Earlier this year I announced that there would be a new edition of the LITTLE BOOK OF NEW LABOUR SLEAZE. THE BIG BOOK OF NEW LABOUR SLEAZE will now be published by Harriman House on June 27th, the day Tony Blair leaves office. Appropriate, dontcha think?I've got about 15 people lined up to bring the book up to date with new entries, but we need a few more. If you have an idea for a 400-500 word piece for the new edition please email me or leave a comment. Guido is dealing with all the Cash for Peerages scandals and we have people to do the following.
The renewal of GNER's franchise
Cherie Blair signing and then auctioning the Hutton Report
Brown's Golden Rules being broken
Brown & Balls & Treasury
Labour's pensions deficit & the FOI requests
Brown's refusal to answer questions on family tax credits
Freebie trips to Floria
Blunkett's cash mountain
Burying Bad News 14 Dec 2006
Afghanistan equipment shortages
Alastair Campbell Hutton
Danny Dewsbury
NHS Heat maps
Manchester Airport and its Labour donations
Tony Blair, Cliff Richard & Copyright
Prescott & Philip Anschutz
Golden Arrow
Margaret Beckett & Her Husband's trips
Prescott's son benefitting from government housebuilding
Liam Byrne's shares
Cherie's lecture tour to USA July 2006
Lord Sainsbury resigns - loans
James Purnell's use of his car
Gordon Brown's special advisers
Lord Warner's new job
We now have writers for most of these. Are there any examples of New Labour sleaze since April 2006 that are missing from this list?
35 comments:
The Trade Union Modernisation fund
Neil Kinnock non-exec director of the company which ran the e-counting fiasco in Scotland?
How about British Aerospace / Saudi corruption probe?
only a little book? they'll have to set it in 6-point
What about burying this news on the day Blair announces when he's going to go?
Neil Kinnock's pension arrangements plus his jobsfortheboys appointments since returning from Brussels and his acceptance of a peerage when he said he would not do so.
(Paul Meron and Ian Hislop went after him beautifully when The Welsh Windbag was compere of HIGNFY)
Cost of return flight by private jet from London to Trimdon on Labour Party business by one A. Blair, doubtless charged to HMG.
Got to be some Olympics sleaze stories, spirallling cost and all. How about the NHS supercomputer project as well? Or are they already covered?
SpAds using official resources for political camapigning (see Guido - particularly Lab Dep leader)
Gordon preventing FoI releases on advice from CS and CBI - then lying about what was said by them.
Wahey!
I hope you will make the point that whereas sleaze under the last conservative government was exclusively concerned with either personal enrichment or personal gratification, Labour's sleaze has almost exclusively been to do with helping to maintain the Party in office which is corruption of a quite different stripe.
EG
Hamilton : cash for questions
Milligan : perverted sexual gratification ie auto-erotic asphyxiation, combined with self-bondage and cross-dressing
Yeo, Mellor, Norris, Browne, etc: adultery and other philandering
Archer & Aitken:
Telling porkies to a court for personal gain
Ecclestone, Hinduja, Mittal, Cash for Peerages/Knighthoods: all part of the project to raise money for elections.
Only thast old Goat Blunkett (inability to keep trousers on), Mandelson (dodgy mortgage and iffy passports) and Robinson (lent his government colleague Peter Mandelson £373,000 to buy a house, whilst under investigation for fraud by Mr Mandelson's department) are Tory-type sleazebags.
George Galloway - the Mini Series.
The Smith Institute and 11 Downing Street
Prescott & Philip Anschutz
Possible extension to Manchester Casino & Sol Kerzner.
eg
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/7days/story/0,,2067899,00.html
Judge Falconer and his new Ministry of Justice - announcing plans to reduce sentences, not punish porbation breakers etc on the day he becomes responsible for paying for prisons. (Buried a la NuLabour one day before Blair's departure re-announcment day).
Something in the genre of Judge Dredd for this one ...
Smith Istitute
Silverfish Productions / HM Treasury et al
- Mr Cashpoint Geoff Robinson and Mandelson.
- The guy who got caught on Clapham Common.
- Alleged postal vote fraud in Birmingham?
£10,000 "Communications" allowance for sitting MPs.
Lord Goldsmith re BAE
Lord Goldsmith re cash for peerages. Petition here.
Crony contracts
Undemocratic practices in West Midlands Labour.
Eric Joyce breaks all records for MP expenses.
State funding for political parties
Leader of Leeds Labour Party encourages postal vote fraud.
All eight locations shortlisted for the supercasino located in Labour areas.
Labour women are like a pack of animals?.
I'm sure someone could put some material together on Terry Kelly and Renfrewshire Labour.
