Ah, the wonderful private sector
In ‘Blair anti-corruption plan weakened by British firms’ in The Independent 2 September 2002, Geoffrey Lean reported:
‘Britain has the world’s most corrupt companies, and some of the weakest legislation among industrialised countries for dealing with them….Half of the 70 companies identified by the World Bank as so corrupt that it has decided never to do business with them are based in Britain.’
Lean commented: ‘The revelation undermines a voluntary initiative to tackle corruption to be unveiled by Tony Blair in Johannesburg today as one of his main contributions to the [earth] summit.’
Mandy finds a new benefactor
In The Times of 10 June 2002 was ‘Clinton helps Third Way find new direction’, describing a weekend conference, ‘The Third Way Successor Generation’, jointly promoted by Peter Mandelson’s Policy Network and the American Democratic Leadership council. Among those attending were, from the government: Tony Blair, Patricia Hewitt, Alan Milburn, Charles Clarke, Ruth Kelly, Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband; and Downing Street advisors including Andrew Adonis and Geoff Mulgan. The conference, the Times told us, was held in ‘the Elizabethan splendour of Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire’.
In The Sunday Times of 22 September 2002, ‘Rothschild bankrolls Mandelson think tank’, we learned that Mandelson’s Policy Network is being funded by Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, the multi-millionaire banker, apparently to the tune of £250,00 – small change to Rothschild whose personal fortune, The Sunday Times told us, is estimated at around £500 million. The donation was apparently the work of Rothschild’s wife Lynn Forester, a friend of Bill Clinton and part of ‘New York’s Democratic Party elite’.
The article also told us that the June conference referred to above had been held not in in ‘the Elizabethan splendour of Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire’, as per June Times report, but at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire, and ‘in the evening, the gathering moved to Ascott House, de Rothschild’s home in Buckinghamshire, for a seated banquet for 100’.
Just imagine how this Clinton-Mandelson-Rothschild link is going to be treated by certain American conspiracy theorists!
Lobbying news
The Labour government’s bizarre decision to follow America down the casinos-are-good-for-you route (See Lobster 43 p. 33) was the result of lobbying by a firm called Good Relations whose members include David Hill, some time Labour chief press officer, Penny Chobham, the partner of former Tory cabinet minister David Mellor, who chairs the British Casino Association, and the son of Lord Bernard Donoghue, Steve. (‘Labour’s big gamble on casino deals’, The Guardian 10 August 2002)
Joe Irvin, the government’s top transport adviser, left to join to Freedom to Fly, a lobby group funded by the British Airports Authority and British Airways. By one of those extraordinary coincidences, some months later government plans to expand runways and airports were announced. Irvin ‘refused to reveal details of any meetings he has had with Ministers or officials since leaving the government in 2001’. Baroness Jay, former Labour Leader in the Lords, is now an adviser to Amey, one of the companies with their snouts in the PFI trough. (The Observer 28 July 2002)
Andrew Bennet, senior civil servant at the Department for International Development has joined Syngenta, the second largest GM food manufacturer. A spokesman for Syngenta stated, with a straight face: ‘[Mr Bennett] will play a key role in framing and implementing Syngenta’s commitment to improving the livelihood of poor farmers.’ (Guardian 14 September 2002.) Presumably by persuading them to buy GM products made by his new employer.
New Labour and Israel
In Lobster 43, p. 9, I referred to Tony Blair’s membership of the Labour Friends of Israel. That body was the subject of ‘Byers plots a comeback with pro-Israel pressure group’ by The Times‘, Political Editor, David Cracknell, which included the following:
‘Stephen Byers is bidding to make an early political comeback just two months after quitting the government. The former transport secretary is the front runner to take over the chairmanship of the influential Labour Friends of Israel pressure group. The body is one of the most prestigious groupings in the party and is seen as a stepping stone to ministerial ranks for Labour MPs. Several recent incumbents have been backbenchers who have gone on to be appointed to government…..Tony Blair consults members of the Friends of Israel over Middle East policy and Byers would have the opportunity to regain access to Downing Street on a vital area of policy without attracting unwelcome headlines.’ (1)
In ‘Tony Blair, New Labour trumpet boy!’, Diane Langford of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, added the following information on LFI. (2)
- The Director of Labour Friends of Israel is David Mercer, former research assistant and electoral agent for Gwyneth Dunwoody, ‘life president’ of LFI.
- The parliamentary register of Members’ interests shows that recent visitors who have had flights and accommodation paid by Labour Friends of Israel include Ivor Caplin, Paul Clark, Oona King, Ashok Kumar, Ivan Lewis, Anne McGuire, Rosemary McKenna, Margaret Moran, former LFI Chair Jim Murphy, Sandra Osborne, Gareth Thomas, Frank Roy, Joan Ryan, Angela Smith, Graham Stringer, Rudi Vis, David Watts, Gillian Merron, Peter Pike, Lorna Fitzsimons, Louise Ellman, Caroline Flint, Linda Perham, Douglas Alexander, Fabian Hamilton, Anthony Colman, LFI former Chair Stephen Twigg, LFI Vice Chair Mike Gapes, and Dan Norris.
