a hustler's life

I’m actually inclined to believe Stephen Byers when he says that he exaggerated what he would be able to do for the corporate clients he’s now hustling for, if only on the grounds that it’s difficult to see what an ex-transport minister could do for anyone that would be worth £5000 per day (or would enable whoever hired him to plausibly claim that the cost was worth it). And it’s not as if he’s fresh goods either. His last ministerial post ended in 2002, which means that a lot of the contacts he made at the time, both government and corporate, will have moved on. I’m not particularly impressed that he helped Tesco out either. “Doing things for Tesco” is as near as this government has to an expression of principle. 

As Justin points out, influence peddling was always part of the New Labour project. It follows rationally enough. The whole thing was supposed to be post ideological, which means in practice that you spend your time managing, choosing between and sometimes working for projects proposed by competing interest groups. At first, the public pays you in your capacity as minister. Then the taxi meter starts, as Byers pointed out. 

I liked the bit about being able to get access to Tony Blair. It’s as if the whole network had simply transferred itself out of parliament and reconstituted itself as a kind of shadow government. But would Tony return Stephen’s phone calls? Maybe. Blair seems to have set himself up as a kind of global influence brokerage running through various foundations which enable people who might like to work together in various ways to meet and see whether they get along. So it depends on whether the people Stephen can scrape up are worth Tony’s time, and that of his valuable friends. So maybe a headline charge of £5000 makes sense. He’s got to pull in some heavy hitters to make the other heavy hitters take any notice of him. I don’t suppose he’ll be getting them now.

Comments

[Alex]

On the other hand, there's Hoon, setting himself up as a sort of one-man exemplar of moral depravity. I could vomit.

[robert]

Sleaze spin and grubby politicians, it's nice to see Major and Thatcher were right, it does go on in all governments.

[Dan Hardie]

I was in Portcullis House this morning and Geoff Hoon walked past very slowly, like a pompous ghost. You could have taken a picture of him to illustrate the phrase 'elaborate unconcern'.