Private Eye: Blair and Cronies Return to Fund Progress Thatcherites

According to this fortnight’s Private Eye, 15th-28th June 2018 Tony Blair and other wealthy donors have returned to fund Progress, the Thatcherite entryist group in the Labour party. The article states that ‘since its foundation, Progress has promoted Blairite candidates and motions inside the party’. The article goes on to state that it has, however, lost most of its internal battles since Jeremy Corbyn came to power, and that Lord Sainsbury’s announcement that he was no longer donating to it was a major blow. It’s now looking for new funders.

The article cites the Electoral Commission to reveal that the liar and unindicted war criminal gave it £10,000 on 26th March. The article states that this is the first time Blair has given it anything from the vast wealth he’s made from his various consultancies since leaving office.

Other donors include the City headhunter, Jeremy Breaks, who gave Progress £8,000 in April. He’s never given to the Labour party, but did give £2,000 to Owen Smith’s campaign for the Labour leadership.

Another financier, private equity investor Stephen Peel gave them £10,000 in January. He also hasn’t donated anything to the Labour party, but tellingly he did give the Tories £50,000 in 2008. He also funds and sits on the board of a business-orientated Remain group, Best For Britain.

Martin Clarke, the chief financial officer of the AA, also gave Progress £10,000 in February. He’s a long-standing Labour supporter, but his only recorded donation to the party was £2,960 to the Morley and Outwood Constituency Party in 2014. He also gave money to one of Corbyn’s rivals. In 2015 he gage £37,500 to Yvette Cooper’s campaign to gain the Labour leadership. (Page 12).

Blair and the other donors to Progress are thus the same City types, for whom Blair decided to sacrifice the manufacturing sector, and betray the party’s working class roots and supporters, privatising industry, including the NHS, cutting welfare and state aid, all to ingratiate himself with big business, Murdoch and the right-wing press, and swing voters, who would otherwise vote Tory. It also shows just a touch a desperation on the part of Progress and Blair himself. Progress were never more than a tiny faction in the Labour party, which succeeded because they held the levers of power. Now their power’s waning, they’re desperate to get more money. And if Blair’s donating to them for the first time ever, it shows that he’s worried that his political legacy is also in jeopardy.

Jewish Donor Departs from Labour Anti-Semitism

Yesterday evening, ITV news reported that one of the big donors to the Labour party had left the party. The donor, who I think was called Gerard, complained that the party was rife with anti-Semitism, and that very little was being done about it. This must have delighted the biased mainstream media. I’m surprised they didn’t do a little dance of joy.

As everyone, who’s been smeared as an anti-Semite by the Israel lobby can vouch, this is an utter lie. The Labour Party takes such accusations very seriously. So seriously that decent people have been suspended, expelled and smeared as anti-Semites and, in Mike’s case, as a Holocaust Denier, simply through baseless accusations brought by mendacious, cowardly individuals. These people hide their real identities, and deliberately twist the evidence and misquote those they are maligning so as to misrepresent them. There are anti-Semites in the Labour party, just as there are in the Tories. But the anti-Semitism smears have nothing to do with real anti-Semitism. It’s about the Israel lobby and its cheerleaders and lackeys trying to get rid of Corbyn, because he supports the Palestinians. And they’re aided by the Blairites, who fear the rise of a real, genuine socialist Left. This is a blow against their control of the party, and their policy of pursuing the vote of the aspirant middle classes instead of sticking up for the poor, the disabled, the unemployed and the working and lower middle classes.

I don’t think that Mr. Gerard will be entirely missed, except by the Blairites. Blair was able to carry through his ‘modernisation’ of the party, getting rid of Clause 4 and transforming it into another Thatcherite political vehicle, because of the funding he was given was by a group of Jewish donors through Lord Levy, who Blair met at a gathering at the Israeli embassy. This made Blair independent of the unions and their funding.

ITV and their guest expert described this latest development as a blow, but said it wouldn’t be as severe as it may have been because Corbyn had transformed Labour into a mass party. And this is the core of the issue.

A couple of years ago Harvard University issued a report stating that America was no longer a functioning democracy but an oligarchy. This is because American politicos ignore what the electorate want, and do the bidding instead of their donors. Hence the Republicans and Corporate Democrats have done their best to represent the interests of the oil industry, big business and Wall Street against ordinary Americans.

