"And,
and then all of a sudden there you are, the British people, thinking:
'you're not listening' and I think: 'you're not hearing me'. And before
you know it you raise your voice. I raise mine. Some of you throw
a bit of crockery."
Their destinies
have been entwined ever since they were new MPs in short trousers.
At first they were inseparable, but then jealousy and ambition dragged them
apart.
This epic feud
forms the backdrop to the election campaign.
David
Blunkett, the home secretary, resigned on December 15th 2004, after it became
clear that his department had speeded up a visa application for the nanny
of his lover. Previously Blunkett had denied the allegation.
Blair appointed
his old friend Margaret Hodge to the new post of Minister for Children.
Hodge had been
the chief of Islington Council ). She had received numerous warnings
that the council's social services were in chaos. She was blind to the criticism,
seeing it as a challenge to the council's loony left social policy.
The problems
had included rampant child abuse, some of it by council employees.
An Australian conman helped Cherie Blair to negotiate the £500,000
purchase of two flats in Bristol. When confronted with the story by the
Daily Mail, the Number 10 press office denied it.
The conman,
Peter Foster, was the lover of Cherie’s lifestyle guru, former topless
model, Carole Caplin. He was fighting an immigration ruling barring him
entry to the UK because of his criminal conviction. Cherie, a top QC, spoke
to his solicitor in a conference call with Caplin.
Later, emails
were published between Cherie and Foster showing that the Number 10 denials
were untrue.
February
2002
Keith Vaz Suspended from Parliament.
New Labour's
Former Europe minister Keith Vaz was banned from the House of Commons for
one month. The Commons Standards and Privileges Committee said Vaz had shown
contempt for Parliament. Vaz was found to have given "misleading information"
about his financial links to the Hinduja brothers in the wake of the Second
Mandelson Scandal.
November
2001
The Lakshmi Mittal Affair
Britain's wealthiest
Asian made a £125,000 donation to New Labour. A month later, Tony
Blair wrote to Adrian Nastase, the Romanian Prime Minister to support Mitt
al’s bid against a rival French company for Eastern Europe's largest
steel maker.
October
2001
Geoffrey Robinson Suspended from Parliament
Former New
Labour Minister Geoffrey Robinson was suspended from the House of Commons
for three weeks.
The Standards
and Privileges Committee found that the millionaire former minister had
given ‘inadvertently incomplete answers’ when it had questioned
him about £200,000 he had received from the Old Labour supporter,
Robert Maxwell.
January
2001
The Second Mandelson Scandal (The Hinduja Affair)
It was revealed
that Peter Mandelson had phoned Home Office minister Mike O'Brien on behalf
of Srichanda Hinduja, an Indian businessman who was seeking British citizenship,
and whose family firm was to become the main sponsor of the Millennium Dome's
Faith Zone.
December
1998
The First Mandelson Scandal
It was revealed
that Peter Mandelson had bought a home in Notting Hill with an interest-free
indefinite loan of £373,000 from Geoffrey Robinson, a millionaire
Labour MP who was also in the government but was subject to an inquiry into
his business dealings by Mandelson's department. The loan had not been declared
by either MP.
BBC: The Mandelson File Guardian
- undone by a story that could not be spun
July
1998
Cash for Access
The
New Labour Groupies who had helped bring The Party to power were now being
rewarded.
The
Observer newspaper trapped GP Market Access, a lobby firm that boasted it
set up meetings for American businessmen with New Labour Ministers.
Derek 'Dolly' Draper, who previously worked for Peter Mandelson, had been
shooting his mouth off about his access to the top.
Draper
also boasted that he had leaked the Government's spending plans set out
in The Chancellor's Mansion House Speech.
(The Budget was also leaked that year as a New Labour snub to Parliament).
The
Scottish Parliament was hit by a lobby row over the roll of Kevin
Reid, (the son of New Labour's Glaswegian attack Dog, Dr. John Reid),
who worked for a lobby firm.
November
1997
The ‘pretty straight’ Bernie Ecclestone Affair
Just
after the election, New Labour announced that tobacco adverstising and sponsorship
for sports was to be banned.
In
November, a special exemption was made for Formula One motor racing. Entirely
coincidentally, Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone had donated £1
million to the Labour Party before the general election. It also emerged
that another £1 million quid was in the offering.
Ecclestone had met Blair personally at Number 10 on October 16 to press
for the exemption. He seemed to have gone 'pretty straight' to the
top man.
The revelations led to the notorious, 'I'm a pretty straight sort of guy'
quote from our PM.
Tony and Cherie had enjoyed VIP treatment at a the Silverstone Grand Prix,
but Blair had failed to declare it in the register of MPs' interests.
Three
years later it emerged that both Blair AND BROWN might not have been that
straight at all in their accounts of what really happened.
