Spitting on Thomas Jefferson's Grave

'I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.' Thomas Jefferson, 1812

While Obama goes all faux-populist in his dealings with Wall Street, the US Supreme Court is accentuating the legal myth that corporations are 'natural persons' just like you and me. For more information check:

News Corpse; 

Greg Palast; &


If you are in the US and/or a US Citizen, there is a petition to sign (Hat-tip: David Sirota).

'Information is the currency of democracy.' Thomas Jefferson.

Canadian Elections- Plus Ca Change!

(Hat-tip: Vive Le Canada).

Well, Canada's Federal Election on Tuesday was very much like the one in 2006. Stephen Harper's Conservatives increased their percentage of the vote & number of seats in Parliament, but fell short of an overall majority. I thought that, rather than trying to repeat/rehash similar points to last time, I'd repeat what I said after the last Federal Election:

Wednesday, January 25, 2006 Canadian election aftermath

Well, I would advocate UDI for Victoria/Vancouver, but apart from that...

It could have been a lot lot worse! For a start, the Cons are far short of an overall majority. They will need support from other parties, which will basically mean the Bloc Quebecois & Liberals. Stephen Harper, although a sandwich or two short of a full picnic (evangelical Christian and all that), will have to hold back the crazies further out than him (first rule of politics- there are always crazies further out than yourself!) or his government will fall, and I'm sure no-one wants to go to polls for a few years yet. So Harper is pretty much boxed in (I could say "straight jacketed" but that would be a cheap shot!).

Furthermore, they only got 36% of the vote ie almost 2/3rds of the voters didn't vote Con. That suggests to me the vast majority of people in Canada are pretty liberal. Blame the first past the post electoral system. It really is a travesty of democracy. Back in May last year Tony Blair got an overall majority of 66 in the House of Commons over here on just 36% of the vote, so count your blessings Stephen Harper didn't get the same!

In addition, I'd be encouraged by the NDP & Greens increasing their shares of the vote. Neither are perfect (this from a recently joined member of the Green Party over here) but having pressure from "the left" (I try not using such meaningless phrases) might force the Liberals to sharpen up their act.

You may also have heard the phrase coined by one-time Labour PM Harold Wilson: "A week is a long time in politics." I was in despair in 1992, when the Tories scraped in for a fourth successive overall majority (I remember staying up watching the election coverage on tv with the Sex Pistols blaring on my headphones- songs like "Anarchy in the UK", "God Save The Queen", "Liar", "Problems", "No Feelings" & "Holidays In The Sun" ["I want to go to the new Belsen..."] seemed to make a lot of sense in the circumstances). The general consensus was that the Tories would stay in power for ever. Within 6 months they were broken (£ leaving the ERM after billions were wasted on the foreign currency markets; plans to shut down our remaining coal mines caused mass protests), went on to lose the 97 election (best night of tv ever!) and only seem to be coming out of a coma in the last few months. One-time Tory PM Harold MacMillan when once asked what he feared most was "Events, dear boy, events". So wait for "events"- even Stephen Harper praying to The Lord 10 times a day can't prevent them!

However, there are positive things to do apart from waiting for the Cons to collapse. This is from Naomi Klein's website from over 5 years ago, but her proposals suggest that not a lot has happened in Canadian politics since then!

Unlabelled the Left by Naomi Klein December 20 2000

Where do we go from here? There's a big space in the political landscape for a new party, one that looks at the calls for localization and doesn't see a dire threat to national unity.

There is a very simple reason to have a left-wing alternative to the Liberal Party: People are suffering. Despite all the wealth created by deregulated markets, many Canadians are seeing no part of it.

In fishing communities from coast to coast, on family farms, on the streets of large cities, Liberal Canada's recipe for economic growth has meant people being thrown into the global market without a net.

In response, we have seen a wave of political organizing and militant protests. Students blockade trade meetings where politicians are bargaining their futures away in exchange for foreign investment. In First Nations communities, from Vancouver Island to Burnt Church, there is growing support for seizing back control of the forests and fisheries—people are tired of waiting for Ottawa to grant permission that the courts have already affirmed. In Toronto, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is occupying buildings and demanding the shelter that is the right of all Canadians.

