Ruth Turner was personally appointed by Tony Blair as his Special Adviser for Government Relations working out of Downing Street. An odd job title you might think, a SpAd liaison officer? Liaising with whom?Well if you go back into the dark New Labour past of Ms Turner (and in places it is a little murky) you will see she was a leading light on the commission of the New Local Government Network the vanguard Blairite New Labour front organisation for “innovation and modernisation in local government”, trans. privatisation and outsourcing.
No fringe ginger group this, endorsed by Blair himself, it is a slick well funded operation backed by generous corporate supporters of local democracy – who just happen to coincidentally depend for their profits on local government contracts.
The NLGN’s outsourcing contractor sponsors:
Ben Lucas of dodgy spin merchants LLM Communications (remember in 1998 they notoriously got an advance copy of one of Gordon Brown’s speeches for a client) is another leading light and trustee of the Network. Coincidentally his top clients include Capita. Through Jon Mendlesohn LLM also has a close association with with the Sleaze-Master General himself, Lord Levy. Mendlesohn is a former Blair adviser on business relations who handled Blair’s business links in the early New Labour days. He boasts that LLM is the conduit between business and New Labour and retains links with Jonathon Powell, the chief-of-staff at 10 Downing Street.
to be continued…
