cameron’s resignation honours.
What few will argue with, however, is that only a rigorous parliamentary inquiry can now hope to get to the bottom of what really went on, in this increasingly murky affair.

Was a deal done at Sexy Fish restaurant?

With its gold leaf ceiling and glittering contemporary sculptures, including a naked blue mermaid by Damien Hirst, Mayfair’s Sexy Fish restaurant was quite the scene when it opened just before Christmas 2015.
Kate Moss and Cheryl Cole were spotted tucking into its pan-Asian menu, which sold steak at £110 a pop and a plate of sashimi for £65 beyond its crystal-encrusted front door.
Yet on December 22 that year a very different crowd headed into its basement private dining area, with its pink marble floors and what purports to be the world’s largest coral fish tank. David and Samantha Cameron sauntered into the venue, closely followed by Chancellor George Osborne and his wife Frances.
They were there at the behest of a woman who was once, rightly, described as one half of the ‘power couple behind the Tory throne’.

Mayfair’s Sexy Fish restaurant was quite the scene when it opened just before Christmas 2015
She was Rachel Whetstone, wife of Mr Cameron’s former policy guru Steve Hilton, godmother to his late son Ivan, and one of his oldest personal friends.
The occasion was a Christmas party, organised at great expense so that a few dozen of the extraordinarily well-connected PR woman’s closest chums and contacts could toast the festive season.
Also on the guest list were a smattering of mostly Left-leaning journalists, including Newsnight boss Ian Katz and his wife Justine Roberts, who runs the internet site Mumsnet; Sunday Times scribe Camilla Cavendish, who had just been made head of the No 10 policy unit and was this year handed a peerage; and journalist Jenni Russell, whose child can boast Ed Miliband as godfather.
At the time, the bash made some unflattering headlines. As Quentin Letts perceptively wrote in these pages, the event only added to the impression that in the era of Cameron, Britain was being run by a moneyed chumocracy ‘detached from the masses’.
Today, that glitzy soiree is starting to look even more ill-advised.
For as the Daily Mail revealed on Saturday, it occurred at a time when Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne were secretly devoting an extraordinary amount of their energy to a lobbying campaign designed to benefit Miss Whetstone’s company, Uber.
Intriguingly, one of the lucky few who Miss Whetstone ensured could rub shoulders with the two most powerful men in Britain at the bash was Tim Allan, a lobbyist who runs Portland Communications.
He once, several years earlier, gave her a job. By happy coincidence, when she moved on to Google and then Uber, those companies gave lucrative contracts to Portland.
All of which meant that, for several hours in London’s most fashionable restaurant, the Prime Minister and Chancellor found themselves alongside Uber’s head of communications (Miss Whetstone) and the man in charge of its lobbying firm.

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

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