New Labour corruption comes full circle
‘Revealed: Labour’s cash for influence scandal,’ says the headline of the Sunday Times. And you think to yourself, ‘what, another one?’ The history of New Labour in government began with middlemen taking cash to introduce big business to cabinet ministers. It’s ending in the same squalid and grubby way.
‘Influence-peddling’ is the quaint euphemism given to this practice. ‘Greedy, grabbing, mediocre and self-fellating little shits circumventing the democratic process by chasing a sense of importance’ is the technical name for it. The first ‘Lobbygate‘ scandal back in 1998 featured none other than ‘Smeargate‘ star Derek Draper. That one of the last scandals of the New Labour years features three of its stalwarts – Byers, Hoon and Hewitt – is utterly fitting.
It’s difficult to believe this way of doing business ever went away in the 12 years between Draper’s adolescent ‘there are 17 people who count, and to say I am intimate with every one of them is the understatement of the century’ bragging to an undercover reporter and Byer’s bizarre ‘I’m a bit like a sort of cab for hire’ description of himself in an identical sting.
Corruption’s been a by-word of the New Labour project – the infatuation with money and those who have it. The stink has hung over nearly everything. Defenders say at least we’re not as bad as some countries they could name, as if being corrupt but less corrupt than bastards is somehow morally defensible. The signal goes out that voters can go swing. The electorate’s needs and wishes are subservient to companies and corporations happy to throw a few grand at Stephen Byers.
Stephen bloody Byers! He’s the man who resigned as a minister, denying he’d misled Parliament and then went on to admit he’d misled Parliament although he couldn’t ‘remember the motives behind it‘. Is he mendacious or simply mentally defective? It makes one wonder why companies would trust him with their lobbying. They could him give five grand only for it to slip his mind and him deny them ever meeting. Companies should take a tip from The Times and video the slippery little bastard.
To be fair, Labour have responded early to these degenerate vultures feathering their tatty nests. It’s still early but the Tories are quiet so far. They’re no doubt frantically checking what their own people are up to before commenting. One would imagine, with the possibility of an election win, they have their own problem with greedy, grabbing, mediocre and self-fellating little shits to handle.
Update 1.30pm: This just gets better. In order to try and get his sorry skin off the hook, Byers offers the defence that he’s a liar and a fantasist. The sad little pillock then goes on to call the Times sting a ‘massive deception’. What a guy.
Posted on March 21st, 2010 at 10:37am under New Labour, Sleaze
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Must be one of the country’s biggest pricks!
in the middle of the financial crisis, The Daily Telegraph slowly fed the information about the hundreds of pounds (sometimes thousands) which MPs had been advised by the Parliamentary Office were legitimate to claim. I don’t generally believe in conspiracies – but it seemed fairly obvius that financial interests were doing theior damnest to make sure that the capacity of the political system to regulate them was undermined. And now – a few weeks away from an election – is it not obvious that financial interests are at work again?
It’s so easy to find dirt in the political system – of course a few individuals amongst 625 (far too many!) are going to mouth off or make false claims. The corruption of the EU Parliamentary system is far greater than the UK We should be very careful about this mud-slinging.
[...] MILLIONS of us right? Must be at least a few that are hacked off with all this corruption. So why don’t we all throw a quid in the pot until we’ve got a couple of grand and then [...]
So, Roland Young: do you think that, if it hadn’t been for the Telegraph’s story about MPs’ expenses, the House of Commons would have been buzzing last year to the sound of MPs working on a solution to the financial crisis? Until evidence to the contrary emerges, I will stick with the more obvious explanataion that MPs were too busy counting their duck houses to notice that a financial crisis was looming.
[...] As Justin points out, influence peddling was always part of the New Labour project. It follows rationally enough. The whole thing was supposed to be post ideological, which means in practice that you spend your time managing, choosing between and sometimes working for projects proposed by competing interest groups. At first, the public pays you in your capacity as minister. Then the taxi meter starts, as Byers pointed out. [...]