New Labour – Page 30

How Compromised Is the Met In The Cash For Honours Affair?

Published on March 9, 2007

Via Ellis Sharp comes former ambassador Craig Murray’s report that the Commissioner of the Metropolitian Police, Ian Blair, has been having dinner with Lord Levy.

I’m sure as sure can be that Mr Ian Blair (no relation) is an absolute model of personal and professional probity, just like the PM and his cabinet. Oh yes.

Murray:

[…]

Meanwhile, I am stunned that last week Sir Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan police, shared the top table at a Jewish community dinner with Lord Levy. Blair is the head of the police force that has arrested Levy, removed his passport and, from the actions of Lord Goldsmith this week in seeking to suppress information that may be used at the trial, is likely to charge him shortly with an imprisonable offence.

It cannot possibly be right for the head of the Metropolitan Police to be hobnobbing socially with a prominent alleged criminal. And this is the ultra-sensitive Ian Blair, whose concern for social form is so acute that he demanded an offical report when a female Muslim police officer refused to shake hands with him. The report presumably explained that many Muslim females do not shake hands with men.

Ian Blair and Levy are of course both close members of the Prime Minister’s social and political circle. It is by no means the first time that they have dined together. In July 2005 the two of them ran up a £140 ($270) bill at a London restaurant, which Sir Ian Blair charged to the taxpayer. There was no investigation into Levy at the time, but his being dead sleazy was hardly a secret.

Ian Blair’s explanation of that charge to the taxpayer was that Levy was a representative of the Jewish community. Now, there are many eminent and worthwhile people in London to whom that description applies, but I don’t think that Levy holds any community posts. He is no more a representative of the Jewish community than I am of the Scottish community. Besides, how many one to one £140 meals has Ian Blair had with a representative of the Muslim community? Or the Irish, Iranian, Kurdish, Turkish, Polish, Palestinian or Greek communities? Other than ultra-rich New Labour supporters who happen to have that background?

So Ian Blair and Levy have form. In current circumstances it was a gross error of judgement for Ian Blair to sit at a top table with Lord Levy. Levy should have realised that himself and made his excuses, but nobody could mistake Lord Levy for a gentleman. Therefore Blair should have made an excuse and left. As it is, some of the smell has rubbed off. Ian Blair should resign.

Why would someone with such a sterling repuation, Britain’s most senior policeman, be hobnobbing socially with one of the chief suspects in a criminal investigation of government corruption by his own police force? Enquiring minds would like to know.

Lord Levy has been rounding up as many prominent Jewish people as possible, even his own rabbi, to bombard the media with accusations that any criticisms of his behaviour are unjustified and indeed antisemitic.

Anti-Semitism?

In an interview with Channel 4 television Tuesday, his rabbi, Yitzchack Schochet, was asked whether Levy, a high-profile member of London’s Jewish community, was facing anti-Semitic treatment.

“I know that the Jewish community is becoming increasingly more sensitive that there’s the one Jew seemingly being hung out to dry here,” he said.

I don’t doubt that No.10 is trying to stitch him up for the crime, but Levy’s hardly some political innocent led astray.

Bollocks. The man’s a crook and he’d be a crook if he were anabaptist.

As for Ian Blair – resign? he should be sacked and publicly cashiered, then banged up in one of his own stinking cells.

Cash For Honours: Injunction Lifted

Published on March 6, 2007

The BBC now has permission to reveal the fuill content of their injuncted report after a lunchtime hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice lifted the injunction on the grounds that one outlet should not be injuncted to the exclusion of others.

The Guardian already printed a rival story this morning which the courts declined to injunct last night as the presses were already rolling.

It seems Lord Levy may have asked Ruth Turner to change her evidence. Oops. Methinks the whoever leaked to the Guardian may have been attempting to preempt todays lifting of the BBC injunction and get ~~a different story~~ a more positive spin out first.

More soon.

UPDATE:

Lending a bit of credence to my above theory Guido Fawkes posts this:

Sleazy Levy Complains of “Trial by Media”

Levy’s lawyers have just released a statement complaining, wait for it, of “trial by media”.

