Wednesday, November 28, 2007
How Independent is the Inquiry?
The inquiry which Gordon Brown announced yesterday into the donations scandal will be conducted by a former Labour Party General Secretary (Lord Whitty), scrutinised by a Judge (Lord McClusky) who is a former Labour politician and the former Bishop of Oxford, (Richard Harries) who, if I remember correctly, was successfully encouraged by Peter Mandelson to slag off the Tories in the mid 1990s. And who does it report to? Harriet Harman, the chairman of the Labour Party whose own conduct forms a part of the investigation! You couldn't make it up.
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18 comments:
A comment on another Blog, referred to the occasion you would normally invite a Lawyer and Priest to.....
A bris?
Iain, the entire paragraph is redundant! It's an inquiry set up by the LABOUR GOVERNMENT, come ON, of course it won't even APPROACH independence, it will find what Brown tells it to find.
Just had a strange vision of scriptwriters on TW3 and the Frost Report being brought to the present by the good Doctor in his Tardis. They read the newspapers and watch the telly for 24 hours then run screaming to the Doctor pleading with him to take them back to the 1960s.
"How can we make a living in 2007!?" they cry in anguish...
A similar point is suggested in a legal blog examining Scots law matters and updated early this morning at http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/sln/ in post number 707 "Have you heard the one about the judge and the bishop?"
Presumably it is an internal labour enquiry.Now that there has been an official complaint to the police they will have to back off until the police investigation has been completed.
The inquiry will find Mr. Shipman innocent of all charges and the Conservative party guilty of receiving dodgy cash from Lord Ashcroft. The Labour party, naturally, will be beyond reproach.
(apologies to Private Eye)
And how independent will an inquiry led by Ian Blair's Met be?
Andrew Neill just claimed he has newspaper sources in scotland (Neill was once the editor of the scotsman, wasn't he?) who claim McLusky is a "crony" and he was a good friend of Gordo. Seems perfect for an impartial role...
Maybe I should listen to Dawkins more, but I still have faith in Bishops.
I only know Richard Harries because I used to go to church in his "patch", so I'm no expert.
But I think you'd have to do better in proving his lack of independence than citing a criticism of your party 10 years ago!
If there's more real evidence you can come up with about the good Bishop, I'm opening to being presented with it, but comments about "the mid-90s" aren't helping me make up my mind who to vote for.
Mark, the "floating voter" now in Sussex (but formerly in Oxfordshire.)
What is really objectionable about this is the way Brown has tried to hide by using the good name of the church and judiciary.
Lets hope a select committee gets stuck in.
I was also shocked by Brown's failure to understand how the law works in PMQs today by saying its up to the electoral commission to bring charges ( even after Brown said a crime had been committed by accepting the law had been broken ).
Again the socialists just can't tell the difference between party and state.
The inquiry to which you refer is the LP internal inquiry and I'd hardly expect that to be opened up to the enemies of the workers' party.
This is NOT the only inquiry however.
As Ben Bradshaw said on the DP the party at large, the PLP and the affiliates will not tolerate any kind of cover up from the internal inquiry.
But representing it as the government's inquiry or one claiming to be in any way independent is pure tosh Iain.
This is a committee of turkeys, investigating whether turkey should be on the menu for Christmas dinner. There is no plurality of possible outcomes.
Anyway, Inspector Grown-up will get involved at some point soon. And then the Labour apologists can all conveniently claim sub-judice further prevents them from saying anything until - oh, after the next general election.
Calm down dears! This is what the party in government does. Get over it!
It takes a special kind of chutzpah to object that a Labour Party internal inquiry is made up of people who are close to the Labour Party. I suppose you think it would have been fairer if the inquiry was headed by Lord Ashcroft, Stuart Wheeler and Lord Tebbit.
They are all lefties and labour should not pick their own people to investigate their own people. it stinks.
Whiter than whitewash.
Doesn't really matter. No one believes they didn't lie about Iraq, that the Hutton Report was anything but a whitewash and that honours were not sold and no one will believe this one either, just a waste of time and money. Can't even trust the police while Blair is in charge, no wonder they protected him. I give up.
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