There is no shortage of principled, radical organizing taking place, yet it is almost completely disconnected from the major political voice of the left, the NDP. Listen to the people excluded from the Liberal mainstream and you hear ideas entirely absent from the NDP platform: the deep distrust of state powers, immigration crackdowns, police harassment, punitive welfare offices, and mismanagement of community affairs.

Surveying the rage directed at Ottawa from across the country, the NDP's only response has been an action plan for better central management. In its policy book, there is no problem that can't be fixed with a stronger, top-down government.

By consistently failing to speak to the hunger for local control, or to the well-deserved skepticism of centralized power, the NDP has yielded the entire anti-Ottawa vote to the right. The Alliance is the party that offers Canadians outside Quebec the opportunity to "send a message to Ottawa"—even if it is only by demanding a refund for poor service in the form of a tax cut.

A national party of the left could articulate a different vision, one founded on local democracy and sustainable economic development. But before that can happen, the left needs to come to grips with how Canadians see government. It needs to listen to the voices on native reserves and in non-native resource communities where the common ground is a rage at government—federal and provincial—for culpably mismanaging the land and the oceans from urban offices.

Government programs designed to "develop" the regions are deeply discredited across the country. Federal initiatives to get fishermen into eco-tourism, for instance, or farmers into information technologies are regarded as make-work projects, unresponsive and, at times, destructive to the real needs of communities.

Frustration with botched central planning is not just an issue in rural Canada. Urban centres across the country are being turned into mega-cities against their will, just as hospitals where cutting-edge programs once thrived are being amalgamated into inefficient medical factories. And if you listen to the teachers having standardized testing rammed down their throats, you hear the same resentment at centralized power, the same calls for local control and real democracy.

All these local battles are, at their root, about people watching power shift to points further and further away from where they live and work: to the WTO, to unaccountable multinationals, but also to more centralized national and provincial governments. What people really want are the tools, both financial and democratic, to control their destinies, to build diverse economies that are genuinely sustainable. And they have plenty of ideas.

On the west coast of Vancouver Island, they are calling for community fish-licence banks, bodies that would keep fishing rights in the community rather than selling them back to Ottawa or to corporate fleets. Native and non-native fishermen, meanwhile, are doing end runs around the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to try to save the salmon fishery by rehabilitating spawning grounds and protecting hatcheries. In other parts of British Columbia, they talk of community forest licences: taking away Crown land from multinational forestry companies that are interested in volume-based logging, and placing sustainable forest management in the hands of local communities.

Even in Newfoundland, long written off by Ottawa as Canada's welfare case, there was talk this election of renegotiating federalism to regain control over the province's rich energy reserves and what's left of the fishery. It's the same message from Inuit leaders determined to ensure that, as the oil and gas prospectors move into their territories once again, the benefits go toward regional development rather than simply enriching multinational corporations.

In many ways, these calls for sustainable economic development are the antithesis of the free-trade model pushed by the Liberals, which insists that increased foreign investment is the key to all of our prosperity, even if it means trading away democratic powers in the process. These communities want the opposite: beefed-up local control, so they can do more with less.

This is also contrary to the Alliance model of regional resentment and tax cuts—though for many, those aren't bad consolation prizes. But there is clearly a deep desire in this country to continue to act collectively, to pool resources and knowledge and build something better than any of us is capable of building as individuals.

This presents a tremendous opportunity for a left-wing party, an opportunity that has been entirely wasted by the NDP. There is a wide-open space in the political landscape for a new party, one that looks at the calls for localization and doesn't see a dire threat to national unity, but the building blocks for a unified—but diverse—nation. In these calls for self-determination, grassroots democracy, and ecological sustainability are the pieces of a national party platform, a coherent vision that includes many Canadians who have never before been represented by the so-called left.

Right now, we have federal parties that try to hold this country together against its will, and regional parties that pit the country against itself at its peril. A new party could do something else: show the country not the differences but the connections among these struggles for localization and articulate the progressive principles of economic sustainability, self-determination and participatory democracy. Rather than fighting localization, we need to spend national resources in a way that would systematically encourage creative, local solutions, making respect for the local the centrepiece of our national project.

What is needed is a federal party that would relentlessly champion the reinvention of local democracy with the same enthusiasm that the Alliance champions tax cuts. That doesn't mean abandoning strong national standards—and stable, equitable funding—for health care, education, affordable housing, and environmental protections.

