GPC London Club Meeting/Mixer

ON THE first Wednesday of July 1998, on the floor of the House of Commons, Britain’s prime minister rose to defend himself. According to the news reports, for the first time since his election the year before, Tony Blair’s hands were shaking ecommerce web hosting. The PM denounced the American reporter whose exposé of wholesale corruption in his cabinet “had not one shred of evidence”. Meanwhile, Blair’s press spokesman, a former pornographer named Alastair Campbell, grabbed every newsman he could find in the hallway to whisper that they should not trust a “man in a hat”, while Peter Mandelson, known as Prince of Darkness, and the power behind the power of the prime minister reseller hosting, hissed a warning about “the man with an agenda”. Note: For Britons who can stomach a full autopsy of British democracy, the UK edition of 'Best Democracy' has a much expanded chapter, 'Lobbygate: Cash for Access, Blair and the Sale of Britain" (Constable & Robinson 2003)

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to enjoy any of this. I could hardly keep my eyes open, half-passed-out after 70 sleepless hours in my “safe house” in Crouch End, a workingclass neighborhood in London adult web hosting. I had moved in with sympathetic friends in the middle of the night because of a crank bomb scare at my hotel and to avoid camera crews.

But that’s not why I didn’t get any sleep. My paper, the Observer, had run a front-page story with detailed evidence that cronies of the prime minister, including his princeling and other cabinet members colocation hosting, had bartered policies for payola, cash for access. Our Observer team described lobbyists’ special, secret access to ministers operating a flea market for favors out of 10 Downing Street.