Why do we take political memoirs at face value?

Lots of people are in a bit of a tizz this morning because of what Tony Blair has said in his autobiography. I don't understand why; after all why should we believe he is telling the unvarnished truth? Do Tony Blair's memoirs report what actually happened, what he would have liked to have happened (knowing what he knows now), what he wants to believe happened (Tony Blair being able to convince himself of most things), what he wants other people to believe happened or what he wants other people to believe he believed happened?

Just as with Alastair Campbell & Peter Mandelson's books, why should anyone believe a word that Tony Blair says? All three are proven liars, so why should their books be any more truthful?

Interestingly, will any journalists be asking Peter Mandelson why he lied to the British public when he assured us that rumours of massive arguments between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were just media tittle-tattle?


From the time that I heard of Tony Blair lying about his stowing away on a plane from Newcastle to the Bahamas when he was 14, tricky as there were no such flights at that time, I had no faith in this man. I was therefore made exceedingly angry by the way the media, especially the BBC, repeated his claims of being a pretty straight guy.

Also remember Tony Blair's involvement with Bernie Ecclestone, the Hindujas and of course 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'. In the latter case, the security services told Tony Blair that intelligence about WMD was 'sporadic and patchy', 'little' and 'limited'; Tony Blair translated that to Parliament as 'extensive, detailed and authoritative'. Also remember Tony Blair writing to the Romanian government when Lakshmi Mittal was bidding to privatise the Romanian steel industry. Tony Blair wrote that 'I am particularly pleased it is a British company which is your partner.' At that time this British compnay was owned by an Indian citizen with holdings in the Dutch Antilles and of his 125,000 employees just 85 were in Britain. The fact that Laksjmi Mittal had donated £125,000 to the Labour Party is of course entirely coincidental to Tony Blair's support. We should also consider the cash for peerages affair but that would take too much time and I am running shot of bile.

Where does Lord Bhatia live?

I ask because it seems that he cannot remember. Another of Tony Blair's peers whose peerage was entirely not linked to his being a Labour donor and whose activities since are I am sure beyond reproach.

"Lord Bhatia... has lived with his wife in a £1.5m home in southwest London for 20 years. Almost two years ago he decided to “flip” the designation of his primary residence to a two-bedroom flat in Reigate, Surrey, which has been his brother’s home for three years. The town is a mile beyond the M25 motorway, a boundary used by peers to define whether they live outside London for expenses purposes.

By saying the Reigate flat was his main home, Bhatia was able to claim lucrative “overnight” allowances from the Lords. Peers whose main home is outside the capital are able to collect £174 a night as reimbursement for the cost of a hotel or maintaining a second home while attending parliament.

Bhatia could not remember the address of the flat when repeatedly asked last week. He had to look it up and even then misspelt the name of the block. A neighbour could not recall him living there, but Bhatia insisted he had spent many weekends at the flat and said he intended to move there with his wife when he sells his family home. "

"Bhatia is a 77-year-old Labour party donor who sits as a crossbencher. He is a successful businessman who has been prominent in several charities. After being made a peer by Tony Blair in 2001, he went on to lead the Edutrust Academies Charitable Trust which was formed to open and run city academies. He quit the board of the trust after a government inquiry found evidence of financial and governance mismanagement at the charity. "

"I will definitely be writing my memoirs"

Those are the words of Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates.

"I've kept careful records of the inquiry and would like to get out my side of the story."

Will Yates of the Yard really tell all about the investigation which resulted in the Crown Prosecution Service deciding not to bring any charges in the "cash for honours" probe? Will he tell us what he found and what strokes were pulled by those trying desperately not to be charged?

Labour party finances

I believe that the Labour party accounts are due to be signed off soon and that there are fears amongst the Labour party that their accountants may feel that they have to "qualify" the accounts. Any qualification would, I presume, be a "going concern" one.

A "going-concern" qualification is an explanatory paragraph that states that the independent auditors have substantial doubts about the ability of the entity being audited to continue to meet its obligations as and when they fall due over the next 12 months.