But it does mean that the mantra of a political party of the left should change from "increase funding" to "empower the grassroots"—in towns, on native reserves, at schools, in resource communities, in workplaces. This project doesn't mean less government, just a different kind of government.

Its slogan: "Protect the Local, Nationally."


Although they hardly registered on the electoral map, I think the Canadian Action Party have some good ideas, at the national level anyway. Perhaps if I was Canadian I wouldn't have voted for them this time around, but if they got involved with the NDP and Greens they may be the catalyst for challenging the two main parties over the question of true patriotism and what it means to be Canadian.

Top Ten Reasons to Vote For CAP on January 23!

1-Freedom for all in a sovereign strong nation. Despite no taxpayer funding, CAP is the only party exposing the unaccountable, unelected rulers of Canada(that is the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, former government officials, business leaders, and academics). MP's are irrelevant, emasculated, and subject to corruption so long as they submit to that influence. As such they are no good to the citizenry.

2-Put your Money to work for You-Reinstate full use of the Bank of Canada-fund infrastructure and enable universal healthcare, education, environmental protection, full employment, and an end to the GST

3-Restore our civil rights and liberty-rescind all liberty stripping legislation including the anti-terrorism law, Public Safety and Preparedness Act. Prevent new laws that spy on law abiding citizens, such as surveillance legislation, tracking devices, biometric identifiers. Remove legislation that imprisons law abiding citizens in our own country, such as no fly lists, no passport lists, security certificates.

4-Restore Canada's Military Peace-Keeping role-Canada to stay out of Northcom, Star Wars, and to withdraw from the Binational Military Planning Group

5-Take Canada out of international agreements that are anti-Canadian, anti-democratic, anti-free trade, anti-environment, anti-universal healthcare-cancel NAFTA, FTA, the Smart Border Declaration,(signed in December 2001 by John Manley Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and Tom Ridge, Director of the United States Homeland Security Department); Withdraw from the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement, signed in March 2005 by Fox, Martin, Bush.

6-Electoral Reform-Restore democracy-revoke Section 550 of the Canada Election Act, that prohibits election promises to be accountable to the electorate-bring in proportional representation, recall legislation, direct democracy, all to provide transparent accountability to the people of Canada

7-Reinstate and enforce the four pillars of the Canada Health Act-including universality, portability, accessibility, fully funded public health programs with a ban on private healthcare(Bank of Canada)

8-Universal access to publicly funded education from pre-school through post-secondary including low interest student loans (Bank of Canada)

9-Providing and investing in alternative energy, research and development (Bank of Canada)

10-strong Voice of opposition- standing for peace, not WAR, and promoting real security and prosperity for the people not for corporate exploitation


Finally, some advice to the NDP in BC from Larry Gambone. I'm not sure when this was written but as BC is currently run by Liberals at Provincial level it must have some applicability! I'm sure it would be of use to NDPers/Greens/CAPers etc elsewhere in Canada as well.

BC, A LAND OF MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

The recent events in BC with the Liberal government are only the latest events in a 120 year history of mis-management, corruption and downright stupidity. One might well say that the present cut-backs are the fruit of this sordid mess. We, or more correctly they, since I languish in Siberian exile, did have 3 (or was it 4?) NDP governments and the situation could have been turned around. But the NDP didn’t. Now it shouldn’t be up to me to lay out a political program for social democrats, after all, I ain’t one ’o them, but the fact that an outsider can show them a thing or two, only points out what a bunch of unimaginative losers they must be.

What can a po’ provincial govt. do? Now we might bitch a lot about Ottawa and all its powers, and rightly so, BUT, the provinces do have a lot of power – at least 75% of the powers of an independent state. Look at Quebec. These are residual powers granted to each province by the British North America Act of 1867 and expanded on since. What are these residual powers? First off, the province can organize the lower level of government as it sees fit – as we have seen to our great displeasure here in Quebec with forced municipal mergers. Secondly, the provincial government itself, as long as it remains within the tradition of parliamentary democracy and does not overstep its constitutional limits visa-vis the Feds, can also organize itself as it pleases. A provincial police force, provincial pension fund and provincial banks are also constitutional. Once again, check-out them there Queebecers. Now you’d think wouldn’t ya, that anyone with an IQ a bit larger than their shoe size, could do a lot with all these powers – a lot of things to make life in BC pleasant.

