“We are looking for outstanding individuals to undertake a 3 month internship to support our London team, which sets strategic direction for the projects overall, focuses on fundraising for the development and expansion of AGI, and provides logistical support to the teams. The ideal candidate would have excellent academic credentials with a proven administrative and numerical ability. Prior experience in an office environment will be an advantage.”

Sounds like an incredible opportunity, but what’s the catch?

“The internship is not paid, however you will be reimbursed for your lunch and travel expenses.”

The continuing mystery of his £8 million of “administrative expenses” obviously does not include intern pay. Guido isn’t too sure where this fits in on Tony’s “poverty-reduction agenda”…

Via @SaneLynch

Much to SamCam’s distress, Dave was forced cancel his Christmas holiday to Thailand in 2010. He was meant to have been the guest of fellow old Etonian, and then Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. However the little matter of a coup d’etat and the shooting of dozens of peace protesters made the trip a little tricky. Since July, Abhisit has been in opposition and is under investigation by the Thai Department of Special Investigations for over ninety deaths. That’s wasn’t enough to put one British leader off from pressing the flesh yesterday though:

Our Tone always pops up in the most interesting of places. Where next… Syria?

The Blairs’ former new age guru and shower sharer has won damages from the Mail.*

She kept repeating on the telly a moment ago that she was “nearly fifty”….

She could have fooled Guido…

*She never sued over her topless photos in The Sun.

Lakshmi Mittal the billionaire Tony crony who, after Prime Minister Blair lobbied on his behalf with the Romanian government, gave the Labour Party £4 million, has extensive interests in the region. Mittal employs 100,000 Kazakhs in local mines where an average of 30 miners a year die working for him. The Mail reports that a whole gang of Tony’s cronies are circling around the resource rich state; Mandelson’s friend Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch, London-based Israeli Alexander Mashkevich an associate of Lord Levy, Lord Renwick of investment bankers JP Morgan – £2 million-a-year paymasters to Blair – coincidentally all attended an investors meeting addressed by Blair. Even Alastair Campbell is proffering advice on spin to the Kazakhs.

Blair says he isn’t making any moolah from the Kazakhs, yet he is opening an office. Presumably the £2 million a year from JP Morgan is for Blair to open high level doors to opportunities. So Blair is technically not lying, just being disingenuous…

“Diplomatic sources revealed today that the Quartet Committee intends to appoint a new peace envoy in the Middle East after receiving a Palestinian request to change the current envoy Tony Blair; the Palestinian request threatened that the Palestinian side will not accept any sponsorship by the Quartet Committee in the negotiations with Israel in case Blair remains in his position because of his ‘clear bias towards the Israeli side at the expense of the Palestinians’…”

Anyone seen Gordon recently? 

“The journalist who conducted the interview for Vogue is said to move in the same circles as the Murdochs in New York. While Mrs Murdoch does not comment on Mr Blair directly, the article states that Miss Kidman, Mr Jackman and Mr Blair are godparents. It claims that Mr Blair attended the Jordanian ceremony “garbed in white” and describes him as one of Mrs Murdoch’s “closest friends”.They have a mutual friend in Queen Rania of Jordan, who hosted the baptism.”

He’ll be creeping up to the Gaddafi family next…

In September 2009 Gordon Brown told the Andrew Marr Show “there was no deal” to have the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi released early on compassionate grounds. Two years later the convicted terrorist was seen cheering on Gaddafi from the comfort of sunny Tripoli. “So if you’re suggesting there was any deal, there was no deal. There was no conspiracy, there was no attempt to make anything conditional on anything else” Brown promised. The line was pushed the next day by Ed Balls, when he told the Today program“none of us wanted to see the release of al-Megrahi.” However we know now that this is just not true…

Far from it in fact. A Cabinet Office report in July 2010 revealed that the Labour government did “all they could” to get Megrahi released. And it wasn’t just the Cabinet Office blowing Gordon’s line out of the water. Guido brought you leaked emails from former Blair adviser John McTernan that explicitly mentioned a deal. Jack Straw let slip that British trade had been a major factor in the release. As Guido reported back in February, the Scottish nationalists tried to line their pockets too.

“Scot’s justice was bought and the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s price was £100 million. The Labour government in Westminster brought forward legislation to get the SNP government in Scotland off the Somerville judgement hook in June 2009, two months later Megrahi was released.”

Far from Gordon’s line that the decision was made in Scotland and that he couldn’t of possibly have had anything to do with it, a dirty deal was concocted at the heart of the British government. It involved Downing Street, the British intelligence services and BP. In September 2009 Guido brought you the players:

“Nick Butler is the Economic Adviser brought into Downing Street when Gordon became Prime Minister.  Prior to that he was a senior strategist for BP. He joined the firm in 1977 and helped to develop close links between BP and New Labour in the 1990s. 

Incidentally Butler is a mate of Peter Mandelson who has also been treasurer of the Fabian Society for more than 25 years. He helped to bring close to half-a-million into Brown’s coffers from his city chums.

“Sir Mark Allen is a Special Adviser to BP. Before that he was the senior MI6 officer who negotiated with Saif Gaddafi to end Libya’s international isolation in 2003-04…”

It was these two men, one ex-BP then at the heart of government, the other  ex-MI6 and then at the heart of BP, who conspired to give Gaddafi what he wanted for access to Libya’s oil. Less than twenty-four hours after Guido revealed the cast more details began trickling out. Allen had called Jack Straw twice in November 2007 to put pressure on him for a deal. Despite initial denials, BP also coughed that they had lobbied the government over the slow progress of the deal, highlighting that there would be “negative consequences for UK commercial interests”. And what was Peter Mandelson’s disingenuous take on these allegations? “It’s not only completely wrong to make such a suggestion it’s also quite offensive…”

No doubt Mandy had plenty of time to make up his mind as to what is offensive whilst he spent a shooting weekend with Gadaffi’s son and Nat Rothschild. A tight and close gruesome threesome. There is no denying the closeness of the upper echelons of the last government to the murderers currently being hounded out of Tripoli. Just last year Gaddafi was asking the Libyan people to “pray for Gordon Brown”, but it’s the hand of Gaddafi’s “good friend” Tony Blair which is never far away. The deal was concocted on Tony’s watch and he even approved the training of Gaddafi’s special forces by the SAS. So close were they that it was Blair that Gaddafi phoned to seek advice on how to deal with the uprisings. Mandelson was keen to help out too – speaking of Saif Gadaffi’s chilling threats to slaughter the rebels, Mandy thinks he could have spun it better:

 ‘I’d rather have had a couple of minutes with him beforehand to say that you know this sort of performance in a very clumsy and ham-fisted way is not going to get you anywhere.’

Even Douglas Alexander, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary who was so keen to talk down the threat of No-Fly Zone, took to the airwaves to claim Blair was right to make friends with Gadaffi, even after he had begun slaughtering his own people. With such a shameful past you would think the “next generation” of the Labour Party might have been more careful to keep their distance from the Mad Dog of the desert. But no…

As the crisis kicked off in February Guido brought you the Miliband family’s own connections to Saif Gaddafi. LSE Professor David Held, who is seemingly in charge of desecrating Ralph Miliband’s memory, welcomed Saif to LSE as a “representative of the Miliband program” - a series of lectures in memory the Labour leader’s father. Held failed to mention the £300,000 he had taken off Gaddafi in his sycophantic introduction. Showing his trademark judgement, it turns out Ed is a very big fan of Professor Held.

Yesterday Guido highlighted the involvement of former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Macdonald and the former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith in the phone-hacking scandal. It obviously hit a sore spot with the latter. Goldsmith’s spokesman emailed Guido: