COMMENTARY: 'Egotistical, ambitious, sleazy ... The perfect candidate for a peerage'
By James Chapman Last updated at 1:20 AM on 03rd July 2008 Comments (0) Add to My Stories Self-regard is not a quality generally in short supply in the world of Westminster politicians. Yet Keith Vaz's ego has the capacity to take even many of his Labour colleagues by surprise. He once described himself as 'a leading member, if not the leading member, of the Asian community in this country'. Europe Minister Keith Vaz, pictured leaving the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London yesterday Over the last 20 years, he has veered from one extreme of his party to the other - moving from the hard-left Campaign Group of MPs to become one of Tony Blair's most unctuous New Labour supporters. But consistency, alas, has never been Keith Vaz's strongest point. More... Riddle of the Keith Vaz 'reward': How Geoff Hoon may have hinted at an honour for MP who helped win terror vote DAILY MAIL COMMENT: How much does it cost to buy an MP? Two years after being elected in Leicester East in 1987, he marched publicly with Muslim constituents who wanted Salman Rushdie's head over his Satanic Verses book. It later emerged that at the same time, he was telephoning the author to offer his private support. Once an arch Eurosceptic, he became such a strong pro-European that as Europe Minister, he threatened to hound Eurosceptics out of the Labour Party. In one leaked piece of correspondence, he was said to have written: 'We know who you Eurosceptics are and we're coming to get you in your constituencies.' Born in 1956 in Aden, he is a Goanese Catholic christened Nigel Keith Anthony Standish Vaz. His father was the correspondent in Aden for the Times of India. Vaz, pictured with Shilpa Shetty, once described himself as 'a leading member, if not the leading member, of the Asian community in this country' Academically brilliant, he want from Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, West London, to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he dropped the Nigel. His contemporaries there included Mr Blair's chief spin doctor Alastair Campbell, the novelist and Labour supporter Robert Harris and the BBC presenter Andrew Marr. A solicitor turned barrister, his family's involvement in politics always made it likely he would seek to follow the same route. His mother, Merlyn, who died in 2003, was a long-serving Labour councillor in Leicester. An early attempt at entering Parliament as Labour's candidate in Richmond and Barnes ended in failure, as did a bid to become Euro MP for Surrey West the following year. He was selected as Labour's candidate in Leicester East for the 1987 election - possibly in part thanks to his outspoken support for hugely controversial 'black sections' in the Labour Party. These were to be clubs closed to white party members and were designed to draw in disaffected ethnic minorities to Labour. Enlarge Vaz pictured at a reception in honour of Lord Irvine, who once described him as 'the most incredible networker I have ever met' Mr Vaz's stance is thought to have helped win him support in Leicester East, a constituency with 16,000 minority workers. He went on to defeat the sitting Tory MP Peter Bruinvels, a prominent supporter of capital punishment who once offered to act as a public hangman. But Mr Vaz's supporters may have been disappointed when, on entering Parliament, he reversed his support for 'black sections'. He prompted outrage in 1990 when he suggested an IRA bomb in Leicester might for some reason have been planted by the Army. Despite the row, he joined Labour's front bench as a junior environment spokesman in opposition in 1992. But it was his role as a Parliamentary bag carrier to Derry Irvine, a close friend of Tony Blair, that helped propel him to the political frontline. Lord irvine, the then Lord Chancellor, described him as 'the most incredible networker I have ever met'. Appointed Europe Minister in 1999, allegations of sleaze and chicanery began to emerge soon afterwards. The next year, the Parliamentary standards watchdog was called in to investigate allegations of undisclosed payments to Mr Vaz from businessmen in his constituency. He was cleared of nine of the 28 allegations of financial wrongdoing-accused of blocking investigation-into 18 and censured for one - failure to register payments of £4,500 from a solicitor he went on to recommend for a peerage. After collapsing during a TV interview he was dropped by Mr Blair from the Government in 2001. Ill health was officially the reason given, though Mr Blair was said to believe that his continued presence in the Government was an embarrassment. And in 2002, another inquiry into whether a company connected to Mr Vaz had taken money from the billionaire Indian Hinduja brothers came to a more damning verdict. It concluded he had 'committed serious breaches of the code of conduct and a contempt of the House' and recommended that he be suspended from the Commons for a month. Yet even this humiliation was not enough to keep Mr Vaz down. After the 2005 General election he slowly worked his way back - being appointed head of an ethnic minority task force by Mr Blair in 2006. Controversially, he won the prestigious chairmanship of the home affairs select committee in 2007, replacing the universally respected John Denham. He was effectively shoehorned into the post by the Government, which claimed there was not enough time to go through the usual procedure of asking a crossparty group of MPs to come up with a nominee. Critics say he has used the post for grandstanding and showboating. Only this week, he was criticised by commentators for inviting Cherie Blair for a high-profile appearance before his committee to discuss policing and knife crime, despite her limited expertise on the subject. Even before the latest controversy, MPs suspect that his ambitions still run deep. 'The rumour running around Labour MPs was that he would be offered a knighthood for his vote on 42 days,' said one MP who knows him. 'I think he wants to be a knight. He sees that it's unlikely he will ever be a minister again and he would like to be a peer of the realm. Whether after yesterday's disclosure such a dream is possible now seems doubtful. -- DEV BOREM KORUM. Gabe Menezes. London, England
