Cronygate: the real scandal is the politics of Labour's leadership
Monsters or Frankenstein?
In reporting the activities of lobbyists and their claims of access to key ministers, the media have by and large swallowed the governments’ line.
This is apparently about outsiders not Blair’s New Labour Party. Draper and friends are merely boastful young men fluttering around the fringes of government.
Blair argues that the bulk of the claims are not about ministers but about lobbyists and that the government has no case to answer. Yet the very value of these people as lobbyists is that they can provide access to ministers.
Someone setting up as a lobbyist who can’t provide that isn’t going to make much of a success. The House Builders’ Federation has dropped the lobby firm GPC because it sacked Draper. GPC was of use to them precisely because of the access Draper could provide!
It is not accidental that Draper and his cronies have close relations with people at the heart of government. They have spent the last 15 years laying the foundations for the policies and practices of ‘New Labour’ in close cooperation with many now in the Cabinet such as Robin Cook, David Blunkett, Jack Straw, and Blair himself.
Many of them have been, and still are, involved in the powerful Labour Coordinating Committee. When first formed in 1978 this was a Bennite organisation of the left in the constituencies. However it moved rapidly to the right (and away from Benn) in the early ‘80s and played a major role in the witch-hunting of Militant. It was no longer the Tories who were the enemy, but the Left.
It pushed for and promoted the ‘Policy Review’ process under Neil Kinnock as leader which was used to get rid of left policies such as unilateral nuclear disarmament. It championed passive voting in the form of One Member One Vote.
It provided the campaign backing Blair in the abolition of Clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution and first proposed the use of a referendum as a way of pressurising constituencies, unions and the special conference into endorsing this.
‘Modernisation’ was their watchword and they put forward proposals similar to those adopted by last years conference in ‘Partnership in Power’ for ‘reforming’ and downgrading the NEC and conference. They have argued for the abolition of the union link.
The LCC provided a platform for Blair at party conference fringe meetings when he was not well known and many of them worked as researchers for key Labour MPs.
Ben Lucas, one of those at the centre of the allegations, used to be a researcher for Jack Straw. He now works for the lobbyists LLM and is still chair of the LCC. Mike Craven, long-standing LCC activist, now an adviser to John Prescott, was previously managing director of Market Access, a firm which merged with GPC. The Observer has shown a long list of those now working as lobbyists who previously worked for MPs or the Labour Party.
Liddle, now a policy adviser in Downing Street, had his own trajectory to influence. He played a role in launching the breakaway Social Democratic Party in 1981, and stood as an SDP candidate in the 1986 Fulham by-election (saying ‘Labour will never govern again’).
He rejoined the Labour Party in 1995 and was instantly taken into the inner circle, through his old friend, Mandelson.
When Mandelson and Liddle wrote their book ‘The Blair Revolution’, they paid fulsome tribute to the role of Draper. Draper worked for years as Mandelson’s assistant. The chair of GPC is Ian Wrigglesworth, an ex-SDP MP.
Draper founded the magazine Progress, mailed free to thousands of Labour Party members, and rumoured to be funded by David Sainsbury, previously the SDP’s main backer, now a Labour peer.
Draper is said to have got the money by persuading Blair to contact Sainsbury. Liddle, Wrigglesworth and Sainsbury have had no problem finding political soulmates at the heart of ‘New Labour’ after leaving the SDP.
The Left has been pointing out the pernicious role of these people and their undemocratic practices for years, from the time many of them were active in the National Union of Students and the National Organisation of Labour Students.
There they employed all the dirty tricks possible to prevent the Left having any influence. The upshot is that NUS has been totally tamed, refusing to defend students’ interests, first against the Tories’ introduction of loans and now against Labour’s abolition of grants and introduction of tuition fees. Blair loyalist MPs like Stephen Twigg, Jim Murphy and Lorna Fizsimmons (still on the LCC committee) are all ex-NUS presidents.
While Blair has defended Liddle, Draper has been hung out to dry, with Mandelson and the rest of the leadership distancing themselves from their long-term collaborator. Draper may even be expelled from the Labour Party for ‘bringing it into disrepute ‘ if the leadership believe that to be expedient.
The Left certainly aren’t going to spring to Draper’s defence (it couldn’t happen to a nicer man), but it is not a question of individuals. Having done their bit to free the government of all vestiges of leftism, the lobbyists are now enriching themselves through their contacts.
Changing the Labour Party into a Party like the US Democratic Party in its structure and policies goes hand in hand with giving power to lobbyists providing access to government for businesses. If it wasn’t a ‘business friendly’ government there would be no role for lobbyists.
In defending the role of lobbyists, Mandelson pointed out that the TUC had recently run one of the most professional lobbying operations ever. This surely proves the point – that if the government is not sympathetic to your cause in the first place, no amount of "access" is going to change its mind.
We have to ask why the TUC wasted money on employing expensive lobbyists rather than mobilising trade unionists.
The ‘cash for access’ issue is not as big a scandal as the Tories `cash for questions’: but for the labour movement the real issue is how these people got into the position of wielding the influence they do, both on a personal level and for their wretched right wing politics.