Well perhaps he should stop ringing up political editors and briefing them in that case? All those unnamed “friends” quoted in the press are him, briefing…

UPDATE : 13:30 The Metropolitan Police have released a statement effectively accusing the Guardian of underming their case.

Heh.

… Like A Circle In A Spiral, Like A Wheel Within A Wheel…

Published on March 5, 2007

That bibulous former Young Conservative and pain in the side of Westminster, Guido Fawkes, has a theory about why No 10’s probably behind the leak of crucial evidence to the Beeb last week, prompting Goldsmith’s desperate injunction:

[…]

When news of arrests and interviews has come out, it has more often than not been from the politicians themselves. Given that the Beeb didn’t buy this story, who profits from revealing crucial police evidence? Not the investigators, which is why the police sought to suppress the story, because defence lawyers could make much mischief, and probably will, with the “trial by media” line.

To quote the most famous detective of all, “If you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, even if improbable, must be true.” Those under investigation, now that they believe it no longer possible to “fix” the CPS because of the evidence known to have been discovered, have the most to benefit from bringing the evidence into the public domain. The desperadoes of Downing Street would not be above leaking against themselves, tactically it would also allow them to portray themselves as victims of media savvy police investigators. They already brief that the police are “theatrical” and whine that they are unable to publicly defend themselves from the “trial by media”.

These are dangerous times for Downing Street’s toughest street fighters. The gloves are definitely off, which is why Guido thinks this leak has Downing Street’s fingerprints on it.

It appears that No 10 appears to be using one of the Scooter Libby perjury trial’s defence strategies – only where Libby’s supporters tried to engineer a mistrial during the hearing by using their media access, New Labour have been trying to stop it before it even comes to indictments, let alone trial. But they were stymied by the Met’s request for an injunction.

This puts what I’d initially assumed about Lord Goldsmith’s motives in a different light – though having to apply for the injunction when he quite probably would really rather have been doing his master’s political bidding and quietly whispering to selected media figures must’ve been irritating in the extreme.

I bet Blair is kicking himself too that he didn’t introduce some kind of Prime Ministerial pardon system when he had the chance.

UPDATE:

BBC 1 O’clock news is reporting that Downing St denies absolutely that it could’ve been the source of the leak, because ‘details of the emails mentioned in the press prove it couldn’t have been them’.

Uh-huh.

Ooooh, look at the airborne piggies!

DOUBLE UPDATE:

BBC Radio 4 is reporting that the emails were between Ruth Turner and Johnathan Powell and concerning Blair crony Lord Levy. ‘Unnamed sources’ in the government are now blaming the police for the leak. Oh, this is fun. More soon.

“It Was Downing St. What Done It….”

Published on March 5, 20072 Comments

…seems to be what certain MP’s are alleging about the leaking of the secret email that led to the cash for honours injunction this past weekend:

Downing St blamed for cash for honours leak

David Hencke and Vikram Dodd
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian

The MP who triggered the cash for peerages criminal inquiry last night accused Downing Street of leaking vital evidence in the case to the media.

The allegation by Angus MacNeil followed a frenzied weekend of speculation after the BBC was banned by a judge from reporting a leaked email between Downing Street aides about the scandal..

Angus Macneil is the public spirited SNP MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar who with Plaid Cymru MPs made the orginal complaint to the police.

[…]

All news organisations are covered by the gag, but cannot learn terms of what they can and cannot report because the judge who granted the injunction insisted on its terms being secret between the BBC, Scotland Yard, and the attorney general. A spokesman for Lord Goldsmith said the injunction was gained to stop a broadcast which police feared could impede their inquiries, and added: “The terms of the injunction are confidential.”

Yesterday the News of the World quoted the Crown Prosecution Service as saying: “We believe the leaks are coming from government sources, who are trying to disrupt the inquiry.”

[,,,]

Whole story

One of the things that non UKian-politics-wonks may not quite have got their heads around is the dual role of the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith– politically appointed, but able to exercise legal powers over prosecutions even where they affect his political patrons and despite the obvious conflict of interest that causes. The current AG, Lord Goldsmith, refused to recuse himself from acting in in regard to his fellow cabinet members despite his being a member of the government himself. You can see why people are a bit angry, including the LIb Dems (though they weren’t that bothered before) who’re now attempting to co-opt SNP and Plaid Cymru’s initiative:

Liberal Democrats are drawing up plans to force the Attorney General to undergo US-style confirmation hearings and make the post subject to parliamentary approval to reduce any perceived conflict of interest.

