On the take
Taki
LRougemont
ibel laws prevent me from spilling the beans, but a certain name caught my eye while reading the Sunday newspapers. The name was among those who donated to New Labour. The gentleman in question is anything but a gentleman, in fact he used to pimp for Adnan Khashoggi back in the days when Adnan was considered among the richest men in the world. Khashoggi was and remains a very nice guy. I once asked him about the future New Labour donor. How could a mild-mannered person like himself employ such a vulgarian. Or words to that effect. Adnan smiled and told me that, 'In a low-life business such as finding women one needs the friendship of low-lifes ... '
Be that as it may. Accepting money from louche characters is nothing new, even in merry old England. In endemically corrupt France, Francois Mitterrand was extremely corrupt, although I doubt he tried to enrich himself or his family. In my own country Andreas Papandreou was out of control in his eagerness to make money. His wife has just sold the villa he built for her for an enormous amount, prompting even the socialist newspapers to gasp at the extent of his corruption. I am told by people in the know that Papandreou accepted kickbacks close to one hundred million greenbacks, most of them lying in safe foreign havens. Just imagine what the Hindujas would have done if dealing with the like of Ali Babandreou. Italy's Christian Democrats were almost as crooked as African kleptocracies, although things are much better at present. The Belgians, too, are very corrupt, and let's not begin to talk about the EU and its totally dishonest bureaucrooks. Ironically, authoritarian regimes like those of Salazar in Portugal and Franco's in Spain were never on the take, even at the highest level. Ditto for the bungling Greek colonels. George Papadopoulos died in prison. His wife, Despina, occasionally accepts gifts of food from supporters, lives in a single-bedroom apartment in a lower-middle-class neighbourhood, and relies on her pension for survival. The other two colonels who made up the original troika, Pattakos and Makarezos, both live in very modest circumstances.
Businessmen who deal with governments have a seismographic alertness to bent politicians. And foreign businessmen, in particular, have their own ways of conducting business. In Mexico, a socialist country, enormous fortunes have been made through corruption. Four of the last five presidents of that miserable country have ended up billionaires, on their rather small salaries.
My favourite comedian is President Bongo of Gabon, another socialist paradise. He has been president for 34 years, and in last week's Paris Match he gave an interview in which he declared that the word corruption does not exist in Africa: 'It was invented by you, the French.' Oh well, and I thought comedy was dead.
But back to England and New Labour. As Paul Johnson wrote, 'New Labour has become the first government to finance itself, regularly and as a matter of course, by awarding peerages to wealthy donors . . and other goodies a government has at its disposal — offices, contracts, passports, citizenship, to name a few.' As the sage pointed out, New. Labour is not about policies, it's about money. Or, as Neil Hamilton wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, 'If John Major's government had been corrupt and given Mohamed Fayed what he demanded, he would have received the passport that he thought he could buy through party donations.'
Let's face it. This Levy chappie, Labour's chief fund raiser, hardly inspires confidence. New Labour outlawed foreign political donations, but when one controls the Home Office, British passports have been known to turn an illegal donation into a legal one. Still, I never thought I'd see the day when English politics had sleaze written all over it. I never thought I'd see a minister of the Crown living in a castle with his boyfriend from Brazil, just as I never thought I'd see a pornographer in No.10 being smoozed by the Prime Minister. But it's all my fault. I was a romantic and, like all romantics, a fool. When Blair had the Gallagher brothers to Downing Street upon taking office, alarm bells should have rung. Liam Gallagher, according to a popularity poll at Madame Tussaud's, is more hated than Saddam, behind Hitler and Slobodan Milosevic. Blair is fifth. It shows that you can't fool all of the people all of the time. No ex-pimps, however, figure on the list.
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