Monday, July 17, 2006



All the way to Number 10

The British "cash for peerages" scandal now looks set to reach all the way to Downing Street, with the news that Tony Blair secretly met with key witnesses in the middle of the police investigation, and that Blair's bagman Lord Levy had advised potential peers not to declare and to remove references to large loans made to the Labour party from their nomination forms. Meanwhile, The Observer reports that police have uncovered a paper trail that goes to the 'heart of Downing Street', and that discontent is rising in the Labour ranks. Hopefully, this will finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and sees Blair ousted - but Blair is pathologically incapable of admitting that he is ever wrong, and seems to be trying to brazen it out as usual. But I wonder whether those tactics will work on the police...?

Posted by Idiot/Savant at 7/17/2006 01:56:00 PM

4 comments:

Another sign that things are really bad: Both Gordon Brown and John Prescott (the likely front-runners if Blair does go) have been quiet as the grave, and conveniently out of the country, over the last week.

 Posted by Craig Ranapia : 7/17/2006 02:28:00 PM

Watching Blair fade away might be fun but in the end his failing will have been to miss the opportunity for reform of the Lords and reform of party funding in his first term.

The unelected 2nd chamber has long been a corrupting influence on UK politics and now that big money is so much a part of elections it is doubly so. Don't forget that the UK Tories are also being investigated for the same thing.

One can only hope that Blair's demise will not let in a Tory government and bring an end to many of the generally progressive global initiatives being sponsored by the UK Labour party (with of course, the rather glaring exception of Iraq).

 Posted by Anonymous : 7/17/2006 03:09:00 PM

Noddy: Blair missed that opportunity long ago, when he opposed full election or total abolition in favour of something in between which would allow him to keep control (and keep the money rolling in?)

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 7/17/2006 04:33:00 PM

Brown has be anointed leader in waiting for so long that there doesn't appear to be anyone in a viable position to take the job from him. I can think of a bunch of Blairite non-entities that might put themselves forward, but god help the Labour Party if they get the job. They make John Major look dynamic.

 Posted by Anonymous : 7/18/2006 10:57:00 AM

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