Peter Hain’s trip to open a school in Sierra Leone last week seems to have gone well: he managed to land yet another job along the way. He’s just been appointed as a non-executive director at Amara, a major mining company that has subsidiaries in Burkina Faso, Mali and the Ivory Coast. Sounds like a nice little earner…
Peter Hain has spent the morning rubbing salt into Tory boundary wounds, openly gloating about a potential 11% handicap facing Tories hoping for a majority. Evidently having too much time on his hands as a mere MP, Peter Hain has just become a partner in his wife’s political PR firm. Back in 2010 Elizabeth Haywood described being the politician’s wife to the Guardian:
“Your job is open to comment, and certain roles may be off-limits (for example, I would have found it very difficult to continue in my old job as a lobbyist) or will create adverse comment.”
A politician’s wife being a lobbyist is off limits, eh? Funny then that Elizabeth’s bio on the Haywood Hain website boasts of her ability to influence ministers: “Dr Elizabeth Haywood is well versed in public affairs, media and government. She has lobbied Ministers and appeared on peak-time TV and radio”. How she might have done that Guido can only guess…
Guido is a getting a bit worried about Peter Hain. Yesterday the former Labour minister was lounging by the pool in sunny Spain and decided to pick a fight. Today he came back for more, which is never a good idea. There is not room for the whole conversation here, but this is a flavour:
So let's see if @GuidoFawkes is still on the sauce again today as he was so paralytic yesterday
— Peter Hain (@PeterHain) August 7, 2012
Liar. @PeterHain
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) August 7, 2012
Like all bullies @GuidoFawkes doesn't like it when people stand up to him.
— Peter Hain (@PeterHain) August 7, 2012
When I got you sacked from the cabinet @PeterHain it wasn't bullying, it was reporting the facts. It clearly still stings.
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) August 7, 2012
. @GuidoFawkes used to be influential blog now just propaganda for tired and discredited government
— Peter Hain (@PeterHain) August 7, 2012
.@PeterHain Only one of us is a tired, old propagandist. Blog forced resignation of a Conservative politician in Wandsworth yesterday. QED
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) August 7, 2012
Asked by District Judge Timothy Stone whether he had an alcohol problem, @GuidoFawkes said: "Possibly."
— Peter Hain (@PeterHain) August 7, 2012
Lest we forget how the @PeterHain v Guido spat ended http://t.co/mQgEpv86
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) August 7, 2012
The sun must have gone to his head…
Something in the Commons water this week? Hain and Gove on verge of coming to blows behind speakers chair.
— Eye Spy MP (@eyespymp) July 11, 2012
Fight! Peter Hain tells Gove "grow up". Mickey juts out jaw, waves and shouts it's Ed Mili's fault. Kicking off behind Speaker's chair #pmqs
— Kevin Maguire (@Kevin_Maguire) July 11, 2012
Gove and I not near coming to blows – he was screaming like a demented school child but calmed down after I told him to grow up @eyespymp
— Peter Hain (@PeterHain) July 11, 2012
Guido has always found that Peter Hain’s side of the story is never spun…
https://twitter.com/#!/jimmurphymp/status/202087063791734784
Terrible day. The horse was innocent.
Guido hasn’t read Hain’s “Outside In“ memoir yet, though his interview in the Observer suggests that it should, to a extent generous even by the standards of political memoirs, be filed under fiction. On having to resign after being exposed for over-spending an undeclared £100,000 under-the-counter on his Labour Party deputy leadership campaign he pleads
“It was about an honest mistake and a disorganised end to the campaign and when I found out about it I told everyone. It’s quite possible that nobody would ever have found out if I hadn’t done that. And a lot of thanks I got for it.”
Not true, Hain only went to the police about it after details were published on this blog and on the front page of the Guardian. Decca Aitkenhead says in the interview that for Hain “the subject is still terribly raw”. No doubt it is, that is still no excuse for falsifying the facts.
