Posts Tagged ‘scandal’

Ian Lavery should not be Labour’s Elections Coordinator. Or anything coordinator, with his toxic past

17/02/2017, 02:00:50 PM

by Rob Marchant

Since Jeremy Corybn’s rise to prominence, there has been a seemingly never-ending succession of skeletons pulled out of the closets of senior Corbynites, to the delight of Tory press officers everywhere.

There was the relationships of Corbyn himself with Holocaust denier Paul Eisen, and with Hamas terrorists; John McDonnell’s outspoken pro-IRA stance; the support of a motion supporting denial of the Kosovo genocide by both; the suspension and reinstatement of MP Naz Shah over anti-Semitic remarks; the suspension of Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker over the same; the well-known Stalin apologism of Corbynites Seumas Milne and Andrew Murray; and so on. Doubtless the Tories are currently holding fire on a number of the more juicy ones, keeping their powder dry for 2020.

But the connecting thread between all these embarrassments has been clear: no matter how senseless or unsavoury, they have all been essentially connected, in the minds of the perpetrators at least, to political positions.

For example, the connections with anti-Semites are always justified on the grounds that the people in question are merely anti-Israel (of course!) The IRA connection? Because they were romantic freedom-fighters, naturally, who happened to kill people. And the Stalin connection because, well, Communism wasn’t all bad, was it? However dire the story, there was always some kind of contorted political justification which allowed the people involved to continue to look at themselves in the mirror the following morning.

In contrast, this was clearly not the case with Ian Lavery. Lavery is Corbyn’s new Elections Coordinator and the man in charge of every set of elections, we presume, from now until Labour is inevitably decimated in 2020.

Until now he has been in relatively low-profile roles, such as Shadow Minister for Trade Unions and Civil Society, and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office. No, with Lavery the story was not political: it was about his questionable behaviour on a matter of simple personal ethics.

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If NI was Westminster, Arlene Foster would already be a political corpse

20/12/2016, 05:23:30 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Northern Ireland is a place apart, we all know that much. Normal rules don’t apply. Things are done differently. Political gravity, as we understand it, doesn’t hold.

Or perhaps it didn’t. If there was any justice, the phrase ‘First Minister Arlene Foster’ would already be written in the past tense. The scandal Mrs Foster finds herself embroiled in – the fallout from the anodyne-sounding Renewable Heat Incentive – is a proper Grade A political scandal.

If this was Westminster, she would be politically dead and buried.

The Renewable Heat Incentive, launched in 2012 while Foster was enterprise minister, was a cut-down version of British scheme to subsidise non-domestic customers – farms and businesses – in switching to wooden pellet-burning biomass boilers instead of oil.

The fairly elementary flaw in Northern Ireland’s version was a lack of cost controls. As the Auditor General succinctly put it, there was ‘no upper limit on the amount of energy that would be paid for. The more heat that is generated, the more is paid.’

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John Whittingdale, allegations of a relationship with a dominatrix and Leveson. What on earth is going on?

02/04/2016, 10:45:16 PM

John Whittingdale has apparently not decided whether or not to issue a ‘commencement order’, which is a formality within the provision of the Crime and Courts Act.

The Act will allow judges to impose costs on newspapers who force plaintiffs to go through expensive court actions because they have not signed up to a recognized independent regulator providing a low cost arbitration service.

Many acts of parliament require commencement orders to bring them into force, just to give the bureaucracy a chance to prepare. Parliament passed the act, with cross-party support, and it did not intend for the Secretary of State to be given the authority to unilaterally repeal it.

Whittingdale apparently mutters something about how Parliament and Leveson had envisaged a situation where one or two newspapers were resisting joining a recognized regulator, rather than where all of the major newspapers have refused point blank.

Whatever Leveson intended, it surely wasn’t the situation we are in now.

Whittingdale not only has to decide the future of the BBC, but also has his finger hovering over a button that newspapers desperately do not want him to press.

The whole argument of those who opposed Leveson’s reforms, an argument that Leveson himself carefully tried to address and design his system around, was that they did not want the government to have the power to interfere in the freedom of the press.

And yet here Whittingdale is claiming that he is hesitating because he himself is worried about that very thing, while he knows that the press must be careful not to upset him in case he decides to push his button.

Meanwhile rumours abound that the papers have some lurid scandal up their sleeve and are holding him to ransom.

This story on Byline.com on the culture secretary, with allegations of a relationship with a dominatrix, has been widely shared on social media. If true, it raises questions about Whittingdale’s judgement and whether he is escaping media exposure because of his position on Leveson. (more…)

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Chuka the unready

15/05/2015, 01:49:34 PM

by Atul Hatwal

In politics, you’re either on the way up or headed down. Chuka, unfortunately, is headed down.

After the shock at his withdrawal and the sympathy at what politicians have to put up with in terms of intrusion, one view will linger: he has suspect judgement.

And that will blight him for the rest of his career.

If there is a scandal about to break, of sufficient scale to force him out of the running, the question will be why he ran at all?

If there is no scandal, then in a way, it will be worse. To have jumped in, and then out, within days hardly suggests decisive leadership.

Chuka has a point about the difference between expecting and experiencing greater scrutiny, but the job he was running for was not some minor office, ultimately it was to be the prime minister of Britain. It’s right that there should be scrutiny and lots of it.

Chuka’s team are briefing that he might seek the leadership again one day, but this is fanciful. Despite his many skills and his ability as a communicator, questions over his judgement will hang silently unanswered, over all that he does from now on.

Many things are forgivable in politics. Bad judgement is not one of them.

Atul Hatwal is editor of Uncut

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Chris Huhne’s political demise is a tragedy all round

04/02/2013, 04:55:14 PM

by Kevin Meagher

No-one should take any pleasure in witnessing Chris Huhne’s public defenestration. A sequence of events that clearly spun out of control has cost a cabinet minister and plausible contender to succeed Nick Clegg his career, his seat and just possibly his liberty.

His resignation from parliament as he awaits sentencing for perverting the course of justice is not just a humiliating end to his political life but a personal tragedy. All the more so for his children and family, doubly victims given the disputatious end of his marriage to Vicky Pryce. But British politics has two abiding characteristics which are up in neon lighting for all to see today: there is little sympathy for the fallen and attention immediately focuses on who benefits from another’s misfortune.

So talk turns to the pending Eastleigh by-election, the prospects of UKIP’s Nigel Farage if he chooses to stand and the implications for the coalition if the Conservatives mount a full throttle campaign to snatch the seat. But there are other consequences our rubber-necking politicians and hacks should pause and reflect on.

The career path of a growing number of our parliamentarians now ends in the most brutal ignominy; a public shaming in court and a custodial sentence. On a human level, this is awful for anyone. Collectively, it scuttles public trust in our governing class.

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