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?
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…
This is taken from the Labour party email sent immediately after Gordon sat down. Puke making isn’t it?
Now the whispered briefings begin, and as with everything nowadays in the Labour party it has to be seen through the prism of the Blair/Brown struggle. The Guardian’s Diary has a planted story from the Blairites putting the blame on the Labour party’s former General Secretary, Matt Carter and Jane Hogarth, Head of Labour’s Corporate Relations and Fundraising. Complete bollocks which tries to spin the blame as far away from Number 10 as possible. Downing Street’s David Levy and Tony Blair are ultimately responsible. Ruth Turner and John McTernan have supporting roles. The police will no doubt want to talk, with good reason, to Number 10 chief of staff Jonathan Powell as well.
It gets better, donors deprived of any real prospect of gongs are now planning to call in their loans. Labour will be some £6m short of cash without the ability to tap into any obvious vein of venality going forward. The union brothers are not going to bail Blair out, nor Brown as he needs to stand tough on public sector pay so as not to scare the voters. So selling the old HQ is a real prospect unless Lord Sainsbury wants to step in again.
UPDATE : Just noticed a dreadful piece by the Guardian’s political editor – it gives a new meaning to the term “whitewash”. The covert funding programme is because of what that pantomime villain the Daily Mail might say about those nice respectable and generous multi-millionaires. Sir Michael White anyone?
“Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime” is what the voters were promised by the man who would be “whiter than white”. How hollow Blair’s words all sound a decade later.However, Offences under the 1889 & 1906 Act require the consent of the Attorney General. Guido forsees a snag here. Lord Peter Goldsmith, the Attorney General, was made a Life Peer by Blair in 1999.
