Tuesday, April 29, 2008 

Political biographies and Lord Levy.

In a world in which ever more thoughts are expelled, and the written to the read ratio drops accordingly, it's curious how the book publishers continue to inflict ever greater crimes against literature on the public at large, even when it seems apparent that it will be simply impossible to recur the original outlay in sealing the deal and providing the advance when the contents are likely to be of interest to only the dullest, most anal and self-hating of individuals.

My point could be about the cross-spectrum of banality provided by sports stars, the cacophony of crying from the misery memoir writers, the vacuousness of self-absorbed celebrities who describe themselves as journalists for writing a column about being a professional clothes horse and beach-dweller, but at least the aforementioned three are guaranteed to sell more than a couple of copies. The same can't be said for the political memoir, no longer confined to those who reach the very top and stay there, and just might have something to contribute towards history, but to the increasing number of acolytes that also make the grade. In recent weeks we've been treated to John Prescott admitting that he was putting his hand down more than the one orifice we've already been alerted to and Jonathan Powell, one of Blair's chief adviser's reminiscing over the Northern Ireland peace talks, a worthy subject for sure but not one which really told us anything new.

The collective nadir appeared to have been reached with the self-indulgent diaries of David Blunkett, who had nothing whatsoever to say but decided instead to wallow in his own misery. There's nothing especially wrong with doing that, but his justifications and blaming of all his woes on everyone other than himself, especially when he played the media for all it was worth and continues to do so rightly rankled, and the book was the biggest and most deserving of flops.

With the memory of that in mind, it's hard to fathom exactly what Simon and Schuster were thinking in giving Michael Levy, aka Lord Levy, the chance to write his autobiography and, more pertinently, his own account of the "cash for peerages" scandal. Never the most sympathetic of figures, especially when he and others resorted to claims of anti-Semitism because of the level of criticism and speculation directed towards him, he has the added problem of despite being Labour's chief fundraiser under Blair of by no means being one of the former prime minister's chief confidants. Even the title sticks in the throat, almost mockingly titled "A Question of Honour".

The excerpts from the Mail on Sunday's serialisation may not represent the overall tone, but it seems as if in lieu of actual juicy material, Levy has decided to take his revenge not just on those he felt were out to get him because of his connection with Blair, but also the Blairs himself and his apparent cooling towards them, whether because he felt Downing Street didn't provide enough support in his hour of need or not. Levy relates anecdotes about Blair receiving long massages from Carole Caplin, of Cherie's conflict with Anji Hunter, and his eventual disappointment with Blair "just being in it for himself", as though Levy himself also wasn't. It also wasn't his idea to seek loans and he didn't want to do so, but was pushed into doing so by Blair, Matt Carter and Alan Milburn. Doubtless the offering of a "K or a P" was also not his idea, but someone else's also.

The main vindictive streak though is certainly left for Gordon Brown and others sensed to have slighted him, with him quoting Blair calling Brown a liar and viewing him as duplicitous, both qualities which we know for certain neither Blair nor Levy have. He also suggests that Brown did know about the loans, something that we know almost for certain that he did not. Similarly questionable is his claim that Jack Dromey, Labour's treasurer went public with his concerns over the loans after they were first revealed in a bid to damage Blair and shore up Brown, which if true would have been inflicting a wound on the party as a whole, not just Blair, something that Brown, would had so many opportunities to wield the knife but never did so was loth to do. The biggest wound though is undoubtedly Blair's other suggested conversation with Levy which suggested that he didn't believe that Brown could win against Cameron, something denied by Blair's camp. For those allegations to come at the same time as Brown is in such difficulties, even if they are mostly of his own making and just a few days before the local elections makes it all the damaging and all the less forgiveable for someone already fabulously wealthy to be once again cashing in as he did so often in the past for others.

The Guardian's leader on Levy's comments finishes by saying that Levy isn't the problem but that the funding system is. That lets both Levy and Blair completely off the hook. Levy didn't have to go along with Blair's urgings to get loans, even if that was the case. It omits any responsibility on either of their behalf for the curious coincidence of four of those who had made loans subsequently being nominated to receive a peerage. The Crown Prosecution Service may have decided that there wasn't enough evidence for anyone to be charged under the ancient act brought in after Lloyd George's selling of honours, but that hardly clears him or Blair of impropriety in full. Levy's behaviour undeniably brought the whole system into disrepute, creating a stench of corruption that will only be dispersed when all parties agree to a system, a deal currently being blocked by the Conservatives wanting to destroy Labour's link with the unions, a move that would force it to rely on the very individuals who got it in such a mess in the first place. His profiting from his role is the scandal is typical of both a man and a party which has become just as shameless in pursuit of power and wealth as all those before them.

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4/29/2008 09:03:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, July 21, 2007 

That predictable backlash in full.


Most interesting now will be how the other Blairite boot-lickers and sycophants will respond.
With all the dignity that is rightly associated with them. First up, Martin Kettle:

Unsatisfactory it may be, but this is the political reality of the cash-for-honours saga now. Tempting though it is to spend time being indignant about the disproportionate police inquiry, the leaks to the media, the impact on the blameless Ruth Turner, the anti-semitic undertone against Lord Levy, the all-round political opportunism at Westminster, and the hypocrisy of those who rushed to judgment about Tony Blair in defiance of due process, the truth is that the whole thing was an overinflated episode from an era that has passed. It was an instructive glimpse into the not particularly edifying intestines of the political system that morphed into a general Get Blair binge. And that particular party is over now.

