Last Updated: Friday, 13 December 2002
Blair, wife embroiled in scandals
By Chinondidyachii Mararike
THE British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his wife Cherie Booth are embroiled in
scandals of shoddy financial dealings that have exposed embarrassing details of
stinking corruption, hypocrisy, foolishness, tactlessness, and political naivety at
No 10 Downing Street, the very heart of British politics and its ruling Labour Party.
The catalyst for the latest scandals came in mid-November when Mrs Cherie Blair
contacted Peter Foster, a convicted conman currently awaiting deportation to
Australia, to help the Blairs buy two flats in Bristol where their son Euan is at
university studying Ancient History.
On November 28 2002 conman Foster e-mailed Mrs Blair, giving details of the price
of the properties, boasting about how he had secured a hefty discount of �69 000
on both flats. On October 30 and 31, the fraudster e-mailed further details to Booth,
prompting the PM�s wife to e-mail back to say: "You are a star," signing off
"Cherie".
Foster, a notorious fraudster, whose criminal past is well-known, is not the only
person at the centre of this scandal. There are three others, and these include
Carole Caplin, Booth�s friend and Foster�s lover, and described in the Mail on
Sunday (December 8) as not only "cranky" but one among many of "Cherie�s odd
collection of friends who include faith healers and other alternative therapists";
Andrew Axelsen, the accountant who handled the Blairs� mortgage on the flats
and is currently awaiting trial at the Old Bailey on charges of money laundering;
and David Janes, a solicitor who handled the conveyancing, and is a co-
defendant in the same trial.
The Sunday Times (December 8) says Caplin has become "so close and
indispensable that she travelled on holidays with the Blairs, though she is said on
one occasion to have caused embarrassment by appearing for a family dinner in a
see-through blouse and no bra". The same paper notes that "Caplin was
unassailable in Booth�s eyes", and is "the best friend of Tony and Cherie Blair . . .
They spend holidays together and she goes in and out of 10 Downing Street as
though she owns it. Her skill at advising on fitness and fashion redeems any
risque tendencies".
These criminals are the British PM�s closest friends. These crooks, cranks and
convicted conmen � "unassailable" in the eyes of Mrs Blair � are indeed the
family friends and business advisers to the wife of what on December 6 2002 the
so-called Independent newspaper�s dim-witted imperialist stooge, Muck-raker,
proudly refers to as "the world�s fourth largest economy".
The first family of a "civilised" nation is befriending a conman whose life of fraud
began in his teens and rolled on across three continents and numerous victims; a
scoundrel who in the 1980s used The Sun newspaper�s former page three model
Samantha Fox, then 20, to promote a bogus slimming tea called Bai Lin; a criminal
who in September 2000 was convicted and sentenced to 33 months, and banned
from being a director for five years, for using forged documents to try and set up a
company to launch a slimming pill.
Who says the Blairs were not aware of Foster�s criminal history when everybody
in Australia, Europe and Britain knew everything about the activities of this
compulsive and careless criminal? Veronica Hacker of Leeds certainly thinks
otherwise: "She (Mrs Blair) is very clever � a top barrister," she says. "Don�t tell
us she didn�t know what she was doing."
To make matters worse, the Blairs would have been godparents to a fraudster�s
child but, unfortunately, it all went horribly wrong: Caplin had a miscarriage on
Wednesday, November 27 2002. How a British PM and his wife could sup with a
conman that nobody would dare touch is anybody�s guess!
Newspaper reports reveal that Foster tried to enlist the help of the Blairs in 1999
while in an Australian prison cell where he recorded a three-hour video appealing
to Blair to intervene in extradition proceedings against him on two counts of
alleged fraud, and that the tape had been hand-delivered to No 10. This time
around the Blairs failed in their attempt to get their financial adviser quickly
deported so he would not spill the Bristol beans!
Is the Blair/Booth imbroglio not mucky enough for our good friends in the
Standard, Independent and the Financial Gazette to rake up in their newspaper
columns? But no, the so-called independent papers would rather manufacture lies
about our President � and members of Zanu-PF. They would rather talk about
President Mugabe�s bullet-proof Mercedes Benz and motorcade, and not about
the Blairs who last week spent �18 000 of the taxpayers� money to kit out their
Chrysler people�s carrier with the very latest in-car cinema and security system
only weeks after the nation�s first couple had splashed out �556 000 on two
designer flats.
The Blairs� in-car security and entertainment system comprises two 7-inch colour
television screens installed in the backs of the two seats, is linked to a multi-player
that allows up to a dozen DVDs to be played, has cordless headphones and roof
nets for stowage, and includes a DVD cinema to keep the Blair�s three children
entertained during the drive to the PM�s weekend retreat at Chequers or to visit
Euan. Is this not a waste of much-needed government funds by a PM presiding
over crumbling transport, education and health systems?
