We do not often hear from John Major, but when we do he often has something interesting to say.
This interview he gave at the weekend is just one of those times. For then best part of fifteen years we have had the left demonising the Conservative party and at times we have been to weak at standing and defending ourselves. With the dramatic downturn of the Government, and the impending loom for the country, it is good to see senior members prepared to come out and defend the record of hat was done throughout those 18 years. It is now a long time since those days but still Labour hark back to that period, although for most they can see that this Government has had more than enough time to have their actions judged. In fact I noticed that Labour Watch has been running a series of posts on exactly the line that Blair took with Major.
The Lib Dems are hardly whiter than white with the £2.5m donation they accepted from a dodgy company during the last General Election and are still waiting for the end of a criminal investigation before they know whether they will have to pay it back. The there is the sexual sleaze of their leadership contenders; Oaten and Hughes.
It is an interesting comparison of so-called Conservative sleaze set against that of Labour, Conservative first.
- Entrapment of two backbenchers in “Cash for Questions”
- Neil Hamilton -
- Jonathan Aitken - former Cabinet member
- Lord Archer - former cabinet member
- Dame Shirley Porter
- There were a number of sexual indiscretions (including of course John Major himself) but I am not convinced you can call these sleaze
And the what of Labour:
- Bernie Ecclestone
- Peter Mandelson - failing to tell the whole truth on his mortgage application
- Peter Mandelson - trying to get fast passports for Labour donors
- David Blunkett - took a job as a company director whilst a Minister but failed to tell Parliamentary officials until after he had taken the job
- Tessa Jowell - Husband now up on charges in Italy for corruption
- Labour loans - Labour party treasurer does not even know the loans exist
- Cash for Peerages - Whilst the police brought no charges the investigation was started when it emerged that a nomination for a Labour peerage was made for an individual who two months earlier had given the party £2.5m
- Third party donations scandal currently being investigated
- Mis-declared donations to campaign funds - especially those from the awful Peter Hain
As John major has said, the difference is that sleaze appears endemic in the whole nature of this Labour Government. Whilst I take nothing away from the wrong committed by those in the Conservative years I think the sheer scale of the sleaze now, compared to then, deserves a very deep apology from Blair, Brown and Mandelson.
I also think John Major’s final comments from the BBC interview are very telling on the context of the current Government position.
And he predicted that losses to the taxpayer incurred by the Treasury’s attempts to bail out the ailing Northern Rock bank would exceed those created by Black Wednesday in 1992.
Black Wednesday and Northern Rock are not sleaze, but it is about time we got them, and sleaze, into the right perspective.
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