If you found yourself in the office of controversial Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, it’s said that just down the corridor is another room containing staff from a curious UK-based charity and company founded by none other than Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s National Security Adviser. Powell, the architect of the Chagos disaster and former Chief of Staff to Tony Blair, founded Inter Mediate in 2011. It still touts Powell on its website, despite the Blairite bag carrier having long-since moved back into government at the highest level as NSA…
The charity said on Powell’s appointment: “Jonathan has left a remarkable legacy that Inter Mediate will now take forward.” The organisation is funded by British taxpayers. As a recent parliamentary answer states:
“The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office funds a number of different civil society and non-governmental organisations for our mediation and conflict resolution work, including Inter Mediate. We have partnered with Inter Mediate for over 10 years to advance peace efforts in conflicts around the globe. Funding of Inter Mediate began under the previous government. We do not disclose details of the individual projects funded.”
The organisations’ entry on the Charity Commission register for the most recent financial year, however, states: “total income includes £887,553 from 3 government grant(s).” Odd that Labour would not provide a figure to parliament, then…
Powell is currently topping up his government experience working on the Ukraine and Chagos files. If he moves back to Inter Mediate, will Rayner’s ethics commission be taking a look?
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”