Just drink it all in. Disproportionate, blameless, anti-semitic, opportunism, hypocrisy, defiance of due process, overinflated, binge, Kettle's certainly not averse to bringing out the hyperbole himself in his mission to defend our sainted ex-prime minister. To claim that the attention on Lord Levy was in any way racist is to enter into the fantasy land which previously resulted in Levy's rabbi turning up on Newsnight to make the absurd accusation in the first place. Moreover, who is Kettle to decide that the police investigation was "disproportionate"? The allegations made against the government and its advisers were some of the most serious that can be leveled against a government: that it was in effect selling honours in return for cash. As Yates himself yesterday pointed out, the very reason it lasted so long was because they came to believe that there had been an attempt to pervert the course of justice. If Downing Street and all those associated it with it had fully cooperated from the beginning it might well have been over with far sooner.

Kettle at least didn't fill his entire column with just how unfair Yates' inquiry was. The Scum however does nearly fill its entire leader with its own dismal rant:

THE “cash for honours” inquiry was shameful, spurious and damaging to Britain.
Here then is the country's biggest supporter of the police, cheerleader for ever increased powers biting the hand that feeds. Only when such an inquiry involved either Blair or a Murdoch entity could the Scum refer to it in such disingenuous terms.

For 16 interminable months the police cast a shadow over Tony Blair’s Premiership and wrongly conveyed the impression that our entire political process was corrupt.
Sorry, is this the same Sun which regularly decries politicians for doing anything other than that which it advocates in its leader columns? As Jeremy Paxman has pointed out in the past, it hasn't been the BBC and others that have helped destroy faith in politics, it's been the Murdoch press which demands constant loyalty and obeisance, knowing full well it can decimate politicians just as it can build them up. It was in this climate that Blair and his hangers-on started to believe that they were invincible, so much so that they felt they could get away with such downright devious methods of funding as secret loans. We expected that from the Tories, but not from Labour, until the rise of Blair and his Faustian pact with Murdoch. To now attempt to shift all the blame on to the police shows where the real corruption lies in our democracy.


About £1million of our money was wasted as over-zealous Scotland Yard chief John Yates desperately ferreted around for evidence of criminality.

He found nothing. Not a shred.


Oh, except for those 10 files of evidence, some themselves containing over 1,000 pages, all of which were handed over to the CPS. Yates found plenty of evidence; it was the CPS that felt it wouldn't bring a prosecution.

Meanwhile senior Labour figures were put through hell by persistent leaks from the Met cynically designed to convey their guilt and against which they could not publicly defend themselves.

Oh, boo fucking hoo. When the leaks concern alleged terrorists, or the latest horrific crime the Scum's describing in all its gory details, the paper can't get enough of them. Even if the leaks did come from the Met, something by no means proved, it seems some sort of justice that a government that lived by spin and briefings finally came unstuck through their own methods being used against them.

Fundraiser Lord Levy was arrested twice. Downing Street aide Ruth Turner was seized at dawn.
Poor diddums! Blameless Ruth Turner, suffering the indignity of the police turning up on her doorstep at dawn, which is a well-known police tactic because it's the one time that they're almost certain to find someone in. Someone somewhere is playing the world's tiniest violin for the both of them.

Mr Blair suffered the stress and humiliation of being the first serving PM quizzed over a criminal matter.
If there was any justice, Blair would be suffering the stress and humiliation of being the first former PM to be quizzed over committing a war crime.


It is now the Met’s turn to answer some questions.

Commissioner Ian Blair must explain why the probe he launched on the back of a politically-motivated request from the Scottish Nationalists was so long and costly.
Err, because the police were doing their job, and as previously stated, Downing Street wasn't exactly helpful.


Questions must also be asked of Yates’ conduct — fruitlessly searching, month after month, seemingly determined to keep going because his reputation hinged on it.

That reputation is in tatters now. He is in danger of looking like an ambitious chancer who was hell bent on staking his claim as the Met’s next commissioner.
Here commences the smearing. Unlike all those other noble policemen the Scum salutes on a daily basis, whose devotion to their duty is never questioned, Yates is pilloried because he dared to take seriously accusations of dishonesty concerning the highest echelons of our parliamentary system.

Yates quizzed 136 people. Finding no evidence to support the original accusation he switched his attention to vague stories of a cover-up.
Yes, of course he did. Nothing to do with the possibility that Levy and Turner were being less than honest, as the leaks to the BBC and Grauniad showed back in March.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown stoically defend the police’s right to carry out the investigation. But the truth is that it was a disgrace.

Treasure this. It might be the only time the Sun ever decides that a police investigation was a disgrace.

Our ex-PM, who knew he and his aides were innocent, is exonerated.

Yes, it was all just a massive coincidence those donors were nominated for peerages. The ex-PM is cleaner than clean!

He begins his new career with his reputation unsullied.
He might be a warmongering, lying, obfuscating, murdering bastard, but at least he's not corrupt. Maybe he can have that on his tombstone. The Sun meanwhile, remains the disgusting, whitewashing, brown-nosing rag it's been throughout the Blair years.

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7/21/2007 09:11:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, July 20, 2007 

Sticking the boot in.

How long then did it take for the recriminations to begin, following the revelation last night and the confirmation today that no one will be charged over the cash for peerages affair? Well, if we're being picky, we could point out Denis MacShane's appearance on Newsnight last night, member of the Henry Jackson Society and a chief apologist for the Iraq war, who quickly established the line of kicking the SNP and letting the media decide what to do to about Yates of the Yard himself. The most egregious piece of buck-passing and complete failure to deal with the evidence that had been collected which suggested peerages had been offered for the secret loans though so far has come from John McTernan, Blair's chief lickspittle (political secretary) from 05-07, over on CiF:

My argument is with the SNP, whose malicious political stunt turned into a slow-burn story which has, I think, damaged public trust in all political parties and in the political process itself. There is a place for political rough and tumble - but that is surely the debating chamber of the House of Commons. To drag decent coppers into what was a clearly political complaint is a step too far. Surely Tony Wright is correct that the genuine policy and political questions raised in this case could - and should - have been dealt with by parliament.