Ed Davey, chief of staff to the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, said he supported the injunction after the police warned the story could impede their inquiry. But he said the case highlighted long-standing claims that the Attorney General’s position as a senior cabinet minister could conflictwith his role as the Government’s senior law officer. He said he was “damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t”.

Well, that’s one way of putting it. Personally I think that Goldsmith is so hopelessly compromised he must resign. Just call me a cock-eyed optimist.

But he won’t go and certainly not on a point of actual principle. Goldsmith is Blair’s last real ace-in-the-hole as the CPS gets closer, he won’t give him up in a hurry.

Blair is planning to stay until at least June 16th, if reports of his diary engagements are any guide, and he’s still going to need a pet AG – Labour doesn’t have any money left to fight with so the lawyer in ultimate charge of the prosecution in his pocket is a handy thing to have.

With a moral coward like Goldsmith, he’s got exactly what he needs.

Meanwhile, In Other News: UK Quietly Reauthorises Slavery

Published on March 3, 2007

For all the pious hooha that’s been spouted this past few weeks by the likes of that permatanned fraud Peter Hain and the risible John Prescott about the sanctity of William Wilberforce and the Abolition Movement they somehow failed to mention, as lenin points out, that quietly, New Labour has been repealing employment legislation thus allowing the effective reinstitution of slavery – not in some far-off, easily hidden colony this time, but on its own soil.

Slavery in the UK. posted by lenin

It seems Tom DeLay was not the only one to learn from the perfect petri dish of pure capitalism. New Labour is to abolish laws that provide the most basic protection for migrant workers. Workers who receive visas to enter domestic service are “legally entitled to leave their employer if they are abused or exploited and to receive basic protection – including the minimum wage – under UK employment law.” Now, if they are abused or mistreated by an employer, either they must suck it up or flee back to their country of origin. Even Barbara Roche, the former Home Office minister who used to put on a hideous freak show by appearing at the docks and interrogating lorry-drivers about any human cargo they might inadvertently be carrying, is alarmed: “These new proposals are a very retrograde step. Workers who suffer abuse from employers will feel absolutely alone. I can’t believe a Labour government which has taken such a firm stance against trafficking will want this to happen.” Oh, you’d be surprised, Barbara.

This comes as a recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found an enormous amount of slavery operating in the UK. There are said to be 10,000 gangmasters operating in the UK, who supply labour that operates under the threat of extreme physical violence to various sectors of British capital. These include everything from domestic service, where the new laws will apply, to agriculture, manufacturing, restaurant workers, food processors, care work, hotels and so on. Among these are tens of thousands of sex slaves, who include thousands of children – and not all of those children come from overseas. If you try to protest about your treatment, you “may be beaten, abused, raped, deported or even killed.”

Read whole post.

Those of us on the anticapitalist left have long been derided as out-there hysterics when we’ve warned that the increased slavery and exploitation so apparent elsewhere is spreading to the developed world and that this is the natural outcome of the neoliberal economic polices that Blair and Brown have been pursuing.

Blindly tribal Labour supporters who still harbour the hope that Gordon Brown’s ascendance to the premiership would herald some sort of shift towards humanity and away from rapaciousness, when Brown himself willingly enables that rapaciousness is out of their tiny mind,

Just look at the money the party has just taken from private equity groups – largely unaccountable conglomerations of private money which buy take private and proceed to asset-strip other companies, They’re run by fund managers, unlike publicly regulated corporations they have no shareholders and they have little social accountability compared to public companies. Plus the Gordon Brown gives them a tax break!

Anyone who’s still with Labour despite everything, and that includes a number of people I was once was close to and thought highly of, deserves to go down with the rest of them.

Did you ever think, staunch union actvist and Labour loyalist, when you were sitting under that tree at Tolpuddle with the union banner at your feet and a cold drink in your hand, that your party would one day be the party of slavery?.

Well now it is and it’s all down to you and your blind loyalty to party over principle. Fuck you, you little Eichmanns.