And Blair was exactly the same. In Peter Mandelson’s notorious words, New Labour was ‘very relaxed’ about the rich, and Blair promoted a vast number of corporate donors, like Lord Sainsbury, to government posts. If you want to see how many, take a look at the relevant pages in George Monbiot’s Captive State. With the power of the Blairites being challenged by Momentum and the Left, it was always on the cards that the donors Lord Levy had brought into the party to support Blair would eventually abandon Labour. They were never really supporters of Labour to begin with. Indeed, quite the opposite. Like Rupert Murdoch, Who also switched from the Tories to Labour, the impression is that they were only interested in Labour as the best vehicle to pursue their own, corporate interests within the wider area of neoliberal economics. The last thing they wanted was a Labour party which actually does what the public wants and rejects neoliberalism for a mixed economy and proper state funding for education, health and welfare support.

And I doubt very much that anti-Semitism is the real reason Gerard left, despite his bitter comments. It seems to me that he’s another member of the Israel lobby, who feels bitter about the Labour leader supporting the Palestinians. Which does not equate to anti-Semitism. There are a number of Jewish organisations supporting them, which are very definitely not anti-Semitic or remotely self-hating, and who will not accept Jew haters as members.

I’ve been informed that Corbyn is a supporter of Israel himself, but wants a fair, peaceful settlement for the Palestinians. But this seems to be too much for the Israel lobby, who can’t tolerate anybody siding with them, even if they aren’t enemies of Israel as such.

As for Jewish support for the Labour party, Mike and very many other blogs have put up pieces showing the support Corbyn enjoys by a whole ranges of Jewish groups and individuals. And Jewish businessmen have supported the Labour party ever since the days of Harold Wilson, before Maggie Thatcher and her clique seized power in the Tories. I’m confident that the Jewish businesspeople, who genuinely support Labour, will continue to find a welcome place in the party.

It seems to me very strongly that Gerard wasn’t one of them. He looks instead like one of the very many donors, regardless of religion or ethnicity, who supported Blair simply for their own corporate advantage. And in Gerard’s case, to promote Israel against the Palestinians. Now that this is threatened, he has angrily made his departure.

And his accusations of anti-Semitism are just lies made to excuse himself and make his departure look less like the self-interested manoeuvring it is.

More from Vox Political on the Blairites Doing the Stalinist Hot-Trot

Over the past few days Mike’s put up a few more posts about the Blairites and their attempted purge of the Corbynites in time for the leadership elections.

Among their various antics, they sent a tweet to one victim of the coup, who had been told they did not have the right to vote, in the middle of the night asking them to support Owen Smith. Which is, as Isabel Waby, a friend of Vox Political, observed, simply adding insult to injury. Another person, Catherine Starr, was banned because of an ‘inappropriate’ tweet. She had made the cardinal sin of posting that she ‘f**king loved the Foo Fighters’. Richard Burgon, the Shadow Justice Secretary, responded to this woman’s ban with the jocular comment that he preferred Motorhead, but liking the Foo Fighters was certainly no reason to ban someone. Quite. Nor is foul language on a completely unrelated topic. I realise the ‘F bomb’ is still very shocking to quite a few people, but it’s now so widely used that it is using much of its ability to shock. If you want an example of this, think of the number of times Paul Merton and some of the other panellists on Have I Got News For You have cussed. When I was at school, the use of the word got Jools Holland thrown off the Friday early evening pop show, The Tube. Admittedly, this show was on much earlier, at about 6 O’clock, while HIGNFY is on after the 9 O’clock watershed. But even so, Merton and co are still going, and the shows as strong as ever. Starr was planning to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, so it looks very much like the Blairite National Executive was simply trying to find an excuse to ban her.

Corbyn was moved to tweet his own disapproval about the one-sidedness of the purge: “I’m very concerned that some people seem to have been unfairly removed from the ability to vote in this election. I’ve written to Labour’s General Secretary to raise concerns about members being suspended from voting in the leadership contest often without knowing why, being given an option to challenge or appeal.”

For this, the Labour leader got told by a Scottish Labour councillor, Stephen McCabe, that he should have some faith as leader in the NEC, knowing perfectly well Corbyn can contribute, but can’t control what they do.

Among the other victims of the purge is Ronnie Draper, the General Secretary of the Baker’s, Food, and Allied Worker’s Union. He was told that he was being denied the vote on the basis of an unidentified tweet. He has also been given no opportunity to refute the charge, and no hearing has been set for him to challenge it.