I have blogged before, querying how long loans to the Labour party can be extended, often with the interest rolled up, before the loans can be deemed to have in fact been donations. More interestingly, the benefits of loaning or donating money to the Labour party are diminishing as the Labour party looks more and more like being on its way out of power within the next 23 months. So will the wealthy individuals who have large loans outstanding to the Labour party now decide that they would like that money back and if so how will the Labour party pay it back? If they cannot pay it back then they are "trading insolvent". Under UK law, if a company is trading insolvent, then the company directors may be liable for wrongful trading. If the director knew or should have known that the company could not avoid becoming insolvent but still continues to trade then he or she must cease to trade immediately and take steps to liquidate the company. Under UK law, trading while insolvent can trigger several provisions under the Insolvency Act 1986 which may have the effect of making directors of a company personally liable to contribute to the assets of a company.

The coming months may be rather interesting ...

Is the Labour Party trading insolvent?

Guido Fawkes has pondered this matter before, as have I - if not here then in someone else's comments. The "loans" that gave rise to the "cash for honours" kerfuffle have not all been repaid, some or more being rolled over - does this still make them loans rather than donations?

Go and read this and this at Guido Fawkes and see what you think.


I suppose it is only fair that the man who has ll but bankrupted the United Kingdom should also preside over the nearer bankruptcy of his political party.

An interesting article re "Cash for Honours"

I don't often recommend an article from the Guardian but here's one that you might find interesting; it's by Angus McNeil.

"Gestapo tactics"?

I read the comments of Sarah Helm with some amazement over the weekend. "The wife of Downing Street's former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, has lifted the lid on the private fury felt by Tony Blair's inner circle over the cash-for-peerages inquiry, accusing the police of 'Gestapo tactics'." Good grief, what did the police do? All quotations from here on are from Wikipedia. Were they "investigate(ing) treason, espionage and sabotage cases", some would say they were. Were the police investigating "cases of criminal attacks on the ... Party and " country? I am sure that some in New Labour believe that any criticism of them is an attack on party and state. "Laws passed in 1936 effectively gave the Gestapo carte blanche to operate without judicial oversight. Nazi jurist Dr. Werner Best stated that “[a]s long as the Gestapo ... carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally.” The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws." I don't think that anyone could claim that the police were acting against the Labour Government in this way, although some might claim it was heading towards acting in this way for the Government. As time moved on in Nazi Germany, the Gestapo were responsible for the setting up and the administration of the Concentration Camps where over 9 years around 7 million people were murdered. The Gestapo also murdered many thousands of anti-Nazi protesters having first arrested them.

Helm, a journalist and author, writes in the Observer: 'I know one shouldn't make these comparisons, but I was writing about Nazi Germany right then and I couldn't help think: Gestapo tactics! Pick on the vulnerable, preferably a single woman, living alone. No matter that you may have nothing on her that will ultimately stand up in court - give her a scare.' To compare the arrest of a woman with the presence of camera crews before 8am to the tactics of the Gestapo is a hideous comparison. Also the comment "Pick on the vulnerable, preferably a single woman, living alone" irritates me, women fought long and hard for equality with men, but here Sarah Helm seems to be calling for special treatment of women.

The Cash For Honours "Scandal" or I don't believe it (part 2)

All becomes a little clearer, it would appear from today's Sunday Times that first David Perry QC declared that Sir Christopher Evans' "diaries would be inadmissible as evidence in a court case, or at least face significant challenges to their admissibility. They were, he said, merely “hearsay” - because the alleged meetings and discussions were disputed by Levy." These are the diaries that previously had "according to Whitehall sources, contained numerous references to discussions and meetings about honours with Lord Levy, a key adviser to Blair." Hmmm Circumstantial, "However, one CPS source alleged this weekend: “The Evans diaries are dynamite. They should have been enough for a case against Evans.”"

The second hurdle that Mr Perry put in the way of a prosecution was (as I predicted ) following Private Eye's City Slicker was the burden of proof, again from today's Sunday Times "Perry declared that for a case to succeed, the prosecution would have to show evidence of an “unambiguous” agreement to bestow and honour in return for funding. “He suddenly raised the burden of proof,” said a Whitehall source. “It was the first time he had mentioned unambiguous.”"

The Sunday Times article has some more comments regarding Mr Perry, "According to a well placed insider, the stumbling block was Perry who, as well as giving specialist advice on whether charges should be brought, also advised on which charges would be likely to lead to any prosecution. As a lawyer who acted for the government over Iraq, Perry was not known for taking an aggressive line against the Establishment. In the end he decided the evidence was not strong enough. His arguments effectively destroyed Yates’s position in one blow. It exposed the simple fact that the police case was, to use the words of one of those involved, “circumstantial”. One official said: “What I would probably say is that he [Perry] is a perfectly decent guy, but he’s risk-averse.”"

