|
|
Honour & New Labour
RECENT CASH-for-honours allegations, which go to the
top of Tony Blair’s ruling clique, underline the rank hypocrisy at the
rotten heart of New Labour. An editorial in The Guardian (15 April)
reckoned that a knighthood can be had for £10,000 and a peerage for
£50,000. One of the cornerstones of Blair’s election campaign in 1997
was attacking the previous Tory government’s long record of sleaze. But
the choking stench of cronyism pollutes the air over Westminster, as it
has always done.
Police began investigating after the House of Lords
appointments commission blocked four of Blair’s nominations for peerages
because they had made undisclosed loans to his party. No charges have
been made, but the first arrest came on 13 April when former government
adviser, Des Smith, was taken in for questioning, under the 1925 Honours
(Prevention of Abuses) Act. As a member of the Specialist Schools and
Academies Trust (SSAT), his job had been to find wealthy sponsors for
the ‘city academy programme’, which allows businesses to run schools, a
central plank of New Labour’s privatisation of education.
But Smith bungled. He was caught on tape by an
undercover reporter saying that people funding academies could expect
honours, and that cabinet minister, David Miliband, was worth
approaching for a knighthood. Miliband denied he had ever done such a
thing, while Smith ‘categorically denies’ the allegations against him.
As a result of the sting, however, Smith resigned from the SSAT in
January.
Other examples of the incestuous relationship
between big business and Blair’s regime have been unearthed. For
instance, Weber Shandwick, a lobbying and PR firm, is being paid £2.5
million over two years by the Department for Education to promote
academies to companies. It introduces prospective ‘investors’ to Lord
Adonis, junior education minister, the architect of the academy scheme.
The PR firm, whose chief executive, Colin Byrne, used to run New
Labour’s press office, also acts as lobbyists for Coca-Cola, Nestlé,
Microsoft and Lockheed Martin, the US arms manufacturer. (The Observer,
23 April)
So, a company which lobbies politicians on behalf of
major multinationals is hired by Downing Street to drum up financial
backing for one of the government’s flagship policies. This is not
against the law. It is, however, very cosy. It reflects New Labour’s
market culture: it’s a capitalist party, absolutely.
Property developer, Sir David Garrard, and
stockbroker, Barry Townsley, two of the four blocked nominees, put £2.4
million and £1.5 million respectively into London academies. Another
millionaire, Chai Patel, had been nominated for a peerage after donating
£100,000 to New Labour and making a secret loan of £1.5 million.
On 12 July, Lord Levy (aka ‘Lord Cashpoint’) was
arrested and questioned under the 1925 act, and the Political Parties,
Elections and Referendums Act 2000. He is now out on police bail. The
well-connected Michael Levy joined Blair’s circle in 1994. In the run up
to the 1997 election, he set up a trust fund to finance Blair’s private
office. Once the election was in the bag, Michael was given a peerage,
becoming Lord Levy. As well as being Blair’s Middle East envoy, he was
president of the SSAT.
Lord Cashpoint brokered £14 million in secret loans
to New Labour in the run up to the 2005 election. It is alleged that
Levy told Sir Gulam Noon to rewrite an application for a peerage to
remove any reference to the £250,000 he had lent the party. The question
haunting Blair and his inner circle is how high up the greasy pole the
police investigation will reach.
Science minister, Lord Sainsbury, and Ian McCartney,
former New Labour chairman, were among the 48 (Labour and Tory)
questioned. Billionaire Sainsbury is New Labour’s biggest donor, giving
£6.5 million from 2002-05 and more than £10 million since 1999. He was
made a life peer just after New Labour’s victory in 1997, and became a
minister in 1998. In April this year he publicly apologised for not
disclosing an additional £2 million loan, but only after he had said
that he had disclosed it.
The 1925 act makes it illegal to reward with a
"title of honour" anyone who has given "any gift, money or valuable
consideration". The New Labour government changed the rules so that
donations to political parties over £5,000 have to be declared. Loans do
not if they are made at commercial rates of interest. They can then be
regarded as business transactions rather than gifts. According to The
Observer (16 July), "… senior Labour figures always knew that many of
the loans they received from millionaire backers would be converted to
donations in the future". In essence, that is what is being
investigated: were these loans or were they donations in disguise, and
who knew about it.
All the establishment parties have been exploiting
this loophole. In fact, Tory leader, David Cameron, refused to give
police the names of lenders on the grounds of commercial
confidentiality. The Tories have admitted that they got £16 million from
13 backers, the Liberal Democrats admit to £850,000.
At times, the scandal has uncovered some surreal,
murky, even macabre, dealings: "Mr McCartney, the minister for trade, is
a former party chairman who signed papers nominating three of Labour’s
lenders for peerages while he recovered from a triple heart bypass in
hospital. Claims that Mr McCartney was pressured to sign the documents
when he was seriously ill have been strongly denied by the deputy prime
minister, John Prescott". (Guardian Unlimited, 14 July)
Prescott has been criticised for failing to declare
gifts he received at the ranch of Philip Anschutz, the US billionaire
owner of the Millennium Dome in London. Anschutz wants to turn the dome
into a giant casino. Prescott says that this is irrelevant because he is
not involved in granting gambling licences. Although many fruitless
hours could be spent trying to work out exactly what he does, Prescott
is the deputy prime minister, a position which, it must be assumed,
carries some influence in government circles.
To the capitalist ruling class, sleaze and
corruption scandals can pose the danger of undermining support for the
political establishment, which is already at an all-time low. They help
to expose the true nature of the state: the superficial democracy hiding
systemic corruption and exploitation. The extreme arrogance of the Blair
regime, its anti-working class policies, and its belligerent, pro-US
foreign policy, have exacerbated this process – illustrated by the fact
that Labour won the election with the smallest proportion of the popular
vote ever recorded.
The cash-for-honours scandal has also revived calls
for the state funding of political parties. Working-class people should
not have to fund hostile political parties through taxation. And
workers’ organisations have to defend the right to fund campaigns and
parties which represent their interests. Over 100 years ago, the trade
unions were instrumental in setting up the Labour Party as their
independent voice in parliament.
The political bankruptcy of New Labour means that
unions should help develop a new, independent political organisation of
the working class by supporting socialists and those campaigning against
cutbacks in local and national elections. They should back initiatives
such as the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, including financially.
They should not be giving money – paid for by the subs of rank-and-file
union members – to a government which is sacking their members through
privatising and cutting public services, which has maintained the
repressive anti-union laws introduced by a series of Tory governments,
and which is tied to the purse strings of big business.
Manny Thain
|