Fits of morality
Rod Liddle on the idiocy of trying to bring down politicians for mere peccadillos while overlooking their real offences
The government continues to use very, very careful language while trying to explain away its alleged role in the coup against the president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang. 1 zst week the shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, tabled the following question relating to the government's prior knowledge of the coup: 'To ask the Prime Minister whether a) he or h) ministers and c) officials had discussions in an official capacity with the former Rt Hon Member for Hartlepool during the last 12 months.'
As I mentioned last week, Peter Mandelson had connections with the Lebanese businessman Eli Calil who is alleged to have been the principal backer of the abortive coup for which Simon Mann, among others, languishes in prison. Mr Mandelson once rented a flat from the somewhat dubious Mr Calil, who has recently fled the country. Mr Calil told friends and acquaintances that he and Mandy were mates and reportedly that Mandy had assured him that there would he no problem from the British government were the coup to proceed. At least one player in this strange game claims to have heard Calil discussing the whole shebang with Mandelson on the telephone; but this may be rubbish. My source may have misremembered, for a start. Or the entertaining Mr Calil may have been talking to the speaking clock or one of those phone-adate hotgirl hotlines and merely claiming that it was Mandelson.
Mr Mandelson, of course, denies ever speaking to Calil about Equatorial Guinea. Anyway, the response from the Prime Minister's office reads as follows: 'Officials in No. 10 discussed with him [Mandelsoril on one occasion recent media reports that named the former Member in connection with the attempted coup.' There was no response to the questions about meetings with ministers or officials. We can only wonder, One of the problems with this story is that you cannot believe a single thing anyone tells you. Even more than with most political stories, this particular yarn is populated by fantasists, nutters, the terminally disingenuous, the shady, the corrupt and the downright dishonest. One might have hoped, therefore, for a shaft of light, for a moment of clarity, from our own government. But no such luck.
No such luck from MandeIson's new Brussels office, either. Last week I promised that I would share with you the answers to several questions which I'd emailed to Mr Mandelson about this business. Well, Mandy's European Commission spokesmonkey, Claude Veron-Reville, refused to answer any of the questions put to him. His one-line response was the closest an EU press officer ever gets to 'piss off and die'.
Last week the Foreign Office, prompted by Michael Ancram's careful questioning, released a statement which was supposedly intended to clarify just what the government knew and when. But it succeeded only in muddying the waters. It would be cynical to suggest that this was the real intention.
Jack Straw's statement included the following paragraph: 'On 29 January this year, the Foreign Office received an intelligence report of preparations for a possible coup in Equatorial Guinea. It was not definitive enough for us to conclude that a coup was likely or inevitable.'
But it was definitive enough for the Foreign Office to review immediately its civil contingency plans for the evacuation of British nationals from Malabo and indeed for Foreign Office officials to summon the mercenary and former boss of Sandline, Tim Spicer, and tell him that a coup against Obiang would be very naughty indeed and would not therefore receive anything from the British government except strong opprobrium. Mr Spicer said he knew nothing about the proposed coup.
For what it's worth. I have yet to encounter anyone in this whole business who thinks the British government didn't know quite a lot about the proposed coup well before January this year. The more the government changes its mind about what it knew and when, and the more it obfuscates, the more the opposition — and the journalists and the somewhat miffed government in the Equatorial Guinea capital, Malabo,
and indeed the South African police — begin to smell a rat.
But why the rat? Let us assume — quite wrongly, I'm sure — that MI6 knew all about the proposed coup a long time ago and was not remotely averse to its aims. What's the problem? Teodoro Obiang is not a Jeffersonian democrat. Even by African standards, which are on the lowish side, he is a baddun. In terms of the big picture, the world would be a slightly better place if Obiang was booted out and a slightly less corrupt ruler installed in his place. But international law (which, when the mood takes us, we are happy to ignore) and a sort of reflexive propensity to dissemble leave the government floundering, changing its message from day to day and choosing its footing with the trepidation and dread of someone playing hopscotch in a minefield.
Increasingly, these days, we call our politicians to account on technicalities, because they are somehow not vulnerable on the bigger picture. Never mind the utter madness of the war in Iraq, a war opposed by a large majority of the British people. Instead, we jubilantly assert that our Foreign Secretary looks as if he's flouted international law on a technicality over Equatorial Guinea; he really should have told Mr Obiang what was going on. And so we go for him, because we can, because on this most minor and insignificant of points he is clearly vulnerable.
And then look at the Blunkett business, the stuff with our publisher, Kimberly Quinn. Here we have probably the most authoritarian Home Secretary in living memory and a man whose private moral code is less pristine even than mine (uh, arguably). And yet we go for him because of a technicality, once again; he may have personally or through his office fast-tracked a visa for his former lover's nanny and he allowed her to travel on a train as if she were his 'spouse'. In other words, he did a couple of things which most likely you or I or anyone in the country might have done for the person they loved in similar circumstances. As the latest opinion polls show, the country thinks he shouldn't resign over this. But we go for him, because we can, because the opportunity is there. And knowing full well that we can go for him on this technicality, the Home Secretary starts to dissemble and orders a wholly fatuous 'inquiry' to ensure that his name is cleared —an inquiry which everybody in the country is convinced will be a whitewash.
It is a peculiar way to deal with our elected representatives and does not improve the image of politics. In a perfect world, President Obiang would be overthrown with tacit British help and we might all allow ourselves a small cheer and an even bigger cheer when Straw loses his position because of his support for the war in Iraq. And Blunkett would be kicked out of office for his profoundly illiberal and un-British scheme for identity cards, and his private life left alone. But I suppose that it's not a perfect world.
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