And so President Mugabe should not be security conscious, should not have the
barest security systems installed in his official vehicle � is this what the reporters
who write in the so-called independent Press are saying? Ah, they tell me he
shouldn�t because the nation is starving. Why is the nation starving? Is it not
because of the drought and the economic sanctions the West imposed against the
country at the behest of MDC in cahoots with journalists who write the kind of
scurrilous articles that regularly appear in the pages of Zimbabwe�s
foreign-controlled newspapers?
Would The Daily News report on Mrs Blair�s connection to a convicted fraudster,
which simply is the most serious incident in a growing history of scandals that
have rocked No 10 Downing Street? Or how a supposedly leading QC and
part-time court recorder can keep a straight face after telling lies that "It is not true
that Mr Foster was or is a financial adviser to the (Blair) family" � a statement she
haughtily maintained for four days until Downing Street�s spin doctor Alistair
Campbell jumped to her rescue following the publication of numerous e-mails
between Foster and Booth revealed otherwise.
Mrs Blair has gone so far as to lie to her PM husband�s Press officer. That,
according to Minette Marrin�s (The Times, December 9), is bad enough in Caesar�s
wife; in an aspiring High Court judge that is a disqualification because judgment,
like common sense, must surely have to do with wisdom, discretion and a respect
for evidence. Indeed, a legal career does not always survive lying, unless it is that
of Cherie Booth QC.
Would The Standard report on how much this reputedly intelligent lawyer � who
relies on the support of cranky fitness gurus � was duped into dubious and
shadowy business deals by an Australian conman? Had Cherie forgotten that the
Aussies are the grandchildren of those criminals shipped to that continent by her
husband�s predecessor Prime Ministers?
Or how Mrs Blair, whose extreme lack of judgment is so embarrassingly apparent
she looks as if she has no clue of how to behave or who she is, bought two
expensive Bristol flats for her student son at a time when her husband and his
government are threatening to throw students even more deeply into debt with
top-up fees or some other debt � a move others have described to be
"eye-poppingly tactless?"
No, the so-called independent papers would rather concoct false stories about our
First Lady Mrs Grace Mugabe, and not reveal what the British media thinks of
Blair�s wife, especially the Mail newspaper which has repeatedly "ridiculed
Cherie�s dress sense, published pictures of her cellulite and portrayed her as a
deranged first lady manque with a penchant for meddling in politics."
Can the so-called independent Press please tell its readers that Mrs Blair sees
herself as very central to Labour�s new imperium, and that her use of writing paper
headed "From the office of Cherie Booth, QC, 10 Downing Street" when her home
is No 11 and her office as Cherie Booth is at Matrix Chambers, proves she lacks
discretion and diplomacy? And, too, of those anonymous Treasury sources that
describe her as "Lady Macbeth", and the regularly repeated accounts of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown�s dislike of her?
The Daily Mail has, with coruscating sarcasm, nicknamed her the "Queen of
Downing Street", and columnist Richard Littlejohn in The Sun newspaper calls her
"the Wicked Witch". The Sunday Times (December 8) notes that in 1988 Mrs Blair
hired, at huge expense, a royal train during a G8 summit meeting to give the
leaders� wives a day out at Chequers, the PM�s official country residence � and
as usual she had her private hairdresser on board for the day trip. In 2000 she was
fined �10 for cheating after boarding a train without a ticket. In December 2002 the
media again had a field day when Cherie telephoned officials at the Ministry of
Defence to ask them for help with her eldest son�s school homework.
Columnists complain that Cherie has unrivalled access to the country�s most
important man but has repeatedly demonstrated lack of judgment. They see her as
trying to mimic the role of an American first lady, in particular Nancy Reagan, and
her taking over of positions previously held by Diana, Princess of Wales, is seen
as a sign she suffers from delusions of grandeur.
The controversy surrounding the Blairs� purchase of the flats in Bristol erupted on
Thursday last week after Cherie was forced to apologise for lying to the public and
to Downing Street�s own lie-spinning machine about conman Foster�s role in the
purchase of the properties, and that she had had no contact with him.
Both the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail (December 10) say that the Blairs used a
so-called blind account to buy the properties, and that apart from this being a
breach of the code of conduct governing the behaviour of ministers, the couple
"might face a tax investigation as a result of the �69 000 Foster had secured as a
discount on the flats". No wonder the Tory leader Ian Duncan Smith has
expressed concerns over the fact that "without integrity and legitimacy and
honesty, then government cannot function". The men and women who run the
British government are corrupt, liars and hypocrites who are completely bereft of
any ounce of integrity.
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"Ivinicus factus sum veritabem diceus." ( I have become an enemy for speaking the truth ) St Paul!
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Mitayo Potosi
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