Well, you see Mr McTernan, there was this small matter of there being enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that there had been a breach of the 1925 act on selling honours for the police to launch a full investigation. It's just ever so slightly rich to complain about the person who's grassed you up when your bosses were, by their own admission, using a loophole in the Electoral Commission's rules on donations to keep the loans secret.

McTernan's argument is a misnomer. The spin has already been decided upon: it shows that the public, poor misinformed sheep that they were wrong to lose faith in their glorious, incorruptible representatives, and it's all the SNP/the media/the police/Henry Kissinger's fault. It doesn't matter that all three parties have more than enough reason to be ashamed of their respective funding mechanisms, with both Labour and the Tories relying on the secret loans, with the Lib Dems taking money from a man who turned out to be a fraudster and was subsequently jailed for perjury. After all, their heart was in the right place: how could Tony Blair possibly let the Tories be bankrolled to the gills by their own multi-millionaire supporters, and possibly win the election as a result? He did what he thought was right, and if that meant taking secret loans from a bunch of unsavoury characters and hiding their millions of pounds out of sight from the spending watchdog, then nominating some of them for the House of Lords, something completely unconnected with their generous help, who are we to lose faith in our politicians' ability to conduct themselves in a proper, open manner? Quite frankly, we ought to be glad that we've still got them.

Did anyone though, except for Guido, really expect that anyone other than Levy was likely to be charged? It would have broken the cycle of this Labour government getting away with it time and again. Not a single person has managed to hold a single member of the government to account over Iraq, where the evidence was far more abundant than it was over cash for coronets, documenting Blair, Campbell et al lying and misinforming on an unprecedented scale, and on a matter far, far more serious than the enobbling of a bunch of idiots desperate to join another bunch of strokers in a second chamber about as relevant to modern life as whether Caligula really did make his horse a consul. How could the CPS break Blair's lifelong habit of shaking the blame, especially when the bastard's finally left office?

It's true that the whole thing stinks to high heaven, and that as Paul Linford points out, the public are likely to make up their own minds, just as they did in the aftermath of Hutton's deluge of whitewash. As much as certain sections of the media are now going to get it in the neck when for once they were doing the decent thing of going after a story of genuine public interest, we ought to be at least glad that it almost certainly brought Blair's ignominious reign to an earlier end than he would otherwise have wanted and pushed for. The real worry now will be there's likely to be less impetus than there already was for further Lords reform. Jack Straw announced yesterday that there won't be any movement until after the next election, by which time everyone might well have got cold feet again. The other positive is that Blair's exit has helped to clear the air: Brown's start, while by no means perfect, has still been refreshing compared to the last few years of purgatory.

Most interesting now will be how the other Blairite boot-lickers and sycophants will respond. Back in February, both the Scum and Martin Kettle ran similar articles demanding that Yates either put up or shut up. Now that his investigation has come to naught on the prosecution front, the smear jobs and defense of their saviour is likely to be ferocious. Blair might have gone, but his ghost is likely to haunt us for a while yet.

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7/20/2007 08:13:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 07, 2007 

Levy still stinks.

Much continuing comment over the Guardian's sort of breaking of the injunction handed to the BBC to prevent Friday's story on the loans for peerages story from being broadcast.

To recap, the BBC, which claims to have more than one source for its report, attempted on Friday to broadcast their story that stated that Ruth Turner, Downing Street's director of external relations, was worried that Lord Levy, Labour's chief fundraiser, had provided a inaccurate account of his role in drawing up the Honours list. On approaching the police for comment, they informed the BBC that they felt this was information that should remain outside the public domain, as it could potentially affect the bringing of charges or the possibility of getting a conviction. They then contacted the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, who applied for an injunction and was successful. All this resulted in was a mass of speculation over the report, with most of those guessing about its contents doing so correctly. The injunction was loosened on Monday when it became clear that the pretence of withholding those named in the report was no barrier to their names becoming public.

This is where the Grauniad comes in. Their account of events is that Patrick Wintour, their political editor, was informed of more or less the exact same story as the BBC had tried to broadcast. The police again attempted to seek an injunction, but both they and the attorney general refused to say whether the injunction which was already in effect was over the same story. As a result, the attorney general was left only with relying on the Contempt of Court act, which the Guardian's lawyers argued, successfully, was highly unusual as no charges have yet been brought. In any case, the paper had already been printed, with the judge deciding that the case was highly balanced, and so the story came out.

As it turned out, the stories were almost entirely the same. The only major difference was that the Grauniad's alleges that Levy tried to influence Turner's account of events, rather than simply presenting one which Turner thought was inaccurate.

The main allegation made is that the leak came from Downing Street: firstly to the BBC, and then once that was stopped in its tracks, to the Grauniad. Behind this is the way that the story is being interpreted as clearing Turner and incriminating Levy, taking the suspicion away from Number 10 and towards a rogue, somewhat independent figure. Levy, perhaps fearing that he's been cut loose in the same way as Des Smith was, has come out fighting, accusing the media of a "smear campaign" with his lawyers condemning the reporting of the latest developments as "partial, contradictory, confused and inaccurate".

I personally am suspicious over this view of events. While the leaks certainly take some of the heat off Downing Street, there had in recent weeks been something of a break in reporting on the whole police investigation. The last time that the leaks/news of the inquiry had reached fever pitch, with Blair being questioned for a second time, some commentators thought that Blair might be forced out early as a result. Instead, everything died down. Downing Street has very little to gain from leaking the story, even if it clears them, as all it does is bring the whole sordid affair back into consciousness that it had otherwise left. The BBC has also made it clear that their story has multiple sources, and in the aftermath of Hutton, it's unlikely to lie about it. Nick Robinson and Michael Crick, the two reporters who have most concentrated on the affair, are also far from Downing Street's favourite hacks. While some have been describing Wintour as the No.10 House Pet, it's worth noting that Martin Kettle, someone far more favourable to Blair than the Guardian's leaders usually are, was opposed to the injunction being broken. The other unintended effect of the whole mess has also been to once again focus attention on Lord Goldsmith, and his decisions which have been seen as being far from independent, something which Downing Street would want to avoid at all costs. Would Goldsmith have been so vociferous in attempting to get injunctions if this was information that Number 10 wanted out?

