Something of the Night

[rozk]

For the last couple of weeks, Nick Cohen has been running with an interesting story in both the Observer and the New Statesman to the effect that Peter Kilfoyle, a very Old Labour MP for Liverpool, is using the Freedom of Information Act to go over something that happened when Michael Howard, now Tory leader, was Home Secretary.

Essentially, on Howard's watch, two Liverpool gang bosses were released after ten months in jail on the grounds that they had informed and made themselves useful. In fact, they had done little more than arrange for drugs and guns to be planted on rivals, and tell the police where to look. They returned to Liverpool and their careers with the reputation of invulnerability.

Liverpool's police force is not known for incorruptibility.

One of the main minions of the more powerful of the two gangsters is a cousin of Michael Howard, and maintains some family connection.

Howard was the Tory Home Secretary who set the fashion of illiberalism which New Labour have imitated. The child of refugees from Nazi Germany, he was one of the chief instigators of the whole anti-'asylum-seeker' thing.

He is also famous for saying, on every oppurtunity, 'Prison works.'

Which is interesting in the circumstances.

His former Prisons Minister Anne Widdecombe damaged Howard by a speech in which she talked - this was after the whole mess about the resignation of the head of the prison service and the occasion on which Howard avoided answering a television interviewer's question fifteen times - of Howard's having 'something of the night' about him.

Since he became leader, she refuses to discuss what she said at all, not disavowing it, but simply stonewalling.

As Prisons Minister, she will have known about the gangsters' release.

I think Anne Widdecombe perhaps knows a deal more than that, and is stonewalling to protect her party from scandal about a man she suggested strongly should never be its leader. She really needs to spill.

Someone up there clearly likes Tony Blair more than the rest of us.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think your "up there" should be "down there". Another politician with a Wolfram and Hart connection, perhaps?

More seriously, it does sound like something decidedly fishy happened. Let's hope she does eventually tell all.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense.

[debg.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. My, my, my.

I'm ten days into House Renovation Hell, and can't even find my house phone behind cartons of books and furniture piled high, so I've been missing things.

How likely is this to explode all over Howard? And how hard should Widdecombe be glancing over her shoulder, and avoiding dark alleys at night?

Hope it comes out

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

Frightened that the standard 'The Public the poor little dears don't NEED to know about this' default option will kick in.
Would like (next to having a real Socialist Goverment) the Torys marginized and the battle ,for the 21 C, being between Labour and the Liberal Democrats

[pirates-daily.livejournal.com]

Given the hell I went through yesterday trying to explain over and over again why their stupid migration healthcheck plans won't work, I sincerely hope this is a) true and b) on the way to exposure. Sadly, I don't think the FoI provisions will be strong enough to get it out, if it is true.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

I saw you doing it. I thought you did a superb job.

[qadriya.livejournal.com]

Hi Roz, I know this is an odd question, but are you based out of England, and did you frequent FP in the 80's?

I think I might know you as I was the casher at FP.