According to Mike, 200,000 people have been denied the vote by the NEC. The process of deciding who gets to vote, and who doesn’t, is overseen by Joanna Baxter. She tweeted that the decisions were made by 2 panels, comprising three people from the NEC, and supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith. She did not, however, give any details on the criteria by which the suitability of the voters was assessed. Furthermore, Baxter is no longer a member of the NEC, and so has absolutely no right or obligation to oversee the purge.

Mike concludes:

So far, it seems you get the boot for comments made at any time since you joined social media – no matter how long ago and never mind whether you have changed your mind since. Use of profanities at any time means you’re out – if you’re a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. Tweeting support for a point of view put forward by another political party – out. Publicly disagreeing with Owen Smith – out.

It is hard to tell the criteria by which supporters of Mr Smith are likely to be removed from the voting register. Does anybody know?

Mike also has put up the advice, given by one of his commenters, that anyone intending to appeal against the decision to ban them should throw in a Data Access Request for Data held on them under the Data Protection Act. As data holders, the Labour party will be obliged to provide them with all the data they have on them.

Mike also warns that as Baxter complained that she was receiving abuse even before these shenanigans began, she’s now got a running commentary on her twitter feed about the abusive messages she’s receiving. Or claims to have received. As Mike says, it’s unknown whether these are ‘false flag attacks’ or not. But he strongly advises his readers to be polite in any case.

See his article at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/08/27/labour-member-is-denied-vote-in-leader-election-then-owen-smith-txts-to-ask-for-support/

I remarked before, when the purge began a few days ago, that this is New Labour and the Blairites behaving exactly like Stalin. He took over the Russian Communist party by purging the membership of his rivals’ supporters. Once installed as the president of the USSR, he continued his purges, not by merely throwing his opponents out of the party, but by sending them, and millions of others, to the Gulags and the firing squads as enemies of the Revolution and so forth. Baxter and Smudger aren’t sending people to forced labour camps, but in other respects they’re following Uncle Joe’s tactics. As he said, ‘it’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.’

It’s also all very Kafkaesque. In his novels The Castle and The Trial, the Czech novelist described farcical bureaucratic tyrannies, in which the regime’s victims were arrested, tried and condemned without knowing what their crime was, or who their accusers were. Which is pretty much what’s happening here, with people being told their banned simply on account of ‘inappropriate comments’.

But only Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters, apparently. Lord Sainsbury, who is now supporting the Lib Dems, has, it seems, not lost his right to vote. Never mind. As Mike has put up in a later article today, after the election there will be a reckoning of this bureaucratic tyrants.

Monbiot’s List of the Corporate Politicos in Blair’s Government: Part One

Chapter six of George Monbiot’s book, Captive State, is entitled ‘The Fat Cats Directory’. The book is about the way big business has wormed its way into government, so that official decisions and policy reflects their interests, not those of Mr and Mrs British Public. In the ‘Fat Cats Directory’ he lists the businessmen and senior managers, who were rewarded with government posts by Tony Blair in May 1997. The list gives the name of the businessman, their ‘previous gluttony’ – a summary of their corporate careers, and ‘Subsequent Creamery’ – their posts in the British government. Those lists are:

Lord Marshall of Knightsbridge.–
Chairman of British Airways
– President of the Confederation of British Industry

– Put in charge of Gordon Brown’s energy tax review, and helped promote the government’s campaign against the Millennium Bug, even though his 1999 holiday brochures told customers that they wouldn’t be responsible for any problems caused by computers malfunctioning due to it.

Ewen Cameron

President of the County Landowners’ Association
Owner of 3,000 Acres in Somerset
Opponent of rambling.

Chairman of the Countryside Agency, concerned with tackling the right to roam, social exclusion in rural areas, and someone, who has very definitely contravened the Countryside Agency’s rules on the maintenance of footpaths.

Lord Rogers of Riverside

Architect of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 on greenbelt land
Architect of Montevetro Tower, London’s most expensive building.

Chairman of the government’s Urban Task Force.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville

Chairman of J. Sainsbury Plc
Chairman of the Food Chain Group
Principal backer of biotech company Diatech
Funded construction of the Sainsbury Laboratory for research into genetic engineering
Replaced skilled jobs with unskilled shelf-stacking.

Minister in Government’s department of trade and industry
Minister with responsibility for science and technology
As science minister, led Bioindustry Trade Delegation to US
Ultimate control over Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Chairman of the government’s University for Industry.

