Quango – A New Political Column

Everybody’s into politics these days. When Britain awoke from its slumbers a few weeks back to find all its Currys Digitals gently smouldering in the early morning mist, suddenly, it had the urge to engage in politics. Who, Britain finally wondered, is this Ed Miliband? Are The Cuts responsible for killing my child? What is Libya, and is it NSFW? With our fingers to the ground and our ear on the pulse, we at VICE have spotted this growing trend, and acted. Stepping into the gap in the market for seasoned, astute commentary from political insiders, QUANGO is the first and only weekly column about politics in Britain, if not the world.

PS: QUANGO stands for Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation. Which sums up this column neatly.

QUANGO: CASH AFTER POLITICS

You might have missed it over a weekend swamped in Tripoli liberations and Tony Blair editorials, but The Mail On Sunday managed to corral two of their favourite stories – house prices and disdain for Peter Mandelson – into one big front page bombshell. The shocking truth was that Tony’s former crony had expressed interest in an eight million pound townhouse in central London.

There had been early speculation that, after leaving office, Lord Peter would opt for the simple life and open up a nail bar on Penge High Street. But it seems that he has gone into consultancy instead. How, people are wondering, has the notorious homeowner managed to make enough money in the past year to put down such a large wedge of cash? The answer can only be that he is simply a really really great consultant. Here is a fragment from the letter he sent out earlier in the year, when he was touting for business:

“Global Counsel brings together much of what I have learnt during my career: how best to renew and re-project brands (as I did in the creation of New Labour); how to re-focus large organisations to meet new goals (as I did in successive government departments); and how to adapt and benefit from the impact of globalisation (as I did as European Trade Commissioner).”

Which is a masterstroke of CV-writing that beats even my own ‘skilled at creating a unique sense of engagement with future-facing digital consumer products (as I did by working in the Sky telesales team)’.

It is one of the most highly-held principles of politics that you get to rinse gullible companies after you leave. Five years after he exited Number 10, John Major was earning £1 million a year in various directorships for not very interesting corporations. He owned three properties. A £400,000 beachfront home in Norfolk. Another, £500,000 home in his Huntingdon constituency. And a three million pound Thames-side duplex penthouse in a moated community in Battersea.

Despite never actually drawing the salary she was entitled to while PM, upon leaving Mrs Thatcher took $250,000 a year as a ‘geopolitical consultant’ from the deeply-ethical coffers of Philip Morris, and bagged $50,000 per speech. She moved into a newly-built Barrat Home, in a gated development in Dulwich.

Peter Mandelson once famously declared that New Labour were ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’. These days, Tony Blair is so relaxed he’s practically doing the limbo in a grass skirt with a pina colada.

In fact Tony Blair makes every politician who preceded him look like a flim-flam carbetbagger, having swagged an estimated £50 million via his Windrush series of offshore-registered companies. This employed a tax-avoiding mechanism so complex that The Guardian once ran a competition to find someone who could adequately explain it. He now has eight houses in his portfolio. Among them, his £4.5 million pied a terre in Connaught Square. His six million pound country cottage that used to be owned by John Gielgud. A £1.3 million Edwardian townhouse in Marylebone for wee Euan. And, most recently, £975,000 in cash for a maisonette near Marble Arch for 22-year-old daughter Kathryn to do her law studies in. Cos you just can’t study very well in a £400,000 house.

Enoch Powell famously decreed that all political lives end in failure. Well, Tony B is trailblazing another, less pessimistic prediction; that more and more soiled political lives are enjoying an afterlife in the air-conditioned vaults of a Genevan private bank.

GAVIN HAYNES