Britain for Sale
LOBBYIST JON MENDELSOHN HAS BEEN RENTING HIS INFLUENCE WITH GORDON BROWN FOR A DECADE
From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
ON THE first Wednesday of July 1998, on the floor of the House of Commons, Britain’s prime minister rose to defend himself. According to the news reports, for the first time since his election the year before, Tony Blair’s hands were shaking. The PM denounced the American reporter whose exposé of wholesale corruption in his cabinet “had not one shred of evidence”. Meanwhile, Blair’s press spokesman, a former pornographer named Alastair Campbell, grabbed every newsman he could find in the hallway to whisper that they should not trust a “man in a hat”, while Peter Mandelson, known as Prince of Darkness, and the power behind the power of the prime minister, hissed a warning about “the man with an agenda”.