If I must, I’ll spell it out simply. Government in BC is highly centralized, more so than in the East. Government is also highly undemocratic, virtually every govt. is a govt. supported by a minority, not a majority. Once in power, a party can do what it wants. Centralization and lack of democracy means less control by the people. Less control by the people means the government is free to reward its friends from public lands and taxes, ignore the environment, grab your property, impose expensive and useless mega projects, etc., etc. and etc. Furthermore, a govt. can introduce a reform, but the next party in power can undo it. What Our Lord the State giveth, Our Lord the State can also taketh away.

What COULD have been done is this: BC could be given a proper level of local government – counties and municipalities – which would be largely autonomous. These govts. would be based on real existing communities and not be artificial creations like at present. Much of what the prov. govt. does could be handed over to these local govts. Hospitals and schools could be de-nationalized (more correctly de-provincialized) and become the property of the community. Development, provincial lands and environment could also be the right of the community. Rather than govt. revenue being concentrated in the hands of the province – and therefore much of it getting wasted by bureaucracy and pet projects – it would be disbursed immediately to the lower levels of govt. to pay – at least in part – for the hospitals, schools, streets etc.

In order to minimize corruption at the lower levels of govt., the provincial govt. would maximize democracy at these levels. Small communities would replace the mayor and council with New England style direct democracy. All issues deemed controversial – by a simple petition of say 10% of eligible voters – would require a referendum which would need 66% of all eligible voters to pass. Large cities would be broken up into Neighborhood Councils, based on real neighborhoods, and elected locally. The Neighborhood Council would elect a recallable DELEGATE to the City Council. The position of Mayor would be abolished, instead a rotating Spokesperson. The Referendum Law would also apply at the Neighborhood Council and City Council levels.

The provincial govt. would undergo the following changes: A limited proportional ballot would be introduced. Any party with more than 5% of the vote would be given a seat. However, the vast majority would represent communities. These would no longer be artificial electoral districts (or ridings as they are quaintly referred to in Canada) but would be based upon real existing municipalities and counties. Each of these – as close as possible to rep by pop. - would elect a recallable DELEGATE to Victoria. Once again, the Referendum Law would apply. A Cabinet would be elected from the Legislature and the position of Premier stripped of any powers. The Premier would become an annually rotated spokesperson. The Prov. Govt. would engage in only those areas that the lower levels of govt. desired, such as collecting and disbursing revenue, provincial parks, highways, ferries, and the maintenance of standards, health and water inspection etc. (*)

These changes in government would be incorporated within a Provincial Constitution. To tie the hands of any future government who might try to destroy these freedoms any changes to the Constitution would require the approval of BOTH 90% of the lower governments and 90% of the eligible voters.

BC would withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan and set up its own Plan like Quebec. Within no time this would become the largest investor in the province. A Ministry of Cooperative Affairs would be set up to encourage mutual aid, cooperatives and the general social economy. Rather than introducing private health care and privatizing auto insurance and BC Hydro, they would be mutualized, i.e., turned into client-owned and controlled cooperatives. With the Pension Fund, mutualism and community ownership, each person would come to own a share in the economy. In time, the bulk of the economy would be in the hands of the ordinary person.

The results? Government would be cheaper and more efficient. The environment would be better protected – who want’s to dirty their own nest? There would be less dissension since government would actually reflect the will of the people and not a minority. The economy would thrive since it would be owned by those who work it. Community would be re-inforced and rebuilt, resulting in less alienation and therefore less social problems. Voluntarism and mutualism would thrive as large, centralized institutions got broken down to human scale.

Like I said before, I’m not a social democrat, if any of you reading this are, well here’s your program. Take it, it’s yours. You don’t even need mention my name. In fact, please don’t or I’ll be forced to turn in my anarchist membership card. Claim it as your idea, for all I care.

*) Anybody thinking that I must be smoking something when writing this should be aware that a place governed on similar lines exists – It’s called Switzerland and happens to be the wealthiest nation on earth.


For what it's worth, if I was Canadian I would have voted either Green or NDP, not least as they are both opposed to the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the stepping stone from NAFTA to North American Union.

Is New Labour Finished?