The second allegation being thrown about is that the reports could potentially prejudice a trial, or lead to charges not being brought, or that it's allowed Lord Levy to blame everything on the media and the police being beastly towards him. This is helped along by the statement from the police condemning the Guardian's breaking of the injunction: they maintain that the reporting of Turner's concern over Levy could undermine their investigation, but they've provided no evidence of this, and the Yates' inquiry is still expected to last a few weeks more. The police's distaste at this leak being reported however though seems odd when you consider that the whole inquiry has been defined by leak after leak, with the police and Downing Street accusing each other in turn. One side has to be lying, and while this leak may well have came from No 10, that all the others came from the same place seems wholly unlikely.

The report itself is hardly earth-shattering. When something stinks, there's only so much you can do to counter the smell; you can try and smother it with air freshener, but eventually you're going to have to remove the offending article or person. We all know that Levy stinks, that the honours list ponged like a frightened skunk, and this report only furthers the belief that he was at the centre of a possible cover-up. This doesn't by any means acquit Turner from also being involved, or indeed Blair and the few other people who were involved in the loans loophole in the first place. Levy himself is so desperate to try and spin himself that he was last night resorting to getting his Rabbi to go on Newsnight to suggest that somehow all the speculation and flying accusations are anti-semitic, as if the fact that Levy happens to be Jewish has had any influence on the reports at all. What does he and his "supporters" expect when he's at the centre of a government which isn't noted for its openness?

For those who honestly believe that the Grauniad has been played by Downing Street, or that Wintour is either repaying a favour or otherwise, it's worth looking at Downing Street's favourite pet when it's come to leaks: the Sun, whose coverage of the whole scandal has been so light and so sycophantic that it's laughable. The Sun's political editor gives over most of the only report on the developments to Levy's arguments, and then in conclusion comes up with this brilliant explanation for why Levy asked Turner to support his version of events:

In Miss Turner’s document, she explains she is uncomfortable at being asked to support Lord Levy’s recollection of how the honours list was drawn up.

One explanation could be that she simply misunderstood his request.


Ah, that must be it! The day's other article is given over to Ruth Turner's mother, who's also complaining about how her poor daughter is being put through the wringer:

THE mother of No10 aide Ruth Turner spoke out today over the “heavy stress” on her daughter caused by the cash-for-honours probe.

Marie Turner said: “It is unimaginable to think what she must be going through. She has nobody to talk to at all. As far as we know this must be one of the stresses for her.”

Mrs Turner, who lives in Connecticut, told a newspaper: “We are at a great distance and she cannot talk to either of us - that leaves her to carry a heavy stress on her shoulders alone.”

In her interview Mrs Turner also said her daughter was “above board, honest and her integrity is beyond reproach”.


Quite right. She's clearly just an angel with a face dirtied by the irresponsible media.

Whatever the truth or the source of the leak, Rusbridger's defence, being to say damn us if you will and prosecute us if we have done what you accuse us of, is at least honest. That is something that cannot be said for Blair. The longer the police investigation goes on, the less likely it seems that any charges will be brought, but it will be this, along with Iraq that will remain his legacy, however much they try to pass the buck, or no matter how many times Levy brings his background into it.

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3/07/2007 07:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 05, 2007 

Are you still here?

It's starting to look as if Blair's days truly are numbered. The Sundays, as they are wont to do, were full of speculation over loans for peerages, with the News of the Screws being unusual in actually producing a political story claiming that Levy, Turner and Sir Christopher Evans, who donated £1m, are all to be charged, with Blair being questioned for a third time, possibly under caution. While believing anything at all in the Screws is foolhardy (just look at this pack of lies and propaganda about the Birmingham terror arrests), today's Times (the website has a hideous trendy new-look, complete with a close to unreadable tiny font) has followed it up with backing some of the Screws' claims, while carrying John McTernan's denials that the information had come from him.

If any of the above happens, then Blair's position would finally be untenable. In a way, if this is how it happens, then it will be the cliche that his reign will come to an end with a whimper rather than a bang. Looking back, it's obvious now to everyone that Blair should have been kicked out over Iraq, and he might well have been had the establishment not found favour in the choice of Lord Hutton as the presiding judge for the inquiry into Dr David Kelly's death. The media themselves, and indeed, us, additionally deserve some of the blame. While we cried whitewash, few of us demanded that Blair should resign, with even less of the newspapers doing so. As ever, the Murdoch empire may have much to answer for in that regard; the unstinting support of the Sun for the prime minister, which continues to this day, has to have had some bearing on the length of his stay. We the electorate though should not be let off the hook: we had the opportunity in 2005 to get rid of the lot of them, but the Tories didn't help matters by conspiring to be an even worse alternative than New Labour.

Some still though hold the view that Blair hanging on until after May is in the interests of everyone. Jackie Ashley, usually one of the more perceptive, if unashamedly Brownite commentators on the Grauniad, has fallen for it:

Two odd thoughts this morning. Tony Blair should not quit. And things are actually going rather well for Labour. No, I haven't taken leave of my senses. Having called for Blair to hang up his boots on several occasions, mainly because of the disaster that is the Iraq war, I don't believe he can walk off just now. To do so - despite the support for that idea from many in his party and, overwhelmingly, from the public - would be an admission of guilt over the loans-for-peerages affair. He, like the rest of us, must wait to see if there are more developments from Scotland Yard.

It may well be seen as that, but if he does go now and he isn't personally charged, then he can claim to have been vindicated. If he stays and any of his staff or Levy are charged, then he will have to go anyway, and in disgrace. Unlikely as his being charged is, if it that happened then he could have possibly the most ignominious history of a prime minister yet written. If there's one thing we know Blair wants, it's at least something of a legacy, and unlike Churchill, he isn't going to be able to write it himself.

