On the Sunday following the week of Blair’s Formula One debacle, the Observer ran two prominent stories on its front page. One was by Andy McSmith, and it reported honestly on the political implications of the Prime Minister’s economical approach to the truth. The other was by Patrick Wintour (aka Mandelson’s orifice) and purported to be an exclusive report of New Labour’s plans to hit oil company profits with a massive £6 billion green tax — in three years time. In the days that followed, no other newspaper deigned to pick up this bogus story, a fairly transparent attempt by New Labour’s spin-doctors to balance the damage done by the revelations about Blair’s links with big business. Careful scrutiny of the Wintour piece revealed that its sole source was a telephone conversation with the Deputy Prime Minister in a hotel in Tokyo. There was no evidence that Wintour had asked Prescott the obvious question: when New Labour is afraid to take on fox-hunters, Formula One or supermarket chains, why on earth should anyone believe it will take on the oil companies, the most powerful lobby on earth?
We know why Wintour writes this rubbish (he’s been drip-fed by Mandelson for so long he’s forgotten how to investigate a real story). The real question is why Observer editor Will Hutton lets him get away with it.
The Guardian managed to miss completely the Government’s announcement that it would not give parliamentary assistance to the anti-fox hunting bill. The story had led the BBC’s news coverage on the previous evening and featured prominently in all the paper’s rivals. A week later, it missed the first rumblings on the Formula One Affair. While other papers led with the revelations about Tessa Jowell’s husband, the Guardian consigned them to the inside pages while plastering its front page with its umpteenth self-congratulatory headline about Neil Hamilton, who is now most definitely old news. However the diminishing ranks of real journalists hanging on for dear life as the one-time newspaper of conscience plunges downmarket faster than you can say Noel Gallagher are staging a fight back. While lobby correspondent Mike White peddles increasingly convoluted apologies for his friends in the Government, people like David Brindle, David Hencke, Larry Elliott and others are getting their teeth stuck in to the often scary realities behind the emollient spin-doctoring.
Paul Corrigan, a professor of public policy at the University of North London, and long-time Labour Party hanger-on, has been enjoying a lucrative sideline of late. Corrigan is advising local authorities — both officers and elected members — on the preparation for Labour’s Best Value scheme, the successor to CCT, details of which are due to be included in the next Queen’s speech. Corrigan’s wife is Hilary Armstrong MP, Minister for Local Government with responsibility for the drafting the Best Value legislation. Far be it from LLB to suggest that there is anything amiss in Corrigan’s conduct, but with plenty of journalists on the lookout for New Labour sleaze stories, his wife would be well advised to tell her husband to stick to the day job.
When it comes to full and frank disclosure, Stephen Twigg MP, that bright meteor in the starry firmament of New Labour, is proving himself an apt pupil of his master Mandelson. In the Sunday Times guide to the new Parliament (details for which are submitted by the MPs themselves), Twigg claims he was a member of Islington Council from 1990, and furthermore that he was deputy leader until 1996. In fact Twigg was first elected to the council in a by-election in July 1992. And his tenure as Deputy Leader lasted a grand total of ten weeks. He resigned when offered the well-paid — and much less onerous — post of General Secretary of the Fabian Society. Indeed, so delighted were the hitherto loyal Labour voters of Sussex Ward in North Islington at being used as a step-ladder in young Stephen’s ascent to power and glory that they promptly replaced him with a Liberal Democrat in the by-election precipitated by Twigg’s surprise defeat of Michael Portillo in Enfield Southgate. Meanwhile, as we go to press, Twigg’s former protege, Islington Cllr. James Winston (Tony Blair’s councillor until the move to Number 10), is under trial in a crown court on serious charges of defrauding two North London local authorities. Winston has apologised to Liz Davies for writing letters to the NEC and the Guardian denouncing her — and has revealed that Twigg wrote the letters for him.
Since the general election, Harriet Harman’s DSS snoopers have visited some 250,000 claimants of Disability Living Allowance to weed out fraudsters. For the first four months of this “benefit integrity project” snoopers were checking on paraplegics, until Ministers decided that people without the use of arms or legs were probably genuinely unable to find work.
Tony Blair’s father-in-law has reportedly bought three ‘Support the Liverpool Dockers’ T-shirts for our leader’s children. LLB is offering a large sum of money for the first photograph of the young Blairs wearing them.
Good to see Nuclear Jack Cunningham, Minister of the Environment, standing up to an energy development by saying it is “massively intrusive” and objecting that it needs “substantial subsidy”. You may think he was referring to the Sellafield monstrosity in his constituency, but no — he was objecting to the building of five windmills.
The £100k a year salary doesn’t stop Neil Kinnock standing up for what he believes in. At the height of the French lorry drivers’ action, the European Transport Commissioner said, “We are not going to let this run and run. It already looks worse than the strike last year.” No, Neil, it looked better.
No one could ever say Neil Kinnock didn’t look after his mates. Former student hack and ex-Kinnock staffer Neil Stewart did what most failed politicians did and set up a PR company charging participants £200 + VAT a head to attend a transport and jobs conference in Cardiff.To make the event a success, a high-profile speaker was needed. Who pops up? EU Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock.