I was thinking the other day that it would be an original idea to ask my current energy provider to take me out for a steak dinner on the proceeds of all the profits they have been making since the gulf war and their end-of-the-Bush-era price hiking. They needn't call it a windfall tax or anything, just a nice gesture to a satisfied customer. In celebration of nothing in particular... lets just say its a kind gesture for me turning up for work year after year, no strings attached. A nice daydream, of course, not something that happens in the real world.
Unless, of course, you are Jack Straw. Jack Straw managed to have a pointless 3000 pound junket paid for by a Texan energy company on a similar flimsy excuse some four years ago. It seems that to celebrate his fine time in public service of this country, the kind Texans decided to put three grand in the kitty when a few close pals held a bash for Jack four years ago.
He had so much to celebrate of course. Those were the days when he was the kind of person that Texan gas companies would just love to push to boat out for. And he'd come such a long way, after all.
Having been abandoned as a child by his insurance salesman father, John Whitaker Straw changed his name to Jack at school, apparently in a fantasy homage to Jack Straw (genuine leader and man of the people in a way our John has never quite managed to be). He learned his politics in the student union, taking office in the NUS at a time when students were highly politicised and could spot a rum 'un only at his third attempt.
Like the later Blair, he also became a barrister and practiced criminal law for a time. Thus he prepared himself in the real world for a career at Westminster. His early career, which will be of interest to those who want the full majesty of the legal book thrown at Damian Green for leaking, includes an unsavoury episode where he allegedly examined someone's confidential social security records on behalf of cabinet minister Barbara Castle, in order to find dirt on the Liberals. (Castle herself, the story goes, had been quietly asked by Harold Wilson for the information). Straw is said to have informed Castle that when he went to examine the file, he found it was missing. The journalist Barrie Penrose has however alleged that Straw subsequently leaked details from the file to the media. Straw has, wise man, kept mum on the matter ever since, and is not saying too much about the Green Affair as far as I can tell.
With that early honing of the black political arts as preparation for High Office, Straw was well equipped later to be Home Secretary and reduce the Home Office to a shambles. He also exercised his excellent judgment to write , in turning down an asylum request in 2000 from a man fleeing Saddam Hussein's regime, that "we have faith in the integrity of the Iraqi judicial process and that you should have no concerns if you haven’t done anything wrong."
He then became Foreign Secretary, to replace Robin Cook, when Blair decided with the Americans to boot Saddam Hussain out of power and save the world from WMDs. There is not that much I remember about what he did as Foreign Secretary. Blair was doing everything important as far as I can recall, but Straw may have been allowed to tinker a bit round the edges of the already set-out policy directions. I do remember him droning on interminably on Radio 4 pretending he was a lawyerly type who cared about law and evidence and how he didn't ever want to deceive people.
This alleged interest in facts and law, and possibly tinkering with policy regarding how they are obtained, may have been bad luck for the people of the Chagos Islands. These islands in the Indian Ocean include Diego Garcia, and are part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). In 2000 the British High Court had upheld the claims of the islanders that an Ordinance which had been enacted to ensure their removal from their homes while Diego Garcia was leased to the American was unlawful. Robin Cook, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, did not appeal.
In 2002, Parliament enacted legislation which gave all Chagossians the right to obtain British citizenship and granted the islanders the right to return to the Archipelago. On June 10, 2004, Jack Straw was responsible for two Orders-in-Council re-establishing immigration controls on the islands and effectively banning the islanders from returning home, reversing the 2000 court decision. Diego Garcia is a US military base which has been used as a staging post for the rendition of suspects for torture, as well as refuelling and rearming bombers used so inaccurately to target various places which would otherwise be a long way beyond America's reach, most recently in Afganistan.
Jack in those heady days knew whose bread to butter and which side of it to smear his knife. He knew how to keep a secret, after all. It was on his watch also that the one-sided extradition treaty with the United States was signed, though the "credit" for that seems to have been hogged by Baroness Scotland.
So what has gone wrong for Jack since? Why was he removed from the Foreign Office and why has his star fallen so far that the dirt about his luncheon expenses is now making it into the public domain and being allowed to bring him so much embarrassment? It is always possible to put it down simply to internal party rivalries.
There is one possible view that neither Blair nor Brown were unmoved by the green eyed monster of jealously at Straw's close relationship with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, manifested publically by her visit to Straw's Blackburn constituency. He may have found he was too close to the Americans, in the wrong way, which could be seen as a threat.
There is also the alternative view however that he was not close enough. In that theory he is portrayed as not quite as lunatic as his American masters, so that in April 2006, when he heard of reports of secret White House plans to target Iranian nuclear installations with bunker busting nuclear bombs he described them "completely nuts". William Rees-Mogg has said in The Times that there was evidence that Straw was subsequently removed from this post upon the request of the Bush administration, due to this expressed opposition to bombing Iran.
My view? I tend to think he is tired and that maybe he's never really been that good a politician in the first place. He can be a bit of an annoying know-it-all after all. There are also younger men snapping at the heals of the old guard. As with many politicians, what we are also possibly seeing is the fag end of his career fizzling out.
Yes, he is Lord Chancellor still, after a short spell at a couple of Ruritanian jobs as Leader of the House of Commons and Lord Privy Seal. Blair also gave him a couple of "important" roles, as a face-saver when he was pushed out of the Foreign Office. Anyone remember House of Lords reform and looking at party funding? Neither role lead to anything much like an "achievement" nor were they probably ever intended to. The current job title, as grand as it sounds, does not even make him a Lord, nor does it make him a Chancellor. I will be interested to see what if anything he achieves and how long he will stay in this current job.
