YESTERDAY Prime Minister Blair stepped in to try and save his Minister for Culture, Media and Sports, Tessa Jowell and also his government.
So we now have a minister whose husband may well face trial in Italy over corruption charges, namely that he took a £350,000 bribe from the Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi for allegedly giving false evidence from the witness box to try to save the Italian billionaire from a jail sentence.
Jowell’s husband, David Mills, had already confessed to the corruption charge, but had then withdrawn the confession saying that the Italian police had forced it out of him after 10 hours of interrogation.
There is also a letter in which he seems to admit that the bribe was given to him by Berlusconi, but he has since dismissed the letter as some personal and stupid flight of fancy.
Mills says that the money was a gift from a Neopolitan shipowner, Diego Atanasia, who has said that this could not be true since he was in jail at the time.
Mills, in a letter to the Dubai financial authorities who had barred him from practising there while his affairs were being investigated, wrote that his wife was a member of the British cabinet and that the Prime Minister gave him support and sympathy, to try and sway them.
In the course of his career as a corporate lawyer and tax specialist, he formed a company, one of whose directors is alleged, by the Guardian newspaper, to be the key intermediary between the Berlusconi financial empire and the Mafia.
Jowell pleaded a lack of knowledge about all of these issues, about the offshore accounts and hedge funds, and a complete ignorance about a series of mortgage agreements that were signed by her without question when requested to by her husband. She admitted that the £350,000 was used to pay off a mortgage without her being any the wiser about where it came from.
Her reaction to the deepening crisis in fact has been a ruthless one, to throw her husband overboard to try and save New Labour.
The fact of the matter is that the Blairites fawn over the capitalist class and the three Blair governments have been a testimony to this.
There was Peter Mandelson sacked twice; the first time involving a massive loan from a Labour millionaire. Then Blunkett sacked twice; the first time for seeking to use his office to do a favour for his millionaire high society mistress. Blair brought both men back to his cabinet as soon as he could, but both had to be sacked again.
There have been innumerable other scandals, from big donors getting seats in the House of Lords to Blair’s habit of taking free holidays at the homes and estates of the super rich.
In fact, Berlusconi has been a special pal of Blair’s. We have all seen the photos of the two men frollicking in Italy. Of course, Berlusconi is a billionaire and must be OK. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Blair over the Iraq war, and Blair stood by him when it was charged that he had ex-fascists and neo-fascists in his cabinet.
Blair’s whole policy has been to help the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer, as even the government’s own statistics show.
Now the stench has become unbearable, with his minister’s husband facing the prospect of standing trial alongside Berlusconi, whose alleged mafia connections are sure to figure in any trial. Jowell knew nothing and could see nothing amiss in her husband’s antics. Blair was just as ‘innocent’ in his alliance with Berlusconi.
British workers must cleanse this Augean stable by bringing the Blair government down and going forward to a workers’ government and socialism.