Lord Simon of Highbury

Chairman of BP
Vice-Chairman of European Round Table of Industrialists
Under his direction, BP assisted the Colombian government in forcing peasants off their lands, and imprisoning, killing and torturing trade unionists. Gave money to the 16th Brigade, notorious for murder, kidnapping torture and rape.

Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe
One of the ministers responsible for implementing the ethical foreign policy.

Jack Cunningham MP

Adviser to agrochemical company Albright and Wilson (UK)
Member of Chemical Industries Association lobbying for deregulation of pesticides.

Secretary of State for Agriculture
Chair of Cabinet Committee on Biotechnology.

Sir Peter Davis

Chairman of Reed International, which made 900 workers unemployed.
Chief Executive of Prudential Corporation Plc, company most responsible for miss-selling pensions.

Appointed by Treasury head of New Deal Task Force.

John Bowman

Director of Commercial Union, which possibly miss-sold 7,900 pensions.

On the board of the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority.

Lord De Ramsey

President of Country Landowners’ Association, sold part of his enormous Cambridgeshire estate for house building, and in doing so destroyed a pond of Great Crested Newts. Lobbies against regulatory burdens on agriculture. Grew genetically modified sugar beet on his land for Monsanto.

Chairman of Environmental Protection Agency.

Paul Leinster

Director of SmithKline Beecham (SB) Plc, which polluted streams in Sussex and Gloucestershire. Previously employed by BP and Schering Agrochemicals, part-owner of bio-tech company AgrEvo, which was publicly shamed for breach of environmental regulations for growth of GM crops.

Head of the Environment Agency’s Environmental Protection Directorate.

Justin McCracken

Managing director of ICI Katalco, responsible for a long list of plants polluting the environment with carcinogens. In 1999 it was listed as the worst polluting company in Europe, responsible for pouring 20 tonnes of hormone disrupting chemicals into the Tees. Also allowed 150 tonnes of chloroform to escape into groundwater at Runcorn. From 1996 to 1997 Friends of the Earth recorded 244 unauthorised pollution incidents from its Runcorn plant.

Regional General Manager, Environment Agency, North-West Region.

Dinah Nicols

Non-executive director, Anglia Water. In 1999 it was prosecuted six times for pollution.

Director-General of Environmental Protection at the Department of the Environment.

Ian McAllister

Chairman and managing director of Ford UK. The company was a member until December 1999, of the Global Climate Coalition, lobbying against attempts to reduce carbon monoxide emissions.

President, Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, which has lobbied against the Department of the Environment’s standards on ozone, lead and sulphur dioxide pollution from cars. Also lobbied against European directives against exhaust gases, removal of lead from petrol, and forcing motor manufacturers to install catalytic converters.

Chairman of the Government’s Cleaner Vehicles Task Force.

Chris Fay

Chairman and Chief Executive of Shell UK, the British company with the most controversial environmental record due to pollution incidents in Britain and in the Niger Delta.

Executive director of BAA Plc, attempting to double size of Heathrow Airport.
President of the UK Offshore Operators Association, oil industry group responsible for lobbying against environmental regulations.

Chairman of the government’s Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment.

Brian Riddleston

Chief executive of Celtic Energy, an open-cast mining corporation which destroyed the Selar Grasslands Site of Special Scientific Interest in Wales, wildflower habitat and home of extremely rare march fritillary butterfly.

Member of the Government’s Countryside Council for Wales.

Graham Hawker

Chief executive of Welsh utilities company Hyder, which sp0ent £42.2m on making people redundant, and only £700,000 on research and development. Opposed windfall tax on privatised utilities.

Chair of the New Deal Taskforce in Wales

Martin Taylor

Chief executive of Barclays Plc. Multimillionaire manager of company which made 21,000 redundant in ten years to 1997.

Lord Haskins

Chairman, Northern Foods Plc. Member of Hampel Committee on Corporate Governance. This was criticised by Margaret Beckett for failing to recommend ways for companies to regulate themselves.

Chair of the government’s Better Regulation Task Force.

Peter Sainsbury

Managing director for Corporate and External Affairs, Marks and Spencer.

Head of Better Regulation Taskforce’s Consumer Affairs Group, whose duties include consumer protection. This decided that voluntary measures and ‘consumer education’ were better than regulation.

Geoffrey Robinson

Director of Central and Sheerwood plc, property owned and chaired by fraudster and pension raider Robert Maxwell. C&S merged with Robinson’s TransTec, to form Transfer Technology Plc. Company later collapsed.

Paymaster General.