Besides, his staying just further entrenches the current impasse in politics. Some are calling it a crisis, but it would be better described as a deep trough which politics has fallen into, thanks to Blair's imminent departure and the loans for peerages inquiry. Everyone is waiting for either the former to occur or for the second to end. Until either happens, everything at the moment seems inconsequential by comparison.

Yet for now this is for the birds. Gordon Brown is not pushing him to stand aside immediately, and there is nobody else with the heft or willpower to make Blair bring forward his own timetable. Furthermore, a Blair resignation this month or next would actually make life harder for his party. It isn't all farewell speeches. Even some of his harsher critics say he is needed for the final push to get the Northern Ireland parties back into a reconstituted assembly before the deadline of March 26. Once that is done, it would be sensible to announce to Labour's national executive committee exactly what his timetable will be, almost certainly involving stepping down after the May elections. That way he takes the rap (and rightly so) for the May election results, and still leaves time for the new leader to bed in well before the autumn conference season.

Northern Ireland is almost a done deal; as Peter Hain has rightly made clear, if Sinn Fein and the DUP can't now reach agreement on power-sharing after Sinn Fein abandoned one of its longest standing principles on not co-operating with or recognising the police, then they still don't deserve to be able to govern themselves. It can be argued that Blair might have to do some additional prodding, if Hain can't manage it alone, but if he was to go beforehand this could be handled by Brown or Bertie Ahern, if necessary.

If Blair was to go now, then the election process could still be conducted in time for the May elections. It would be more than possible for the campaigning for that to be merged with the campaigning for the local elections, with Brown and his opponents (it might turn out to be just John McDonnell; John Reid is tainted, Charles Clarke probably couldn't get enough signatories, while David Miliband and Alan Johnson have made clear they're not interested, and neither is well enough known anyway) making their own cases for just why Labour should be supported even in a time of flux. It's tempting for Blair to stay and to take the blame for the likely disaster, but the mood in the country is that he should go now. If he did, it's still conceivable that the mood could change. The longer he stays, the more everyone's reminded of just why he hasn't gone yet.

What Labour really needs is a medium-term plan for dealing with the appalling damage caused by the cash-for-honours row, and the erosion of trust it has brought. There is a rising revolt against Jack Straw's latest plans for a part-elected, part-appointed House of Lords. Last week's cabinet meeting was a long way from rubber-stamping the plans, and that's before the rest of the Commons and the Lords themselves get a look in. Whatever the intellectual case for a mixed chamber - or indeed an all-appointed one as set out by David Steel on this page - suspicion of undue influence and malign patronage is fixed in the public mind. We need to go all elected, ending for ever the chuckles about cheque books and coronets.

What better arena could there be for discussing and debating all of this than the election process for both leader and deputy leader? This is potentially a great opportunity for involving the Labour membership in a far greater democratic say in what policies should be taken forward than ever is allowed at the annual conference.

What is clear is that Labour needs a new constitutional deal that ends this dismal history of political sleaze. It doesn't matter if it comes this month or after May. But it can be done, a new political tone can be set, and many in the party want it. That surely is rare good news for Labour.

The one thing Ashley misses out is that the sooner it happens the better. Both for Labour and the country. Everyone is just waiting for Blair to do the decent thing, but then it could be argued we've been already spent 9 years doing just that.

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2/05/2007 06:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 02, 2007 

Scum and Times-watch: Leaks and lackeys.

The leaks are continuing to come thick and fast over the arrests of 9 men in Birmingham under suspicion of being behind a plot to kidnap a serving British Muslim soldier. Or it could be two, or according to the Times, up to 25, as the men may well have had a list detailing the names and addresses of just less than two dozen servicemen. The Times also alleges that at least two of the men may have attended a camp "directly linked to al-Qaida", claiming that "al-Qaida" chose Britain to be the testing ground for their terrorist initiatives, the kind of information that makes Melanie Philips and Michael Gove start salivating.

The more down-market end of the Murdoch empire doesn't want to be outdone. The Sun today claims that "murder videos" were found at one of the houses being searched in Aston, Birmingham, which if true, are likely to have been copies of the type of jihadist propaganda which turns up on radical websites and then later on sites such as LiveLeak (formerly Ogrish).

I wouldn't have so much of a problem with such information being put into the public domain as long as it was done so by a police spokesman, but instead, as has happened in previous cases, we're seeing a media free-for-all in which police and security sources leak information which may or may not be true, and then let the media potentially embellish it even further.

According to the BBC:

At an afternoon press conference, ACC Shaw told reporters the searches so far had yielded a "significant quantity of exhibits" but would give no further details.

No, they'll just leak them to the newspapers instead.

Today's Sun leader focuses instead on the loans for peerages affair, and would you believe it, it takes a line so similar to the one which 10 Downing Street has given in private that you wonder whether the two are indistinguishable:

DOGGED Yard chief John Yates has been walking a fine line in his cash-for-gongs probe.

Yesterday he crossed it.

In a staggering cloak and dagger flourish, he not only quizzed the Prime Minister but ordered Downing Street to keep quiet about it.


This was apparently to make sure they were no differences between the information that Blair had given them and that also provided by Lord Levy, who was then again arrested, this time under suspicion of perverting the course of justice. The reason why they wanted Downing Street to keep quiet seems to have been to make sure that Levy was not potentially tipped off. For a newspaper that prides itself on always supporting the police and often gets plenty of juicy information back in return, this seems a rather willfully ignorant way to talk about such a ploy.

In his year-long marathon, Mr Yates has TWICE interrogated the Prime Minister, TWICE arrested Lord Levy and TWICE grilled Downing Street supremo Jonathan Powell.

He has also arrested Downing Street “gatekeeper” Ruth Turner TWICE for possible conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.


