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Cherie and Tony enjoying a Chinese takeaway |
Camden books | Review | Tony and Cherie Blair | Lord Levy | John Prescott | autobiographies
Cherie Blair, Lord Levy and John Prescott – a ‘repellant Trinity’ concludes Illtyd Harrington in reviewing their autobiographies
WHAT strange bed fellows these three make, posing as Safe, Hope and Charity. In reality, beneath the decaying masks, there lies Greed, Vanity and Sloth.
Cherie Blair is more Lily the Pink than Mother Theresa – at least she acknowledges that a great grandfather was a Liverpudlian smuggler involved in protection rackets.
Relentlessly, she catalogues her high achievements, spurred on by the Lord and her formidable granny plus mum, Gale, deserted early on by actor Tony Booth, her father.
Her role model was the defence barrister Rose Heilbron, a fellow Liverpudlian, who blazed a trail into legal history.
Under the tutelage of leading commercial lawyer Derry Irvine, Cherie rose and met her fellow in pupilage, Tony Blair.
After a long, drunken Christmas lunch given by their boss, and Blair’s future Lord Chancellor, Tony took her home on the number 74 bus. The top deck was empty. She spent the night in his Primrose Hill flat carrying, I presume, her now infamous “contraceptive equipment”. That night of passion in Primrose Hill led to the marriage in March 1980.
Thereafter Tony’s star rose and rocketed when Labour leader John Smith died suddenly in 1994. His initial triumph came in May 1997 when he took possession of the keys of Number 10 and rattled them. She was ecstatic.
Soon feuding, fighting and jealousy struck like a summer storm. Gordon Brown was in Number 11 like a threatening black cloud. Angie Hunter, Tony’s gatekeeper, was shown the door and a £200,000 job in BP, presumably passing Silvia and Carole Caplin coming in with their bag of magic crystals. In days to come, Carole relieved Tony’s tensions by full body massage in the rural quietness of Chequers.
As the glitter and gallantry of Blair’s Camelot became tarnished, so did the patience and professional acumen of Alastair Campbell and his partner, Fiona Millar. They erupted and the sanctified corridors of power echoed to some in-your-face ripe abuse. The word “liar” was used. Once, Andre – Cherie’s society gay crimper – boldly stood up for her to Campbell. Andre became her confidant, bag packer, case carrier. Here and elsewhere. She paid for him to accompany her on a world trip. He was her consolation and lay confessor.
Lord Levy of Mill Hill also had a deep spiritual journey after he met the Blairs at a St John’s Wood dinner party.
Levy, then plain Mister, became entranced by the new youthful Leader of the Opposition. Tony and he were yoked together – a dynamic duo who between them would rebuild Britain, the Labour party and perhaps the world.
Levy became a phenomenal money raiser, collecting up to £15 million for Labour’s war chest. The unkind made disparaging comments about the public photographs. Michael, as did Cherie, makes his spouse Gilda his rock. Gilda, it seems, was not totally swept away. Cherie’s philosophy, she asserts, is based on her Roman Catholic faith and the family. Michael’s on “ambition and compassion”, it sounds like a description of a political mercy killer.
All was shattered one glorious sunny July day in 2006. The Old Bill was knocking on the front door. The noble lord was interrogated in Colindale nick while the Prime Minister was questioned at his sedate quarters at Number 10. Then he was asked 170 questions about “Cash for Honours” and bravely replied: “I have nothing to add to my statements.”
His anguish became acute when he discovered that Blair had hired a private consultant, one Ronald Cohen, to organise loans to the Labour party. Levy claims this was the root cause of the aborted one-year police inquiry.
I have heard less plaintive pleas in the divorce courts by abandoned wives: “I was angry, exposed, manipulated and misled,” writes Levy with bitter sarcasm.
He adds that if he had been charged and brought to trial “the very first name on the witness list with a difference would inevitably be the man I helped and supported, believed in – Anthony Charles Lynton Blair”.
Happily for both, it was not necessary. Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, and the CPS took the advice of an eminent QC not to prosecute.
No more was Blair his schnoozer (or buddy). “I was lied to,” he cried. To add to this ingratitude, Blair vetoed his nomination to the Privy Council.
Castor and Pollocks, those heavenly twins, were no more.
John Prescott’s Prezza – My Story is not quite his version of Mein Kampf (My Struggle). It reads more like a sketch for Les Dawson than the former deputy prime minister musing on past glories. Here again, homage is paid to Pauline, his betrayed but tolerant wife.
It became apparent to him in a period of sad realisation that he was just part of the scenery in the Blairs’ self-absorbing Chamber of Horrors – a working-class piece of camouflage held in contempt by the two he once tried to reconcile over a steak and kidney pie in his grace and favour house in Admiralty Arch.
To his detractors he is seen as a bucolic buffoon in the gruesome court of King and Queen Blair but, worst of all, a notable conspirator in the real scandal – the war in Iraq.
There you have it. As the song says they are the “waiter and the porter and upstairs maid” of a repellant Trinity.
After Tony and Michael had single handedly won the third general election for Labour, his lordship was ruminating in his house in Mill Hill. It was a time of grey banishment.
Suddenly, the phone rings from Number 10. Alas, it is only Cherie asking for his help to buy 150 Thank You umbrellas to be charged to Labour’s accounts. It would only be a couple of hundred quid, she prattles.
Lord and Lady Levy, weary of it all, decided to cough up the £2,000 themselves. A true model to this trilogy of deceit and venality which closed a decade begun in golden optimism, ending in rejection and the resurgence of Labour’s Old Enemy.
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