I still think we will have a hung Parliament next time around (and another prediction is that the next General Election will be held in June 2009, the same day as the European Elections) and the Cons will be the biggest party, though they will fall well short of an overall majority. I also think neither of the two main parties will get 40% of the vote. A coalition "National Government" pledged to "reform" & "modernisation" will take over.

However, such a "National Government" will see its main challenges as being based around questions of identity. That is, the threat to the UK from Scottish (and Welsh...and English) Nationalism; opposition to greater EU integration; and divisions along ethnic, religious and racial lines.

In the meantime...one wonders how New Labour will get out of this one. The best commentary piece I've seen so far is this:

Another fiasco, but Brown is forever a sucker for business: The funding scandal has a familiar reek for a party infatuated with finance at the expense of the ethos of public service
Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, Wednesday November 28, 2007

For the Tories it is sex, for Labour it is money. Financial scandal sticks to the latter like political napalm. From formula one to ministerial mortgages, privatisation contracts and cash-for-honours, the sign of a £50 note waving in the wind sends Labour politicians weak at the knees. Their only moral is don't get caught, yet they get caught all the time.

Last July a Tyneside jobbing builder, Ray Ruddick, and a secretary, Janet Kidd, were jointly seized by the urge to give £80,000 each to Gordon Brown. This startling summertime generosity was in addition to some £400,000 they had given since 2003. Along with two others, they had contributed a total of £600,000. "Mrs Kidd of Lindale Avenue, Whickham, Gateshead" was out-donated only by Lord Sainsbury and Mahmoud Khayami. No hair turned.

Walk into a high street bank with that amount of cash and men in dark suits will gather round and demand in no uncertain terms how you came by it, usually just before the arrival of the police. Walk into the Labour party and you get an invitation to dinner with the prime minister and talk of "a K or a big P". Murmur that you are "from Mr Big" and the general secretary hurries to the door. You whisper in his ear, he puts his finger to his nose and congratulates you on winning the pools. He of course will keep the good news to himself.

The whole thing is preposterous. Gordon Brown's explanation yesterday was like a Lord Gnome editorial in Private Eye. Not since the print unions signed on in Fleet Street as "Mickey Mouse" and "Lord Beaverbrook" has the system been taken for such a ride. Brown may have been rueful about a prime facie breach of election law, but he could not help hinting that the fault lay variously with Tony Blair, under whom these things "were going on for some time", and Sir Hayden Phillips, for not giving Labour more taxpayers' cash. He could add that Blair's fiendish Geordie allies have now cost him a general secretary and given him Northern Rock and the Inland Revenue fiasco, all inside 10 days.

Labour's third biggest donor of the year has turned out to be a David Abrahams, known to Durham planning officers as David Martin. He was selected to fight William Hague in the Yorkshire seat of Richmond but was deselected when his curriculum vitae, including a reference to a non-existent wife and son, proved less than authentic. Yet he was close enough to Blair to attend his farewell in Sedgefield earlier this year.

Abrahams has rightly threatened to sue anyone who links his donations with a controversial planning application by his Durham Green Developments for a business park in prime land off the A1. This was at first refused by Durham planners, then approved after intervention from Douglas Alexander's transport department. A second application is now under way. For those who suggest that owt is never done for nowt, Abrahams has gone to some lengths to ensure that the general public knows nothing of any link between his one hand and his other.

What is astonishing is that, with cash-for-favours going nuclear on all sides, Labour's finance department did not ascertain any risk that might lie behind the source of its largesse, especially when the general secretary, Peter Watt, must have given them at least a wink and a nod.

The truth is that New Labour has been a sucker for "business" from the moment in the early 1990s when Blair and Brown decided to curry favour with the City. Eager to seem business-friendly, Brown abandoned his pledge to reverse Thatcher's union legislation and privatisation. He decided never to raise income or business taxes, and bizarrely chose Geoffrey Robinson as his buddy. His only act of delegation, ever, was to the one profession he trusted, the financiers of the Bank of England.

The word business still mesmerises Brown. To most people the occupation is about making money. To Brown it is a mysterious priesthood of infinite competence. To build a school or hospital, run a prison or plan an urban renewal, you must pledge partnership with a "businessman". Private money is always good, public bad.

If business wants a new runway at Heathrow, Brown orders one. If business wants the planning regime collapsed, he will collapse it. If business worries over capital gains tax, it will be heard. Never was the maxim, what is good for General Motors is good for the nation, so enshrined in one man. Any theory that Brown is not a real Thatcherite is rubbish.

