Honours ‘cover-up’ meeting revealed

[cal04]

SCOTLAND YARD detectives who are investigating the cash for honours scandal have uncovered a private meeting held last summer at which key Downing Street aides allegedly plotted a cover-up.

The meeting was attended by four of Tony Blair’s closest aides, including Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, Lord Levy, Labour’s chief fundraiser, and Ruth Turner, a senior adviser.

It is understood that Levy was questioned about a note of the meeting, said to have been held at Downing Street, when he was arrested last week for allegedly conspiring to pervert the course of justice. One source described the note as setting out an “action plan” for dealing with the police inquiry.

According to a senior Whitehall source, police believe they now have evidence to recommend charges in the investigation. “They (the police) believe there was a conspiracy to cover up evidence over a period of weeks,” said the source yesterday.

(snip)
Jon Cruddas, a contender for the Labour deputy leadership, in his appearance today on BBC1’s The Politics Show, will call on Blair to step down. In a live interview on Sky News, Charles Clarke, the former home secretary, is expected to launch a fresh salvo against Blair by declaring that Labour has sunk to its “worst position for 20 years”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2583238,00.html

[Benhurst]

1. O Happy Day!

:popcorn: Recommended

[eppur_se_muova]

2. But wasn't attended by Blair ?? Oh, what a close one ...

that would have ended his reign for good.

[IndianaGreen]

3. So just how bad is it, Tony? (The Poodle's Watergate)

This is Blair's biggest scandal. Backbench Labourites, Tories, and Liberal-Democrats are calling for Blair to stand down now for the good of the country.

So just how bad is it, Tony?

Fresh arrests in the cash-for-honours inquiry. The PM questioned again by police. Calls for him to step down - and not just from the opposition parties. Still Tony Blair remains defiant, even invoking the spirit of Mrs Thatcher

Gaby Hinsliff, political editor
Sunday February 4, 2007
The Observer

The crash barriers designed to restrain the crowds were still stacked on their lorry when the Prime Minister's outriders came to a halt in a busy Bloomsbury street yesterday. They were clearly superfluous. A few tourists looking over from the steps of a nearby hotel were the only audience as Tony Blair stepped smartly from his car.

Inside the TUC conference centre, unused chairs were piled at the back of the room and most of the Cabinet had found other ways to spend a Saturday morning than attending a policy forum for grassroots activists. The small audience received the usual slick delivery, a valiantly maintained image of a guy just doing his job, confident that the storm will soon blow over. Anthony Charles Linton Blair, at your service.

To rebellious backbenchers, it just shows how out of touch with reality Blair is, a bunkered Hitler, deluded and in denial about his war being over. 'If he thinks this crisis is not doing serious and lasting damage to the government and the party then it won't be men in grey suits, it'll be the men in white coats coming for him,' said one rebel MP.

But to the remaining loyalists, it is the Prime Minister's tormentors who are on a different planet. How can a man who received such a warm and apparently heartfelt standing ovation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last weekend be finished? Even the sports teachers in Shropshire he met last week stood up and clapped when he had finished speaking.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,2005536,00.html