Britain: Blair up to his neck in arms corruption and other scandals

Posted on by

The cartoon on Tony Blair here alludes to Alfred Tennyson’s poem, The Lady of Shalott.

Blair and cash for peerages scandal, cartoon

The Lady of Shalott

The cartoon is based on this painting about the poem The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

From British daily News Line:

Saturday, 16 December 2006

Law cannot be allowed to get in the way of profiteering

THE Attorney General – the same official who ruled after much equivocation that the war with Iraq was legal – on Thursday told the House of Commons that ‘it has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest.’

He was referring to the fact that the investigation into whether alleged illegal and corrupt payments had been made by BAE Systems to elements of the Saudi royal family could not be balanced with the much more important issues of preserving their profits through avoiding the cancellation of a contract for 72 strike fighters, and maintaining oil rich Saudi Arabia’s support for Britain’s foreign policy in the Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Iran.

For the capitalist ruling class, maintaining its profits and its relations with oil rich Saudi Arabia were always much more important than any rule of law. This is now the declared view of the Labour government.

So when the Saudi Royal family gave the British government 10 days to quash the Scotland Yard inquiry, it was quashed, in the interests of profit and the future of British capitalism, and to hell with maintaining the law.

The same process was at work at the time of the Attorney General’s Iraq war dilemma.

He began with the view that the war could well be illegal and criminal, but this respect for the law was dumped when it could not be brought into balance with the value of Iraq’s oil wealth to the British bourgeoisie.

BAE Systems: here.

Saudis, Bin Laden family, 9-11, and Michael Moore here.

British cluster bombs: here.

Blair is involved in many more scandals than only those ones:

On Thursday 14 December, Tony Blair became the first serving Prime Minister to be interviewed by the police in a criminal investigation.

Blair chose the same day to shut down a major criminal investigation into alleged corruption by the arms company BAE Systems and its executives claiming it would endanger Britain’s national security. …

The police questioning was over the cash for peerages scandal.

Blair’s tennis partner and personal fundraiser Lord Levy — known as “Lord Cashpoint” — negotiated nearly £14 million in secret loans.

Labour’s former general secretary, Matt Carter, then a key member of Blair’s inner circle, had told the businessmen that their loans would not have to be declared.

Four businessmen who gave Labour £4.5 million in unpublicised loans and were subsequently nominated for peerages.

Related articles