Ivan Lewis, in the list above, was PPS to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Stephen Byers MP.(3)
- Since 1997 57 Labour MPs have visited Israel, mostly with the Labour Friends of Israel.
- There have been 34 official trade missions to Israel from the UK since 1997. The BRITECH agreement signed by Trade Secretary Stephen Byers means there is now a £15.5 million joint fund to encourage co-operation between British and Israeli hi-tech industries in research and development for their own benefit.
In the event the puff for Byers in The Times came to naught. The new chair of Labour Friends of Israel is the MP James Purple.
Banking on the City
Ruth Kelly MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, used to be a financial journalist at The Guardian. In a piece in Financial News (20-26 May 2002), ‘Keeping London open and fair’, Kelly stated, with apparent approval:
‘Return on capital in the UK banking system is now the highest in the world at 26%. The contribution of the banking industry to GDP has grown enormously over the past decade – now at 3.6% – and the number of people in the City is up to 445,000.’
Add the 445,00 figure to the cascade of conflicting figures produced over the past two decades on employment in the City – which is much wider than ‘the banking industry’ – and focus on (a) a Labour minister boasting of UK banks having the world’s highest return on capital and (b) the fact that the banking ‘industry’ only contributes 3.6% to the GDP. For 3.6% of GDP they are allowed to run Britain’s economic policy in their own interests – hence returns of 26%. There was a time when Ruth Kelly seemed to understand all this.
Mea Culpas
There was a sudden change of tone, if not policy, earlier in the year as the new Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, Patricia Hewitt,(4) repeatedly stated the government’s new admiration for the manufacturing sector. All the emphases in what follows have been added.
‘In our first term we quite inadvertently gave the impression that British manufacturing did not matter to us. We never set out to downgrade manufacturing, but in part because of all the dotcom hype we gave the impression that manufacturing was not a priority.'(The Guardian 16 May 2002)
She said it again on 16 June in a profile of her in The Observer (Business):
‘The perception had grown in the first term that we did not care about manufacturing and traditional industry and that it was being replaced by the new economy’.
And again in the Daily Telegraph, 6 August 2002:
‘We let the impression build up in our first four years that we were interested in something called “the new economy” and we weren’t interested in manufacturing. We have to think of manufacturing as an integral part of the future.’
This sudden interest in manufacturing curiously coincided with manufacturing output falling to levels not seen since 1979 – and the implosion of the dotcom bubble.
The report in The Guardian (16 May) included her astonishing admission:
‘…..the great texts of the dotcom economy, Living on Thin Air and The Weightless Economy ….informed the DTI’s white paper on the knowledge economy.’
Great texts, eh? Has she read them? In other words, the DTI had bought the whole dotcom hype.
In her May pronouncement she demonstrated her ignorance or confusion by stating on the one hand that ‘the exchange rate with the euro has been very, very difficult and has been since 1996’ and ‘the exchange rate is a real factor’; but on the other hand that, ‘if we do not get the investment, the research and development, the skills, then nothing that happens to the exchange rate will make a real difference to our levels of output and productivity.’ If a lower exchange rate has no effect, how can it be ‘a real factor’? What Hewitt means but cannot say is that while a lower exchange rate would benefit manufacturing, since a lower exchange rate is not going to be forthcoming from Gordon Brown, British manufacturing is going to have to survive by improving its productivity. Like all Ministers at the DTI, Hewitt is essentially powerless against the chancellor of the exchequer; and this one has no interest in manufacturing and believes that it is doomed to shrink (as is farming, fishing and mining).
The inexorable logic of globalisation is that companies compete by moving where costs are lowest. When Black and Decker moves a plant from Northumberland to the Czech Republic, or Doc Marten’s move to China, where wages are lower, for Chancellor Brown this may be a source of regret but not a surprise. In any case, he believes the market will create new jobs for the people made unemployed by these relocations:
‘…exposing industry to yet more competition was the only way to generate the jobs and wealth need to create better public services’. (‘Brown embraces global market’, The Guardian 29 March 2002.)
We have been warned.
Notes
1 See also < http://inminds.co.uk/boycott-news-0326.html > for comment from within the UK’s Jewish community on the Times’ story on Byers.
2 < http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/dlangford.htm >
3 See Lewis’s Website < http://www.prestwich.org.uk/mp/ivanlewismp.htm >
4 Patricia Hewitt was Director of Research for Andersen Consulting – yes, that Andersen – before becoming a member of the 1997 Labour government. On this see the invaluable piece by Paul Foot, one of the best things he has done, on the Net at < http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n21/foot01_html >