Somehow animals have become inescapable in our political discourse of late – puppies, kittens … & now a fox.
The resignation of Liam Fox as Secretary of State for Defence, however inevitable & deserved, brought about by his own seemingly foolish & incomprehensible behaviour, feels & seems a tragedy. I have been trying to work out why I should feel this way since his brand of politics is not one with which I feel automatic sympathy.
I knew his attempt to ride out this storm was doomed as soon as I saw the front page headline on Friday’s Times: Fox’s friend was funded by private intelligence group – a view confirmed by The Times itself on Saturday: Times report on private donations marks end for Defence Secretary.
Speculation has it that this tangle of unofficial relationships & finances was there to support Mr Fox’s own independent foreign policy agenda which, if true, is extraordinary & ought to see him forever out of favour with Parliament & party.
An alternative, less venal, explanation could be that it was just a kind of left over from the four years which the Shadow Secretary for Defence devoted to mastering his brief so that he would be ready to take over when the Conservatives returned to power, & not a new boy totally the prisoner of ‘the departmental view.’
I have written before about the way in which I felt nervous at the prospect of Labour coming to power in 1997 poorly prepared for the realities of office & running departments. This is a real problem – how does a Party not in office provide potential ministers with the briefing & expertise they will need.
For this, & other perfectly respectable intentions, there is no reason why they should not pick the brains of outside experts. And, once again, this Fox affair raises the question of how we finance this process honestly & fairly in an age when political parties cannot raise the finance from a mass membership, we do not want our politicians to be drawn solely from among the independently wealthy classes, & when private sector, free market ideas of entrepreneurship, consultancy, selling yourself & networking hold sway.
We are told that Dr Fox devoted himself diligently to this task over the four years that he was Defence Secretary in waiting; I know that I couldn’t be an effective politician but that we do need them, & I admire him for his energy & enthusiasm in pursuing his ambitions; most commentators have suggested that he has done a good job since taking office, not least in getting a grip on the Walter Mittyish or Micawberish attitudes to budget cuts which the MOD has displayed in recent decades.
The Times front page article rather alarmingly described the three identified donors who supported Dr Fox’s personal interests as a ‘private intelligence group’, a ‘property investor who lobbies for Israel’ & a ‘venture capitalist keen on strong ties with Washington’. Ooh er, obviously dodgy. James Bond saves us from people like that.
Elsewhere we could read that these could alternatively be described as a company which provides ‘strategic advice & corporate intelligence’ with a charitable arm whose adviser is the sainted Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon; a philanthropist with a passion for the ‘promotion of peace & understanding between peoples’; & a hedge fund owner whose latest project is to save the Readers Digest.
The newest channel of finance for these private activities of Dr Fox & his young adviser is a not-for-profit company called Pargav whose accounts ‘have been seen by The Times’. On Friday I assumed this meant something like accounts filed at Companies House, but a longer article on Saturday (byline Billy Kenber, a graduate trainee as recently as February) makes it clear that these accounts include details of payments made using the company’s debit card, which don’t seem like the kind of thing normally on the public record.
Some of these details are used by Kenber to suggest that at least three people had the use of this debit account.
On December 20th a card was used in Sri Lanka; on December 21st in Dubai & also for a £100 cash withdrawal in London; & in both Sri Lanka & Dubai on December 22nd.
My reaction is So what? but only because (thirty years ago) I had the experience of leaving Abu Dhabi in the morning, having lunch & an afternoon rest in a hotel in Bangkok, ending with a reviving drink of coconut water at about 10pm that evening in a hotel twenty miles north of Colombo. The reason was not a lavish jet-set life style but a runway temporarily blocked by a plane whose nose cone wheel had collapsed on landing. I haven’t checked flying times between Dubai & Colombo, but I should imagine it would be perfectly possible for one person to follow the itinerary implied by the debit card payments. As to the London petty cash withdrawal – any PA or office assistant could have made that.
Another element of this story has of course been the tawdry speculation & innuendo about the exact nature of the relationship between an older & a younger man. Why do politicians need courtiers? Why did Gordon Brown pluck Damien McBride from his job in the civil service? Why did Tony Blair need Alastair Campbell?
To do their dirty work for them; to provide a hedge & a shield; to have about them people they can trust who are on their side; to have somebody to act as general dogsbody; to train the next generation. There is of course an ancient, long established & honourable tradition for the last of these – both Cameron & Clegg benefited from a period working for a senior – the only thing surprising is the modern habit of giving the title ‘adviser’ rather than ‘secretary’ or ’ADC’ to such inexperienced youngsters.
I have enjoyed putting my feminist hat on & considering what the reaction would be to any young woman in such a position. It would be difficult; even if the relationship with the boss were handled with complete ease & tact & was accepted by the politician’s family & colleagues it would still, I think, be very difficult to have the right kind of relationship as a go-between in the kind of intermediary role being undertaken by Mr Werritty.
However, the thought which keeps popping unbidden in to my mind in all this is that, with a name like that, the young man’s story is just crying out to be written by Charles Dickens.
