Sleaze and Serendipity
Remember how the whole cash-for-honours affair started, with the sponsors of the democratically unaccountable City Academies being promised gongs and/or a seat in the Lords for a million-pound donation or higher to New Labour’s dreadful city academies scheme?
Of course, then the affaire de sleaze opened out, encouraged by party treasurer Jack Dromey, to expose the centrality of Tony Blair and his chief moneyman Lord Levy to the giving of undeclared loans to the party election coffers in exchange for more patronage.
The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust is the freestanding ( ie no democratic oversight) over-arching organisation of the city academies scheme. Of the 40 representatives on its ruling council 16, or 40%, have some form of honour, ranging from an OBE, to a dameship or life peerage; and of those, 7 are awarded to sponsor’s representatives, a similar percentage.
Guess who’s President of the Trust? Cha-ching! Yes, indeed it is who you think it is – step forward, Lord Levy, take a bow.
Wow, what an astonishing co-incidence. I’m quite bowled over with surprise.
