The Obscurer is usually Blairite Pravda, but now and then it does something worth reading. Have a read of this story. One Anthony Bailey, a rich PR man, is apparently running a Labour Party entity called the “Faith Task Force” charged with raising donations from the rich and religious.
What is fascinating is exactly what Jamie Dowson’s story doesn’t point out. For a start, Mr. Bailey claims to have raised £7 million for the City Academies program. Yes, the same one at the heart of the police investigation into cash-for-honours. And honour – or rather, influence – is what he got for the cash. He is, it turns out, an “advisor” to the Department for Education and Skills and a member of its “Gifted and Talented Task Force”.
Wonderfully, even Lord Levy was suspicious of where his money came from, rejecting a £500,000 donation to the Labour Party from Bailey’s own pocket on suspicion that it came from abroad, in breach of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 1999. That law, let us point out, does not restrict donations to a nonparty pet project like the academies.
Bailey appears to be the Vatican’s chouchou flack, running a supposedly ancient order of chivalry for them. But let that pass. What worries me more than that is his client list – including the House of Saud and the Syrian Government. Lovely. And what about this?
As chairman of ‘Painting and Patronage’, a regular cultural exchange of artists between Saudi Arabia and Europe, Bailey has presented paintings by Prince Charles at exhibitions sponsored by British Aerospace.
Paintings by Prince Charles? In Saudi Arabia? Sponsored by BAE? And this chap gets to “advise” government on the prime minister’s pet policy? Actually, let’s not let the order pass. His order of chivalry “bestowed honours” on Margaret Thatcher and donated charitable funds to “pro-life causes”. I wonder how much of the charity came from either the Saudis or BAE? And did any of that money wander into one of the Blair academies?
It all has a smell of John Latsis’s £2m bung to the Tories, which was also backed up by lavish funding of Prinny’s various hobbies. It goes without saying that the link with the cash-for-honours case is tastefully elided.
Update: Via Labour Humanist, Bailey’s official biography according to his website. And what do we find? Not only is he on the board of a thing called the United Learning Trust that has been given not less than 12 schools to run, but he’s an Ambassador-at-Large for the Gambia. Yup, that’ll be the same Gambia whose president claims to be able to cure AIDS by magic, and whose private Ilyushin-62 C5-GNM is on a UN Security Council blacklist.