No he hasn't. She may have been questioned twice, but she's only been arrested once, which even then provoked gnashing of teeth from the Blairite-ultras and government loyalists.

Now the Deputy Assistant Police Commissioner has two options . . .

To PUT UP or SHUT UP.

He’s had ample time to assess whether there is a case to answer or not. His inquiries have created a cloud of suspicion over the Blair government which will not disperse, even if nobody ends up in court.


How very different the Sun's attitude to this investigation is to those suspected of involvement in terrorism. Then 90 days detention without charge is not just common sense, it's an absolute necessity. When it comes to investigating a scandal at the top of government, where there now seems to be evidence of a possible cover-up, just as the inquiry appears to be reaching its conclusion the government's only remaining loyal ally in Fleet Street comes out demanding that a police officer either put up or shut up. If this didn't involve the prime minister or the Murdoch empire itself, when else would the Sun ever tell a police officer investigating a crime to put up or shut up?

Nor can he simply dump responsibility by handing his dossier to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Err, he's gathering the evidence, it's up to the CPS to decide whether there's enough to go through with a prosecution. The Sun loves to act stupid when it's to its advantage.

Whatever others may think of the characters involved, this is either much ado about nothing or serious wrongdoing.

After almost a year, Mr Yates has enough evidence to reach a professional judgment . . .

Either wrap it — or scrap it.


Either way, the loans were hidden through a loophole of this Labour government's own creation. The secrecy surrounding them, with the loans kept hidden from nearly everyone who should have known about them, means that there's the stink of corruption around this for a good reason. Blair and his acolytes have no one but themselves to blame for getting into the situation at the last election where they were forced to rely on rich businessmen, and then to attempt to cover-up just who was bankrolling the party ought to be enough to show that there was serious wrongdoing from the beginning. The only question is whether what happened was actual selling of peerages or just a happy coincidence for the men who loaned their millions. Either way, the whole political system has become tainted, and until Blair does the decent thing, it will only increase the cynicism of the general public. As for the Sun, in its attempts to exert pressure on the police when otherwise it would do the exact opposite, it's shown again just how deep the unwritten pact with the current occupant of Downing Street is.

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2/02/2007 05:54:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, February 01, 2007 

Clinging on for no greater purpose.

It's completely impossible to work out just what it is that somehow makes Tony Blair think that he should still be prime minister. He's not just a dead man walking, he's almost in the same position as Saddam Hussein found himself in in his final moments. Not only has his power evaporated, with it about to be wrenched away to the man he's spent most of the last few years fighting with it, he's getting mocked even in his final moments of what seems like clarity. Blair still believes that he can achieve something, and this week he actually almost did. Northern Ireland is back on the road to devolution, with Sinn Fein making their historic pledge to support the police, yet all of it was overshadowed by the re-arrest of Lord Levy and now the revelation that he was again questioned by police over the loans for peerages affair last Friday.

Blair, if he's honest with himself, and let's hope that his delusion hasn't reached that stage yet, must realise that his continued stay in 10 Downing Street and as the Labour party leader is only hurting both the country and the prospects of his party being re-elected. The question that he should be asking himself is how much longer it should be before he puts both himself and us out of this misery. While an immediate resignation would be incredibly welcome, if we put ourselves in Blair's shoes for a moment, would we want to give the opposition the pleasure of seeing a police investigation result in the first ever prime ministerial scalp? They would never stop crowing, and certainly not on election day.

Hanging on though, as he is, just inflicts even more damage. The smell of corruption isn't just over the loans - it grows ever stronger over the decision to drop the Serious Fraud Office investigation into an alleged slush fund for the Saudis provided by BAE. The Guardian today reports that Blair personally forced Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, to tell the SFO to drop the investigation, despite Goldsmith previously deciding that there was sufficient evidence to at least charge Sir Dick Evans, former head of BAE. Goldsmith found himself incredibly flustered and looking less than honest in a brilliant interview conducted by the FT. The Liberal Democrats have also rightly turned on Goldsmith, and his strangely quickly changing opinions.

This is why it seems so apparent that Blair's vanity is the thing that is actually keeping him at Number 10. He's made clear that he won't be forced out until after the May elections, showing complete disregard for the Labour party's chances in those very elections, which are bound to be greatly increased were he to go quietly now, giving a chance for the leadership election to take place before campaigning gets underway in earnest. He's still looking desperately trying to find something that will mean he can leave office on a high - even though his options, the longer he puts it off, continue to dwindle. There's no sign of any good news from Iraq, Israel/Palestine continue to be deadlocked, with the boycott of Hamas continuing and Mahmoud Abbas left powerless. The chatter about an attack on Iran grows louder, the sign of another politician facing his demise drastically raising the stakes for little reason other than his legacy. The Home Office may be about to be split, but it won't be sorted out until Blair is long gone.

While some claim that there may be a silver lining to the loans for peerages cloud, with reform of the funding system and the House of Lords as a result, if the investigation leads to charges, he'll never be remembered for inadvertently kick starting those changes. Even the apparent plans for doing both are half-measures, the Lords, crying out to be fully elected, is instead going to be a hybrid of both, if parliament gives the green light, which is far from certain.

One legacy which Blair will have that few will thank him for is the values that he has stood for continue to infect those that amazingly continue to look to him for their inspiration. John Denham on Tuesday chided the ultra-Blairites for their lack of ambition in targeting only the super-marginals. Some MPs can still see what Blairism has led to: the embrace of the consumer, of choice, has become so ingrained that they only seem to care what a tiny sub-section of the country cares about, rather than see the bigger picture. The capitulation to the Mail/Sun agenda, which inevitably results in the removal of families such as the Bokharis, described movingly by Austin Mitchell MP, has turned off traditional Labour supporters across the country, yet even now when Labour faces its biggest challenge to remain in power they can't see what their agenda has done.

