Stephen Byers: look how far a £5,000 fare gets you

Posted on Monday 22 March, 2010
Filed Under New Labour

 


NINE times out of ten I get the bus home like everybody else. But on those rare occasions when I pile out of Ronnie Scott’s or the 100 Club and it’s a bit too late or a bit too cold to be hanging around for the N73, I jump in a taxi to Stoke Newington. There’s change from twenty five quid, even after the tip.

So when Stephen Byers – who would have regulated the taxi trade during his stint as transport secretary – compares himself to ‘a cab for hire’ at £5,000 a day, the obvious question is just how far that fare would take a punter.

That kind of cash might even be enough to overcome any lingering traditional reluctance to go south of the river after midnight, guv’nor. Despite the extortionate rates charged by London cabbies, five grand must be sufficient to drop you off in Rome or Vienna, just in time for a bollocking from the missus for staying out late.

The irony here is that Byers’ words precisely echo the remark made by disgraced Tory lobbyist Ian Greer during the cash for questions scandal of the 1990s. It was Greer who famously told Harrod’s owner Mohamed al Fayed that people can rent an MP like they can a London taxi.

For socialists of the period, that formulation seemed to encapsulate everything execrable about the discredited administration of John Major. It summed up precisely why the Tories had to go. Those of us who then yearned for a Labour government would never have imagined that a prominent Labour politician could sink to the same depths.

How wrong we were. Perhaps it is a good job that the public is no longer all that engaged with politics anymore. Because if it was, it would surely be disgusted.

Yet Byers’ outburst somehow serves as a final shameful metaphor for New Labourism, which ultimately created a taxi party from which the super-rich could rent a law or a peerage or a passport or a lucrative PFI deal or pretty much anything else they wanted, at prices starting from a bargain basement £1,000,000 upwards.

Byers started out in politics as a member of the Militant Tendency, an organisation still regularly reviled as exemplifying all things problematic about Labour in the past. He ended up as a Blairite, representing a school of thought that exemplifies everything problematic about Labour today.

The contrast between the two is that Militant supporters were famously puritanical. Where they did bend the rules, it was to advance what they regarded as the wider interests of the working class, rather than to line their own pockets. Blairism doesn’t even have that excuse.


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Comments

21 Responses to “Stephen Byers: look how far a £5,000 fare gets you”

  1. media scum
    on March 22nd, 2010 at 14:59

    Am I alone in being immediately puzzled by the name Anderson Perry. Transpose this and you get the name of Perry Anderson,, UK Socialism’s grand old man of the intellect, and the Editor still (I think) of the New Left Review. Would that not have rung a warning bell alone ? Or am I being just a wee bit paranoid ?

  2. Bill Corr
    on March 22nd, 2010 at 16:05

    The Lib Dems remain unbesmirched excpt for having that awful nutty Tonge woman hanging around like a bad smell in a Volkswagen.

    Talking of her, some of you know this and some of you don’t:

    http://www.jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/

  3. KevB
    on March 22nd, 2010 at 16:18

    What about ‘Blair Babe’ Margaret Moran? Isn’t she in enough do-do at the moment? She hasn’t being spotted in her Luton South constituency for a long while. She’s been a crappy, unreliable, incompetent MP – and seriously expected lobbying work!!!

  4. Sue R
    on March 22nd, 2010 at 16:56

    I don’t know where the ‘Anderson Perry’ comes in, must be something I don’t know about, but I do know that Perry Anderson is no longer editor of New Left review. That honour belongs to Mrs Tariq Ali. Sue Watkins (assuming that they are married).

  5. Robert
    on March 22nd, 2010 at 23:00

    Funny really i spoke about the £5,000 a day because I’m disabled in a wheelchair most of the day and I get £89 a week, i think it’s something like £6,900 a year.

    And this Labour chap said get a job then, he of course is annoyed that his new Labour buddies have sold the party down the toilet, but he could not bring himself to say so, decided he would attack me for not working.

