Training | 2010.03.25
Hugh Muir's Diary
Who could have let us down over the collapse of Lehman, George? Anyone we know?
✒ So out came George Osborne on Monday, swinging, taking no prisoners over the failure of oversight that led to disaster at Lehman Brothers. "Irresponsible. Grossly irresponsible. On the part of the company itself; obviously they must take primary responsibility, the directors of Lehman," he said. And that must be right. So who were those directors? Well one was Sir Chris Gent, the former chief executive of Vodafone, who sat on the Lehman audit committee. Yes, Sir Chris Gent, a noted Tory donor, who was also drafted on to David Cameron\'s all-star economic recovery committee. And yes, it is true that his audit committee did raise concerns after a whistleblower spoke out about dodgy accounting, but, one must ask, did the alarm bells ring loudly enough? George is right. It\'s awful. Shocking.
✒ And with Michael Gove leading the effort to paint the union Unite as Labour\'s militant tendency, one might expect some semblance of unity in Tory ranks. But sad to report, there do now appear to be differences appearing between Donal Blaney and Greg Smith, co-founders of the Young Britons\' Foundation, the Tory "madrasa" for party election candidates. That\'s the training foundation whose students get to shoot guns and listen to Tory worthies; whose leaders have pronounced waterboarding justifiable, the NHS a waste of money and global warming a scam. Blaney is a free spirit and can say what he likes these days, but Smith is a bigwig in Hammersmith, the municipal jewel in the crown for rightwing Conservatives. He has a position to protect. Hence a spot of distancing. "Donal is not a mainstream politician. He likes to put out some ideas that make people think and challenge the status quo," Smith tells his local paper. And anyway: "I don\'t think we should use any form of torture in interrogating prisoners or suspects. Instinctively I would imagine that waterboarding is torture, though I have never studied it." We have. It is.
✒ And what prompted Iain Duncan Smith, John Redwood, Bernard Jenkin and former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton to hold a neocons get-together at Westminster yesterday. What were they planning? What of Tehran? Is it safe?
✒ Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller speaks, and it is a tribute to the former head of MI5 that, as she clarifies what she did or didn\'t know about the waterboarding of terrorists, she only clouds things further. In that trade such an outcome can only be desirable. I said "that I did not know exactly what had been done specifically to Khalid Sheik Mohammed until after I retired", she said in a letter to the Guardian on Monday. "Apart from that, I made no comment on what I knew or did not know in office." But then who ever knows what they know? Consider the position described last year by the present MI5 head, Jonathan Evans. "I did not fully realise that I was working for MI5 until a few days after I had joined," he said.
✒ Finally, with the last in his series The Great Offices of State due to air on BBC2 this Saturday, film-maker Michael Cockerell takes to the digital station Colourful Radio and reveals himself to be an accomplished mimic. One minute it\'s Michael as Harold Macmillan. The next, he\'s John Major, on the pressures of being PM. But the highlight is his mimicked recollection of Enoch Powell (pictured), darling of the nutty right, high priest of moral seriousness, grasping for a fee to be interviewed about the rise to the Labour leadership of the late Michael Foot. We\'ll do the interview at your house, says Cockerell. "Nay tarry a while," interjects Powell. "There is something you haven\'t mentioned." What\'s that, asks Cockerell. "The filthy lucre. The pot of Russian gold." You know I can\'t negotiate fees, protests Cockerell. "I am aware of the conventions that subsist within your organisation but I believe you can have an input," says the rabble-rouser. "I think Enoch Powell on Michael Foot on the day one is elected leader of his own party must be worth 100 guineas of anyone\'s money." I see rivers of blood? More likely rivers of cash.
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