"I haven't read the article, so I don't know if it refers to Liam Fox MP, or a member of the genus vulpes vulpes."
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| © Steve Barnes |
The director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) was secretly recorded telling an undercover reporter that funders could get to know ministers on first-name terms and that his organisation was in “the Brexit influencing game”.
Mark Littlewood claimed the IEA could make introductions to ministers and said the thinktank’s trade expert knew Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Davis and Liam Fox well.
The IEA chief was also recorded suggesting potential US donors could fund and shape “substantial content” of research commissioned by the thinktank and that its findings would always support the argument for free-trade deals.The Guardian also quotes Littlewood's response that there is nothing wrong with any of this, though I am not convinced by research whose conclusions you know before you have conducted it.
A fascinating Chard Group document comes our way (and that is not a phrase you will often read in Liberator). Long before its present preoccupation with running conference raffles, the Chard Group was set up and run by Richard Denton-White to support Paddy Ashdown’s objective, set out in his 1992 speech in Chard, of working more closely with Labour.
The September 1995 issue of the group’s Campaigner newsletter says its new vice-chair is Mark Littlewood, who “is now the youth president of the European Movement”.
Someone called Mark Littlewood was the Lib Dems’ head of media until his unfortunate spot of bother with Ming Campbell’s inaugural conference speech as leader in March 2006, and later ran the lunatic-fringe libertarian right Liberal Vision, before departing the Lib Dems last year to become director of the Thatcherite Institute of Economic Affairs.
That Mark Littlewood was, by an extraordinary coincidence, described as a former youth officer of the European Movement in a 2004 interview in PR Week to mark his appointment as Lib Dem press officer.
So did Littlewood really make the strange political journey from Denton-White’s pro-Labour body to the wilder shores of the libertarian right – and, if so, where might he next be found?Well, he's still to be found at the IEA. But if he did start our with the Chard Group his journey has been stranger even than that of his employee Darren Grimes.
Lord Price announced he would write a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph.
His previous book, The Foolish King, focused on teaching children how to play chess.The Amazon blurb for The Foolish King runs:
LONG, LONG AGO, when kings ruled the land, dragons filled the sky and magic still existed, two small children stumbled upon the game of chess. ... Join PIP and HOLLY on a magical fairy-tale adventure and become a CHESS MASTER. Packed with INTERACTIVE PUZZLES and GAMES, and clear instructions and tips on how to improve your technique, this book is a must have.It all sounds a bit twee, but then the book that got me hooked on chess was Raymond Bott and Stanley Morrison's More Chess for Children, and that was full of illustrations of knights and damsels.
The Lib Dem chief whip, Alistair Carmichael, called the letter “a blatant attempt at intimidating the BBC and undermining the independence of our media”.
“The BBC shouldn’t be bullied into publishing government propaganda and has rightly stood its ground,” Carmichael said. “Liam Fox is acting like a tinpot dictator. He can’t blame the media for his inability to deliver on all the trade deals promised by the Brexiteers.”At the back of all this nonsense lies the fact that the Conservative Party is no longer Conservative.
“Duterte is one of the 21st century’s most sinister leaders and Liam Fox has flown halfway around the world to grovel to him. The fact that the first visit made by Fox since triggering Article 50 is to the Philippines shows just how low this government is willing to stoop in order to secure even a minimal trade deal in the future.
“According to UK trade statistics, the value of our exports to the Philippines are just £500 million a year- to put this into context our total international trade is currently over £28 billion a month.
"So not only is Fox blind to the horrific human rights abuses and endemic corruption in the Philippines, he’s also clearly oblivious to the actual realities of doing trade with them.
"No amount of pandering to corrupt regimes can replace our membership of the Single Market, which is why the Liberal Democrats will continue to fight against the hard, divisive Brexit this government is pursuing."Talking of Liam Fox, let us read an old article by John Elledge to remind us of why he was obliged to resign as defence secretary in 2011:
He allowed his close friend and best man, Adam Werrity, to take up an unofficial and undeclared role in which he attended meetings at the Ministry of Defence without first obtaining security clearance. Werrity had access to Fox’s diary, printed business cards announcing himself as his advisor, and even joined him at meetings with foreign dignitaries.