    It is sad to see labour go out like this, because it might get away with expenses because they are all at it, but it’s all building up bit by bit and Browns dithering again did not help.
    New labour…

  6. Les Abbey
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 02:05

    The target of interest should probably be Andrew Adonis, of attacking the BA workers fame. Unless he is prepared to sue his mate Byers we can only believe he did do National Express a favour at the public expense. About time this pinhead got his.

    At least we are seeing the true faces of the Blairites.

  7. Bill Corr
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 05:59

    Is Les Abbey under the impression that there is an ideological or ethical distinction between Blairoids and McBroonians?

  9. media scum
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 09:33

    For the record, Anderson Perry was the ficticious US compnay looking for lobbyists and which was used by the Despatches team as their lure

  10. Sue R
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 09:36

    These labour MPs ought to become supermodels. They don’t get out of bed for less that £10,000 for a mornign’s work. But, who’s surprised? Destroy the Labour Party and shackle the Labour Movement and this is what you get.

  11. Richard Harris
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 09:47

    Well children, isn’t it remarkable how the (oh so) vulgar Marxist concept of the Cash Nexus is thus born out? Capitalism, no longer in contention under Neo-Lib New Labour, (it just “is”), so why not fill your boots, pockets or any other available orifice? Sociologically, the “associative consciousness” as the UK business class happily merges with the UK political class and the aspirational/progessive Labour slogan “Why aren’t WE coining it like the f… bankers who’s arses we worship?” is loudly heard throughout the PLP. To me the pond-life prize was Patricia Hewitt (Hey, Ex NCCL)… “I might be able to just fit you in after my Lloyd’s work”. Pricessless. Still voting for them Dave? Of course you are.

  12. Robert
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 10:01

    One look at Blair is enough to make anyone within real labour puke, sadly real labour f*cked off to the BNP, which is where a few more will go now.

  13. Mike
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 11:50

    “One look at Blair is enough to make anyone within real labour puke, sadly real labour f*cked off to the BNP, which is where a few more will go now.”

    Oh bullshit. Some website (I think it was political betting? I’m not sure- if anyone knows I’d love ot hear it) actually questioned BNP voters, rather than just assuming based on nothing, and found an equal number of ex-Labour and ex-Tory voters- all things considered you would think that ex-Labour would be higher than ex-Tory just because of the broad spectrum Blair won over, so the reality is quite the opposite of what you’re suggesting.

  14. modernity
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 12:06

    Hang on, Robert, weren’t you the bloke that was going to vote for the BNP? As a protest?

  15. Benjamin
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 13:15

    Blimey, taxis in London. I don’t know if you experienced the taxis in Hong Kong when you were here, but I worked out they are not that much more expensive than London buses.

  16. Dave
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 13:25

    Yeah, you can go out anywhere in HK, get caned, and get a cab back for £2-3.

  17. Benjamin
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 13:25

    Byers is simply beyond belief. Blairite he may be, but well trained Blairites don’t make a mess on the floor this close to an election. Moreover, he’s got himself in a total no win situation: if he says he was lying – then he was lying to try to extract a payment of up to five grand a day for influence. But if it was the truth – then it’s no better for him.

  18. Sue R
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 14:31

    Yes, Dave, isn’t exploitation a wonderful thing, providing you are not the one toiling away in a sweatshop and wishing you had better health insurance. Lond live the cheap taxis and booze of Hong Kong.

  19. Benjamin
    on March 23rd, 2010 at 14:59

    Sue R – I wish I had ANY health insurance. I have none. The booze, actually, is not all that cheap in HK.

  20. David Holland
    on March 24th, 2010 at 11:19

    reminds me of the Doctor (from Dead Ringers) calling a cab company and asking for a price for a cab to Betelgeuse.
    He was quoted ‘about £12.’ Bargain really.

  21. Les Abbey
    on March 24th, 2010 at 14:25

    Is Les Abbey under the impression that there is an ideological or ethical distinction between Blairoids and McBroonians?

    Not really Bill.

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