by antiaristo » Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:09 pm
There WAS a major scaandal two or three years ago involving Blair and vaccines (which may connect with Gouda's comment above). A donor paid 1/2 million pounds to the Labour Party and a few months later received a monopoly no competition contract for ALL the supplies of UK anthrax vaccine.<br><br>They screwed up the contract and the vaccine was unusable. But the company floated and the owner made a TON of money.<br>Then Mr Blair made him a peer - I think it is Lord Drayton(?)<br><br>This article gives a feel for the circumstances surrounding Mr Blair<br><br>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="font-size:small;">Blair is doomed to suffer death by a thousand kiss and tells</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> <br><br>Lance Price's diary shows that the cronies and hangers-on inside No 10 will sell its secrets to the highest bidder <br><br>Simon Jenkins<br>Friday September 30, 2005<br>The Guardian <br><br><br>Damn. I was writing a column on the need to curb free speech. I thought Tony Blair should have stopped Lance Price, his former aide, from publishing his book, The Spin Doctor's Diary. Even prime ministers must have a right to some short-term privacy in their private conversation.<br>The ink was hardly dry, but Blair's party conference thugs were doing a heavy job on an 82-year-old man for shouting "nonsense" at the foreign secretary. Walter Wolfgang was mildly heckling Jack Straw for justifying unprovoked military aggression.<br><br>As luck would have it, Wolfgang was a refugee from Nazi Germany. When he felt the hand of "security" on his collar, I wonder if his mind flashed back to his youth. The incident recalls a New Yorker cartoon of a Nuremburg rally. It has the Führer beginning his speech: "I think I may say without fear of contradiction?"<br><br>What was outrageous was not the ejection as such - insecure politicians have always feared hecklers - but the use of anti-terrorism powers. It now seems instinctive to the police to assume that an elderly heckler has terrorist intent. It is exactly the syndrome that killed Jean Charles de Menezes in the London tube.<br><br>Next year's "shoot-to-kill" anti-free-speech law will enable the police to throw people such as Wolfgang into prison for giving "unintentional encouragement" to any political violence. Lord Falconer said on Sunday that the powers will be enforced "reasonably". Like in Brighton on Wednesday? Does that mean Falconer will arrest only regius professors of history?<br><br>Ian McCartney, the Labour party chairman, should not have bothered to apologise to Wolfgang. He should have summoned Blair, Straw, Charles Clarke and Falconer and told them to get their tanks off Labour's lawn. They had already turned his conference into little short of a police rally. The whole thing was near Mosleyite. Blair and co should abandon their totalitarian laws or he, McCartney, will suspend their party membership forthwith.<br><br>Back to Price, the Walter Wolfgang of sofa government. His latest raspberry at Downing Street sets a new standard in political kiss-and-tell. Whitehall tried, halfheartedly, to get it suppressed. The cabinet secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull, declared the whole book "completely unacceptable" and made a series of juicy cuts. Price was thus able to use them as an 18-certificate trailer in the Daily Mail, flagged the "Allegations They Tried to Ban". I suspect that Turnbull, no friend of Blair's "democracy", knew exactly what he was doing.<br><br>Price claims his revelations reflect his "passionate belief that unnecessary secrecy about how our government works is bad, not just for the people in whose name it operates but for government itself". This presumably refers to aides copulating on Blair's sofa, Blair abusing "the fucking Welsh" and his "relishing" sending troops into action.<br><br>The book is a savage money-spinner at Blair's expense. It is a diary of events in the last three years of the 1997 parliament, offering a first-person account of spinners at work. The portrait of the Blair-Campbell duumvirate is so breathtakingly cynical as to be near implausible. Every day is an exercise in trying to write the following morning's front pages. It convinces me that Campbell's talent lay not in using the power of Downing Street to corrupt the press (an easy task) but in using the power of the press to corrupt Downing Street. At this he was astonishingly successful.<br><br>Campbell is the diaries' evil genius. He clearly regards Blair as a fool - the word is more obscene - loathing the public sector and obsessed by his future income. Campbell dominates every decision, holding most ministers in contempt and using them as initiative factories to get Blair out of some new scrape, be it on drugs, asylum seekers, binge drinkers or whatever. Blair emerges "effing and blinding", vacillating, charming, opportunist, chaotic, above all thick.<br><br>Price is not the first so to describe Blair and his entourage. We can read similar material from Rentoul, Rawnsley, Naughtie, Seldon, Kampfner, Scott, Riddell, Oborne and others. But most rely on such devices as "an insider said" and can be taken with pinches of salt.<br><br>The new book is closer to Washington memoirs in flaunting oratio recta. The intimacy of Price's revelations is what gives them force. They intrude into the innermost sanctum of sofa government, the off-message exchanges of those present. No indiscretion is sacred - or so we must assume.<br><br>Blair is said to be upset by Price's disloyalty. But it was Blair who wanted to staff his office with media hangers-on, not civil servants. The latter may have shortcomings but are bound by oaths of secrecy and job security. A crony's loyalty is only to his boss. When that wanes, he has nothing to sell but his secrets. Since their price is in direct proportion to their sensationalism, the temptation to dish the dirt must be overwhelming.<br><br>Blair's reputation seems doomed to inundation by memoir. So far this has been limited to dissidents such as Geoffrey Robinson, Mo Mowlam and Clare Short. Iraq is about to unleash the literary equivalent of Operation Shock and Awe on Blair, not least from soldiers seething with rage at its present direction. But Blair's closest circle is the real danger, since it is best placed to turn his innermost weaknesses into cash.<br><br>Geoff Mulgan, the former Downing Street policy chief, remarked recently on Radio 4 that there is "nothing more corrosive to the quality of decision-making than a ... culture in which every participant is secretly writing their diary". It was not just Blair's disdain for his cabinet that has emasculated it but rather the unprecedented presence of a press officer, Campbell, known to be keeping a diary and leaking against any minister who stepped out of line.<br><br>Nobody likes his private conversations revealed to others. Even prime ministers must be able to relax with aides, swear, panic, insult colleagues and abuse the Welsh. If close aides cannot "speak truth to power" in confidence, they will not speak it at all. When Campbell told Price to remember, "Life is on the record", he was really saying that in Blair's Downing Street it was "me Tarzan, you sycophant".<br><br>It is hopeless to censor kiss-and-tell memoirs once they are written. But Mulgan must be right in suggesting that prime ministers who bring personal staff into their office would be wise to make it a condition of service that no revelatory memoir be published at least until all involved are out of power. This is not to protect their feelings, rather to guard the quality of decisions at the centre.<br><br>Instant memoirs have changed since the old days. Lord Whitelaw was horrified to be told that his were "interesting". Now they are lethal documents, a first draft of revenge. They drove Reagan to use ever more dangerous "back channels". They forced Thatcher into a clique that led to her eventual downfall. They are imprisoning Blair in a hall of mirrors.<br><br>Any journalist has a professional interest in disclosure. But good government must have an interest in upholding confidence at its heart. Otherwise everyone will start playing to the gallery and acting the book. In this tiny respect, Blair is not secretive enough. There is time to kiss and tell later.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1581336,00.html">www.guardian.co.uk/commen...36,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>It needs to be said: Campbell (the man who hounded David Kelly to death) was possessed of royal prerogative powers while he was Blair's press secretary. That is the REAL REASON cabinet ministers were terrified of him.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