It all seems most peculiar to me, questions are being asked on various web site forums as to who might have put pressure on the CPS and how. Guido Fawkes has started a campaign to get a private prosecution launched, you can sign up to that here. Guido also makes a telling point on his blog here when he describes part of the case "One example will give you a flavour of the Loans for Lordships scheme - Gulam Noon has publicly stated that he made a £250,000 donation to the Labour party, which he correctly submitted (via Downing Street) on his vetting papers for the House of Lords Appointments Commission. Two days later on October 5, 2005 Lord Levy, Gulam Noon reportedly claims, telephoned him and referred to the £250,000 donation as a "loan" which need not be disclosed on his vetting papers. The Levy-intercepted and revised vetting papers were submitted to the House of Lords Appointments Commission, now without mention of the £250,000 "loan" / donation. When the Commission independently discovered the existence of the "loan" / donation they blocked the peerage - as presumably Lord Levy knew they would - why else would he intervene in the process? What was the Labour party's chief fundraiser doing intervening in the honours process anyway? Prima facie there is a case to answer. If the CPS won't bring it, they should at least not attempt to block others from doing so." The problem as I see it is that a private prosecution can be killed stone dead as the "Attorney General could, at any time, rule a private prosecution to be not in the public interest ("nolle prosequi"). This terminates the proceedings and this power is not subject to judicial control or judicial review." Now do you really think that this Government would allow any private prosecution to take place if there is any chance of success? Obviously the Attorney General (Baroness Scotland) should not block a private prosecution as one of the Attorney General's departments roles is described on the Attorney General's website like this "The Attorney General and Solicitor General (the Law Officers) are the chief legal advisers to the Government and are responsible for all crown litigation." Does the phrase possible conflict of interest come to mind?

Also I wonder if this pledge that I found here on the Attorney General's web site may be relevant "The Prosecutors' Pledge - From 21 July 2006, all major public prosecuting authorities will follow a new pledge to take into account and protect the interests of victims. The Attorney General has set out a Prosecutor's Pledge which requires all prosecutors to consider and support the interests of victims at every point in the case from charge to appeal in all types of case. Each prosecuting agency has looked at the commitments of the Prosecutors' Pledge and adapted it to their areas of work." Nice timing to introduce this pledge whilst a case against the Prime Minister and some of his closest advisers was in full swing.

You can read the full text of the CPS press release here. You can read Carmen Dowd's explanation as head of the CPS special crime division as to why she "advised by a team of independent counsel, led by David Perry QC" decided not to prosecute. She explains that "The Director of Public Prosecutions played no part in the decision-making process. In his stead, Carmen Dowd consulted the Director's Principal Legal Advisor, Chris Newell." It is arrangements like this that irritate me intensely. It is akin to saying that 'we know that X might be perceived as being biased so we have discussed it with X's close colleague instead' as though this removes any likelihood of a partial decision.

Many events over the past six years have led me to believe that this country is being run more and more like a banana republic and this matter does not dispel this thought. The trouble is that I cannot see how we, the people, will see any change for the better happen.

Naughty Tony?

Almost a month ago, I blogged about how Tony Bliar allegedly escaped being interviewed under caution in January "the police wanted to interview Tony Blair under caution but backed down when Scotland Yard was informed by a political intermediary that Mr Blair would resign as Prime Minister if he was interviewed under caution." It now appears that Tony has been interviewed again and possibly by Inspector Yates himself, no news yet as to whether it was under caution.

Tony Blair and his threat to resign

This is just to remind people that back in January this year the police wanted to interview Tony Blair under caution but backed down when Scotland Yard was informed by a political intermediary that Mr Blair would resign as Prime Minister if he was interviewed under caution. You can read more about this here.

Apart from finding it despicable but entirely believable that Mr Bliar would try and escape the embarrassment of being interviewed under caution, I also felt that Scotland Yard should not have backed down. Tony Blair and his team have always made great play of the fact that Tony Blair has not been interviewed under caution and that he is only a witness not a suspect BBC report .

It is probably a bit late to interview Tony Blair before he hands over the role of Prime Minister to his bestest mate Gordon Brown. What concerns me is what new excuse Tony Blair will use to wriggle out of being interviewed under caution once he is no longer PM.