If renewal is to come, unlikely as it seems, then it has to begin now. This simply isn't going to happen, unless the Yates' inquiry drops a further bombshell. While it was Blair's lies that led to the catastrophe of Iraq, it's his vanity that may well result in the defeat of his government.

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2/01/2007 08:28:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, January 22, 2007 

It's the end, why don't you admit it?

According to "Dr" Cliff Arnall, today is the most miserable day of the year. Despite this not having any basis in fact whatsoever, seeing that Cliff Arnall has already been exposed by Ben Goldacre as a corporate whore, it seems that New Labour really does want it to be the day when you're most likely to think of doing a Saddam. Nothing could be more apparent than the continuing attempts of ministers both to questioning the police for so much as daring to question Ruth Turner, as well as the Blairite's continuing belief that only the "super-marginals" matter.

Let's start with Frank Field, who has written what can only be described politely as an "interesting" comment piece for CiF:

A successful terrorist attack on London could make part of the capital uninhabitable for decades and make Britain permanently poorer.

New York, despite having the two tallest buildings in the city demolished without warning, managed to be back up and running within weeks, although whether the dust created by the collapsed buildings will turn out to be a long-term health hazard remains to be seen. Unless our suicide bombing loving friends manage to explode a nuke, there's not much that could make the capital "uninhabitable" for decades.

This is only part of Field's first paragraph. This is where it gets really "interesting":

Yet, while London awaits its fate, Scotland Yard is fiddling away on an enquiry into the alleged sale of honours. How can the Metropolitan commissioner defend this enquiry as the best use of scarce police resources?

How can the Metropolitan commissioner defend investigating kids getting mugged for their iPods? How can the Metropolitan commissioner defend sending officers out to arrest people caught shoplifting 2 or 3 chocolate bars? How can the Metropolitan commissioner defend apprehending burglars?

This is quite possibly the most pitiful argument that an MP could ever possibly come out with. Believe it or not Frank, the police have different departments to investigate different crimes. See, there's the Counter-Terrorism Command, there's a Economic and Specialist Crime Command, and gasp, John Yates has set-up his own team of six detectives to investigate the "loans for peerages" affair. And you know what, the Met are even kind enough to provide a web page with all the information on each different department of the force. You could have seen it there.

In criticising the Metropolitan Police commissioner for a serious misuse of police time I have not assumed that there is no case to answer on the honours front. No 10 has at the very least been sailing close to the wind. The whole saga is tacky, to put it mildly.

Tacky. Prostituting the party to huge corporate sponsors because no one else was willing to stump up the cash at the last general election, possibly selling honours as a sweetener on the deal, and then deliberately hiding what had been done by exploiting a loophole in the very law which Labour brought in, and Field only finds this tacky, to put it mildly. I'd call it as bad as some of the worst sleaze which the previous Tory government indulged in, and seeing as Neil Hamilton received money in brown envelopes for asking questions and Jonathan Aitken prepared to have his daughter lie for him in court, that's quite an achievement.

The way that the police have conducted the enquiry suggests to the media that it is the PM who is in the frame. But where did those senior Labour party figures who run the party, particularly in the run-up and during the election, believe the £18 million spent on the election came from, if not from wealthy donors? When the small group of top Labour officials, including the prime minister and the chancellor, mapped out the campaign, did they all believe that the £18 million or so they were committing to election campaign grew on trees?

Maybe, just maybe Frank, they thought that the funds had been properly donated, all above board, keeping in line with the very measures which Labour introduced. They didn't have any reason to be suspicious, so they didn't ask.


What is the financial control structure in the Labour party that allows the treasurer to claim that he had no idea of the source of the £18 million? Does not the Labour party have an audit committee to ask such elementary questions before money is committed?

From what we know, Labour was so desperate for money that Lord Levy had to go out glad-handing, begging and bribing. Neither Jack Dromey, the Treasurer, or Jeremy Beecham, the head of National Executive Committee, knew about the loans until the papers exposed them. In fact, Dromey was so concerned that he was going to end up being the fall guy, that he then he made clear that he had, to paraphrase Manuel, "knew nothing". This didn't spare him then being attacked for not being inquisitive enough when he had no reason to be. John Prescott, and it has to be assumed, Gordon Brown also didn't know about the loans. According to the Independent, only Blair, Levy and the then party general secretary, Matt Carter knew about them. This is what is known as shifting the blame. Even if the treasurers had been aware of the loans, would they have been able to persuade Labour to either forgo them or convert them to donations? It seems unlikely.


These are some of the very important questions the Labour party leadership needs to answer. They are not questions which have so far been put in public debate. But we shouldn't have to turn to the police to gain answers to questions which tell us something pretty fundamental about how political parties are run in Britain today. That a full scale police enquiry was put in hand raises not for the first time the judgement of Ian Blair the commissioner.

Much as Ian Blair has to answer for, this is nothing to do with him. Sure, he has ultimate say over the investigation, but once a complaint has been made, the police have a duty to thoroughly investigate it, which is exactly what they have done. Much as Field would like for it not to have been turned over to the police, the very reason a complaint was made was because there is a suspicion that the law as it stands very well may have been broken. There have been claims in recent days of the Yates' inquiry discovering a "smoking gun", which may well be the other reason why New Labourites of all shades have taken it upon themselves to question both the police's remit and their tactics.

The commissioner has found himself in choppy political water recently and it was obviously easier for him to allow the enquiry to advance than to defend that with all the issues facing the Yard, the honours for sale fiasco was no where near the top of his agenda. But the easy option is, in this case, a negation of leadership.

During Ian Blair's watch the nature of the terrorist threat to Britain has fundamentally changed. Irish terrorists were about destroying buildings, usually after giving a warning. The nature of the threat posed by Islamic extremists is carried out by suicide bombers. What none of us know is when the next outrage is going to occur.