An investigation by then cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell found that Fox had shown a lack of judgement by blurring the lines between his official role and his personal friendships.
His report concluded: “The disclosure outside the MoD of details about future visits overseas posed a degree of security risk not only to Dr Fox, but also to the accompanying official party.”
"I’ll just say a word about Liam Fox though because I do feel sorry for him. I’m not a betting man but if I was I’d put a fair amount of money on Liam Fox resigning in a huff in the next 18 months and I’ll explain to you why. He doesn’t have a job and he doesn’t appear to have realised that yet.
"He genuinely doesn’t have a job. If the United Kingdom doesn’t leave the customs union then he is heading a department without purpose because he cannot negotiate all these apparently magnificent trade deals with Papua New Guinea and Tanzania."I think Nick Clegg is right. In my experience you can't go far wrong by predicting Liam Fox will resign.
My own tip for the first resignation would be a Tory right-winger like Liam Fox.In October 2011 I was proved right.
Liberal Democrat acting leader Vince Cable is boycotting the state visit to Britain of Saudi King Abdullah.
Mr Cable says he will not attend any of the planned ceremonial events - as would be normal for the leader of one of the main opposition parties.
Mr Cable told the BBC's Today programme that by any assessment of Saudi Arabia, "the human rights record is appalling".
He also cited the regime's arms deal with the British firm BAE and the row over alleged corruption surrounding it.
Mr Cable added: "I think it's quite wrong that as a country we should give the leader of Saudi Arabia this honour."If you read the post I wrote at the time, you will find that Vince's stance was criticised by both Tory (Liam Fox)** and Labour (Kin Howells).***
I also suspect that the differences within the two Coalition parties, Conservatives as well as Liberal Democrats, will ultimately prove more significant than the differences between the parties. So my own tip for the first resignation would be a Tory right-winger like Liam Fox.It should have been "next resignation" rather than "first resignation", as David Laws had already come and gone, but this post is looking spookily accurate this morning.
"So many people – friends and family of the pilots, my predecessor Ray Michie, and others – campaigned for many years to overturn the original verdict which found the two young pilots, who died doing their duty, guilty of gross negligence.The setting up of the new inquiry was announced by Nick Clegg when he took prime minister's questions on 8 September 2010.
"This review is long overdue. Where the previous Labour government stalled and obstructed, the Coalition Government has ensured that justice has been done.
"I hope that today’s report and conclusions will help many people to put this horrible accident behind them and I join them in remembering and paying tribute to all those who passed away on that disastrous day.”
It was clearly set out in the Coalition agreement. Now clear off down the garden and leave our dustbins alone.
The problem about Fox is that he has no judgment whatever about strategic affairs. He was, of all the Tory frontbench, the most hawkish, gung-ho enthusiast for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
As one does not allow children to play with matches, Fox is not the right man to be allowed substantial Forces. He is the sort of person — so desperate to please Washington — who would try to get us involved in another expedition, perhaps in Yemen or Somalia.
And then there is Trident, about which ministers are allowed some latitude under the Coalition agreement. We must hope that the Lib Dems put up a resistance to paying for this unusable and expensive piece of hardware, designated a weapon but, in fact, little more than a diplomatic masculinity symbol.
In a private letter to David Cameron seen by The Daily Telegraph, the Defence Secretary refuses to back any substantial reduction in the Armed Forces.
He says it risks seriously damaging troops’ morale.
The letter was written the night before a National Security Council (NSC) meeting on the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). In it, Dr Fox says the Tories risk “destroying much of the reputation and capital” they have built up on defence.
The review is becoming indefensible, he suggests, warning of the “brutal reaction” from the party, press and military if “we do not recognise the dangers and continue to push for such draconian cuts at a time when we are at war".
"According to the papers," as he says himself, "I'm miserable, alienated, and on the brink of resignation." For many Labour voters – and a lot of disillusioned Lib Dems too – Cable's resignation would represent some sort of moral triumph, or at the very least, a return to politics as normal. "But that's simply not where I am," he says.In fact what we have now is politics as normal - or at least politics as it was before Tony Blair became prime minister. A Cabinet of strong personalities with sometimes differing views is just what we should expect.
