Tory losers turned into financial winners by writing and speaking
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Your support makes all the difference.William Hague and the losers of the Tory leadership contest have cashed in with directorships and part-time jobs worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, the new register of members' interests shows.
The former leader has consultancies, payments and perks worth £200,000 since resigning as Tory leader. He reveals that he is a director of an engineering company, has a contract with HarperCollins to write a book about William Pitt the Younger and has been to Morocco with his wife at the expense of Le Cercle, a political group that organises conferences. He has also enriched himself making speeches to companies from supermarkets to sugar manufacturers.
In October, Mr Hague was paid at least £5,000 to make a speech for the supermarket group Safeway. He was paid between £5,000 and £10,000 to make a speech for the British Sugar Foundation in the same month and a similar sum to speak to Marks and Spencer in July.
Ann Widdecombe, who fought to succeed Mr Hague as Tory leader, has forged a successful career as a writer, with £200,000 in advances for two novels, while earning thousands more for lectures, magazine articles and appearances on television programmes, including Celebrity Fitness.
The former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke is also in demand as an international speaker since his failure in last year's leadership contest, clocking up fees and travel expenses for conferences in Bahrain and Italy.
Michael Portillo, his rival, has made about £85,000 since May in speeches, lectures, foreign trips and stints as a guest television presenter. The Kensington and Chelsea MP's entry in the register published yesterday covers two pages and includes fees for presenting UK Confidential on BBC2 in January and a BBC Radio 5 programme FC Barcelona, and a fee of at least £5,000 for speaking at a Monaco conference. He has also flown to Disneyland Paris to speak, and to Germany to present a BBC TV programme on Richard Wagner. Peter Mandelson, a former cabinet minister and Labour MP for Hartlepool, is also in demand for conferences. He lists engagements in Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Israel, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Vienna and Berlin in the new register.
Among the more unusual declarations in the new register is one from Theresa May, the party chairman, who lists "three pairs of Hot2Trot shoes from Russell and Bromley".
The former culture secretary Chris Smith was paid £25,000-£30,000 as an adviser to Walt Disney and Alan Duncan, a Tory foreign affairs spokesman, lists the gift of two "ceremonial tribal daggers" presented by the government of Yemen and a watch from the government of Oman.
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