And your point is what, Frank? Are you trying to suggest that Ian Blair is negating his duties in countering-terrorism? Blair is more than open to the charge of being all mouth and no trousers, since he's more than happy to exaggerate the true level of the threat and to demand even more draconian powers, but surely he can't be accused of lacking leadership over tackling it, especially over an investigation that involves only six detectives.

Speaking of scaremongering, here comes Frank "I'm shitting bricks" Field's take on what the evil terrorists could possibly do to London:

Nor is the threat, awful as it is, confined to such horrors visited on innocent individuals. An explosion of a dirty bomb could make parts of London uninhabitable for decades or more. Such an explosion would bring down more than the surrounding buildings. Twenty per cent of Britain's income comes from the financial services sector. A dirty bomb would see much of this industry leave our shores. At a stroke our national income would be reduced from being at the top of the league of advanced countries, to the bottom, with huge repercussions for income and employment levels.

Likewise, bombing the Thames barrier at a record high tide with strong incoming winds would not only flood Canary wharf. Such an attempt would result in a pack of financial lemmings scuttling from our shores with the same devastating effect on national prosperity as a chemical or dirty bomb attack.

Field has then came up with two nightmare scenarios, and that is exactly what they are, nightmares. As a commenter on the thread notes, the studies into the threat posed by dirty bombs have all played down the threat, or rather, have concluded that there is a threat but that it's nowhere near the fevered imaginations of some of our politicians and other defense "experts". The real threat posed, as has been made all the more obvious by the 21/7 bombing trial, is from jihadists preparing their own bombs with easily available materials. A more realistic nightmare scenario would be multiple suicide bombers attacking multiple cities and multiple targets in a co-ordinated attack. That doesn't however pose the same horror as the use of nuclear material, or flooding the city through bombing the Thames barrier.

It is against the need to try and prevent a catastrophe on this scale for our country that I continue to question the use of police time over the alleged sale of honours. I know it's much easier for the police to chase a somewhat old fashioned crime as the alleged sale of honours than to try and foil the next, and then the next, terrorist outrage.

Right, so apparently our police have suffered so much under Field's own government that they can't do two things at once. He must realise that this is a completely false argument, so completely ludicrous that you almost do wonder whether he actually does realise that. Have you finally lost it, Frank?

The commissioner has put what we are told is his most gifted senior policeman onto this task but it is these very gifts that we need to employ trying to keep ahead of the new terrorists. Given the choice between ruffling some feathers of the smaller creatures at No 10 for perverting the course of justice or reinforcing the unglamorous daily grind of trying to protect the security of our country, Ian Blair's judgement looks eccentric, to put it mildly.

And so this litany of disingenuous garbage finally comes to the end. Is this is what Labour has now been reduced to? Faced with a police inquiry right at the top, a government that has given the police nearly every single new power they've wanted, all of sudden the supporters of Blair come out to question the very same organisation they've time and again defended to the hilt. Field doesn't just question the police's actual reason for existing, to investigate allegations of breaking the law, he has to bring in terrorism, the new catch-all for justifying anything and everything to cover the backside of the current occupier of 10 Downing Street (see today's ruling on Brian Haw for another example of this). It'd be easier to understand if a rabid Blairite had written this pathetic, new low for a Labour MP, but Field isn't, and never has been.

Which brings us neatly to Hazel Blears. She too believes, like Liam Byrne and Bill Rammell that the next election will be won through targeting the "super-marginals".

New Labour came to power with its belief in the "third way", that left and right politics no longer applied and that such labels were obsolete. It now even seems that vacuum has been thrown out of the window, in favour of anything that pleases a few select people. Gone is the belief in any broad narrative, that's so 20th century. Instead, we are all consumers and we're all going to choose what we want. Blears however, unlike Liam 'n' Bill, seems to know what the voters want; while Liam 'n' Bill think aspiration will win the day, Blears thinks that what the people are interested in are what she wants to talk about i.e. the police, the NHS and education, rather than foreign policy, civil liberties concerns or immigration.

All this though is just a waste of breath on their own concerns. Blair's downfall, Field's attack on the police for doing their job and Liam, Bill and Hazel's ideas are all connected. All of them are doomed. All of them are on their way out. It's the end for Blairism. Sure, it might be about to replaced by a slightly lesser form of Blairism in Brownism, but they're finished. It's the end. They just can't admit it.

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1/22/2007 06:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, January 20, 2007 

They don't like it up 'em.

Do you remember how many times Blair professed his "complete confidence" in his namesake as the head of the Met? He did it on more than a couple of occasions last year. That's what makes the reaction to the arrest of Ruth Turner, Blair's political liaison officer, on the suspicion of perverting the course of justice in connection with the loans for peerages investigation, so illuminating. Out they come, all united in their questioning of the "theatrical" nature of the arrest, done as it was "before dawn" at 6:30am.

All of which made me remember the treatment of Lana Vandenberghe, who worked for the Independent Police Complaints Commission. She was the one who leaked the reality of what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes to ITV news, disgusted by the way that the police had lied and attempted to cover their tracks over what took place at Stockwell tube station on the morning of the 22nd of July 2005. For her trouble, she too was arrested before dawn, but rather than being questioned and released within hours like Ruth Turner, she instead had her door kicked in by 10 police officers and was thrown in a cell for 8 hours without access to food, water or a lawyer.

Whilst what Vandenberghe did was clearly in the wider public interest, correcting the myths which had been perpetuated, Ruth Turner is widely thought to have been arrested for potentially destroying evidence, i.e. deleting emails, a serious, imprisonable offence.

As Curious Hamster points out, this is the same government that wants us to trust the police, that wants them to be given further summary powers of justice and desperately wants us to believe that if we have nothing to hide then we have nothing to fear. As ever, when the boot is on the other foot, the predictable loyalists and hangers-on of Blair emerge from out of the shadows to voice their distaste. Isn't it all so terribly unfair?

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1/20/2007 08:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

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