In Brown's Britain there is no longer a public service ethos, only a business ethos applied to public services. No longer do Presbyterians render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Everything goes to Caesar under a private finance initiative.

After a decade of getting their fingers burned by business links to politics, Brown and his colleagues should surely have been streetwise. Apparently not. Despite reforms requiring openness in donations in 1997, despite the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and despite the trauma of cash-for-honours, nothing was learned.

As Brown thrashed about yesterday he decided there was no rescue from within. He showed the depths of his despair when, as if on his deathbed, he summoned a lawyer and a priest, Judge McCluskey and the former Bishop of Oxford, Lord Harries, hoping for the umpteenth time to "restore trust in the political process". They may save his party from the courts and his soul from damnation. But what do they know of business?

Brown has been woefully served by his infatuation with high finance. Men and women whose sole skill is the pursuit of money have been corralled into the public sector and given tasks way beyond their vocation. They have been honoured with jobs, gongs and contracts. Their money has been taken under the counter. Civil servants have been demeaned and demoralised, and public service has rotted in the process.

One outcome of this fiasco must be stamped out without delay. Brown implied yesterday that the taxpayer should buck up and rescue politicians from their own sins by giving them a thumping great subsidy. This is outrageous blackmail. The public should not give these people a penny, other than in direct and accountable local subscriptions and open donations. How can Brown claim to run the country when each week he fails the whelk-stall test?

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

Greg Palast also shows that some of the leading people in the saga have previous, to use police parlance...

Brown’s Fixer Explains How It’s Done: Jon Mendelsohn and the Secret Tape
Boasted £11 million donated by Tesco cut tax bill by £20 million
Greg Palast, November 29th, 2007

It was a stunning admission. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s crony explained to the U.S. businessman, in evil detail, exactly how the fix is done in Britain.

Unfortunately, for Jon Mendelsohn and his partners, the “businessman” was, in fact, an undercover reporter for The Observer of London.

Today, Brown’s foes are calling for Mendelsohn’s resignation as chief fundraiser of the Labour Party for his admitted knowledge of £630,000 ($1.2 million) in dodgy, possibly illegal, campaign contributions to Labour.

What’s odd here are the protestations of shock at the behavior of Mendelsohn, described in the Guardian as an “ethical” lobbyist. “Ethical” my arse.

It was exactly nine years ago that Mendelsohn and his lobby firm partners were caught trading cash for access. How this Mendelsohn character ended up heading Labour Party fundraising and how he obtained the sobriquet ‘ethical’ is the real shocker.

I know a few things about this Mendelsohn. The “businessman” with the hidden microphone was me. In June 1998, joined by my recorder and a real US businessman, Mark Swedlund, who designed my elaborate corporate front, I met Mr. Mendelsohn at his tony Soho London office. There Mendelsohn confirmed what was already on tape from his partners in the lobby firm he founded, LLM.

I explained my corporate needs: some environmental rules needed bending. I hinted I was with Enron. Mendelsohn’s partner Neil Lawson told my recorder that, if I paid LLM £5,000 to £20,000 per month, “We can go to anyone. We can go to Gordon Brown if we have to.” Brown was at the time Chancellor of the Exchequer. Could the lobbyist provide concrete examples of a fix?

Easily. Here is a short list of LLM claimed accomplishments:

- Inside information on then-Chancellor Gordon Brown’s budgets.
- Tax avoided by a supermarket chain following millions donated to a New Labour pet project.
- A pass on anti-trust action against client Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
- And for Gordon Brown, a favor that the Mendelsohn team expected to redeem.

Tesco Goes Tax-Free

LLM, which stands for the founders Lucas, Neil Lawson and Mendelsohn, were about to derail Brown’s plan for a tax on car parks (”parking lots” as we say in the States). This would cost Tesco, the supermarket chain, an LLM client, £20 million annually. LLM was holding secret meetings that week in June 1998 with Tony Blair’s Downing Street Policy Unit to get Tesco exempted from the proposed tax.

The tax threat went away after LLM advised Tesco to drop £11 million into funding for Blair’s odd Millennium Dome project.

[To my US readers: The Dome is a gargantuan tent costing $100 million - no kidding.]

“This government likes to do deals,” Lucas told me.