Private equity and tax exile Lakshmi Mittal keep Labour afloat.
I presume you've got Sam Coates to do the Danny Dewsbury job?
And no I wouldn't mind helping out.
Lord Chancellor's wall paper.
Dome access scandal - many celebs prevented from getting in ? Does this count as sleaze ?
The Egyptian holiday ?
Bristol flats/Carol Caplin/Aussie conman ?
Or are they all in the Little RB ?
Alan Douglas
Gordon Brown advancing the career of the daughter of the Chief Rabbi by appointing her as a superfluous 'advisor'.
Doesn't non-financial corruption count as sleaze? Think of changes to postal voting rules and the proven/reported abuses in the name of NuLab
Although not done for personal gain, story of destruction of Railtrack by Byers and advisers is worth a page too
Definitly don't forget the quashing of the investigation into the BAE/Al Yamamah deal by the Attorney-General, thoughtfully provided by Anon 4:44. Hell, I'll even write about it.
It doesn't get much sleazier than waging war on terrorist murderers thousands of miles away while simultaneously assisting the Adams/McGuinness brigade in foisting their insurrectionist agenda onto the decent folks in Northern Ireland.
A Tory taking the moral high ground about sleaze....hahahahaha! Nice try.
Interesting list Iain. Now my understanding of political sleaze is that it covers the misuse of public office for private gain.
Just what constitutes your definition of sleaze? I ask only because some of the items on the list are acts of incompetance rather than dishonesty/corruption, and hell is likely to freeze over long before we get competant government from any of the current incumbents of the Commons.
After all, the GNER franchise renewal was a case of poor business judgement and a stupid franchise system, the latter being a part of the privatisation of the railways carried out by John Major's government.
The Afghan equipment shortages are a consequence of military overstretch, budget cuts and lack of foresight. All indicative of poor judgement, but sleaze?
Breaking of the Golden Rule is just typical political behaviour, saying one thing whilst doing another and in no way the first case of political dissembling by a Chancellor.
Not saying that New Labour aren't guilty of sleaze, but your list seems rather scattergun in its examples.
Iain
My advice would be dont bother with the Big book. Just wait untill we get our hands on the countries accounts, MI5 and MI6 in a few years time and you can go straight on to the 13 volume encyclopedic version.
As for any help with this current project.
I cant help because I cant spell my grammar is crap and my head is too full of shit to be of any assistance to anyone but myself.
However
Remember this. Just like an iceburg. Its the bit you have not seen yet, that sinks the ship.
Hide the sausage in tracey temple.
Lord Drayson and the Powderject vaccine contract.
Mistakes may have been made back when GNER first ended up with their franchaise, but 10 years later you can't keep blaming the Tories, especially if you compare how Virgin was treated.
What about all the lies and betrayals regarding the Armed Forces?
- a supposed WMD threat when troops went into action without protective equipment.
- The lie about only committing troops to action after a Parliamentary vote. Most of us in uniform were making preparations in mid-to-late 2002.
- scandalous inadequacies in equipment. Not enough body armour. Hercules aircraft without fire-suppressive foam. No combat identification equipment, resulting in the death of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, over a decade after a similar incident in GW1.
- Overstretch. Black Watch are returning from tour no 3.
- Inadequate accommodation.
- Pension cutbacks.
- To cap it all, troops serving overseas have been denied the chance to vote through 2 scandalous screw-ups in the absentee voting system...convenient?
Visit www.arrse.co.uk for comments about the Dear Leader's military legacy.
Prescott's Council Tax Amnesia
Hospital 'hotspots'.
Virtually all SpAds.
Housing etc development areas.
De Menezes manipulations.
The list is almost endless. I guess one could put together a book of such dealings detailing at least one fresh scandal per week for the entire ten-year regime.
Purer than pure bastards.
Is Guido keeping the Sith Institute to himself then?
Hasn't Gorbals Mick been providing any new material since that time? He is usually reliable for a bit of light corruption of his esteemed post. You don't seem to mention anything about Ken Livingston's distinctly dodgy friends; the best thing about his return to the fold of Labour being the vulnerability he takes in with him.
The Saudi corruption probe is a non-starter. I have it on good authority of an honest lawyer (I know, very rare; that's why he is so well known in my business!) who was involved in the investigation that it was a genuine decision on the grounds that as far as they had found nothing illegal, as opposed to morally questionable, had actually been done. The investigation concluded when it was seen as too small a chance of finding anything to warrant the police time. It was, of course, in the interest of my fee-charging acquaintance to see the investigation continue, but he agreed that it should not.
P.S. I should have mentioned that the lawyer is no friend of New Labour
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