Liam Fox is history – but he’s still causing problems
The Mole: Was Sir Gus O’Donnell’s report on Fox delayed to give Cameron an easier ride at PMQs?
These are exactly the sort of links that the neo-cons in America are so keen on fostering. Yet Sir Gus blithely accepts the assurances of William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, that Fox was not running a parallel neo-con policy through Werritty at the MoD. Interestingly, Sir Gus adds that this was "accepted" by the National Security Council and the Cabinet.
But if this is right, what on earth was the Atlantic Bridge all about? That was the link with the neo-cons in America (its website is now down) that encouraged donors to cough up large sums of money. If Fox was not running his own operation inside government, why did they donate the money? And why did Werritty create a separate company called Pargav to fund his trips abroad?
Sir Gus does shed some new light on the web of businesses set up by Werritty behind the Atlantic Bridge. He said "Mr Werrity also has a company, Todiha Ltd, which is Mr Werritty’s personal company and this company invoiced Pargav for Mr Werritty’s services."
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The report names six donors including for the first time Mick Davis, chief executive of Xstrata, the FTSE 100 mining company. The Guardian reports that Davis is a close friend of both Michael Lewis and Poju Zabludowicz, two donors whose identities had already been made public.
Werritty - who ran the Atlantic Bridge as a charity until it was blown apart by a critical report from the Charity Commissioners - was clearly using his links to Foxy for a network of right-wing contacts in Israel, America and other places of interest to Foxy, such as Sri Lanka.
Sir Gus should get to the bottom of this operation, and if he won’t then it is a good subject for further investigation by a select committee.
As for the Opposition, given the alarm bells sounded about inflation by the Governor of the Bank of England last night, Ed Miliband will be sorely tempted to stop flogging Fox’s dead horse, and buoyed by a Labour lead in the latest Populus opinion poll, hit Cameron where it really hurts - on the economy, stupid.
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