But this deal was complex, Mendelsohn said, not so simple as cash paid for a tax break. “Tony is very anxious to be seen as ‘green’,” Mendelsohn explained to me and my confederate. “Everything has to be couched in environmental language - even if it’s slightly Orwellian.” So LLM devised a set of cockamamie gimmicks for Tesco, like offering bus services to the elderly, which would paint the retailer green.

It worked. Tesco was spared the tax - though the company denies categorically that its cash dumped into the Dome bought any favors.

Message for Murdoch

The year of my paper’s original investigation (dubbed, “Lobbygate”), anti-trust authorities were looking into Rupert Murdoch’s companies’ alleged predatory pricing practices. LLM carried the word from Downing Street, according to Lucas, that, if Murdoch’s tabloids toned down criticism of new antitrust legislation, the law’s final language would reflect the government’s appreciation. On the other hand, harsh coverage in Murdoch’s papers could provoke problems for the media group in Parliament’s union-recognition bill.

The message to muzzle journalists was not, said Lucas, “an easy one in their culture” - journalists being a trying lot. However, the outcome pleased LLM clientele.

A Peek at the Budget

It also happened that on one of the days I recorded Mendelsohn’s partners, they boasted of informing an LLM client about details of Gordon Brown’s budget plans before the Chancellor’s announcement went public.

A lobbyist competing for my “business,” when asked to match the offer of inside information and deal-making held out by LLM and another New Labour firm said, “It’s appalling. It’s disturbing,” and added that he would refuse to match LLM’s services at any price.

If LLM appeared favored by Brown’s operation, Brown himself received favors from LLM. “Gordon Brown asked us to have our client KPMG [the consultancy] host a breakfast for him where it was pre-arranged that they would praise him for his prudent budgets.” Brown basked in this Potemkin praise-fest - a favor that would be returned with special access (for my own clients, if I paid the retainer).

Whether Mendelsohn, Lawson and Lucas actually pulled off all they claimed, I can’t say. Though just kids in their twenties, LLM had garnered millions in revenue, a lot of loot if for mere advice. No one seriously investigated; no one asked uncomfortable questions of Mr. Brown, Mr. Blair or the man at the center of several of these supposed “deals,” Mr. Peter Mandelson, now an EU Commissioner.

However, that Mendelsohn made these tawdry claims (or grinned at me while his partner made them), and that they were published on page one of every newspaper in the realm - part of an LLM tape broadcast on BBC’s Newsnight - one would think that the perspicacious Mr. Brown would have avoided Mendelsohn like the plague.

But the PM embraced Mr. Let’s-Make-A-Deal. The reason was made clear to me by Mendelsohn himself, a man as brainy as he is cynical and wealthy. Those many years ago, at the dawn of the Blair regime, Mendelsohn handed me a confidential manifesto he’d penned for LLM clients only. It was a map of the soul of New Labour.

Here was a chilling combination of Mendelsohn, Mandelson and Nietzsche. “AN OLD WORLD IS DISAPPEARING AND A NEW ONE EMERGING,” he announced in upper case. In the “Passing World” were “ideology” and “conviction” - which would now be replaced by “Pragmatism” and “Consumption.” “Buying” would replace “Belief.”

And ultimately, in this Brave New Labour World, style was all: “WHAT YOU DO,” wrote Mendelsohn, was passé, replaced by, “HOW YOU DO IT.”

So why demand Mendelsohn’s head now? Gordon Brown is a prudent man whom, I suspect, reads a newspaper or two - and knew exactly whom he had positioned to fill his party’s coin sacks. Mendelsohn is just a gun for hire, a forgettable factotum. I wouldn’t place the blame on the hired gun, but on the man whose finger is on the trigger.

The series “Lobbygate: Cash for Access” was originally published by The Observer (UK) in July 1998 by Greg Palast and Antony Barnett. For a complete history of the scandal, read, “Blair and the Sale of Britain” in The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin/Constable & Robinson 2004).

My own feeling is that although quite a few Labour MPs would willingly join a National Government, careerists as they are, the Labour Party itself will not survive being out of office. I've read stuff by "think-tanks" like the Fabians, Compass and Catalyst. None of it is very inspiring, coming across as happy-clappy managerialism at best. Not the sort of stuff to make one fight on the barricades, or even write out a cheque for...