Of Football, Knights, Bungs and Blair

Amidst great fanfare, a recent BBC documentary detailed the outcome of a year’s investigation into alleged corruption within British football. Some carefully edited, tenuous, and predominantly indirect evidence from an undercover reporter claimed to implicate several Premiership managers as having received illegal payments from players’ agents. Such payments are popularly known as bungs within the cash economy of the working classes, lending a rather sordid air to the affair. Of course in industry such inducements are more commonly known as incentive payments, within business as a gratuity, or corporate hospitality, and in politics as a wise investment. Drug companies give doctors gifts and exotic ‘conferences’ to encourage them to prescribe their products, IOC officials are lavishly hosted and entertained by cities hoping to win Olympic hosting rights, and foreign dignitaries are spared no expense. However within the world of football, where the very poorest come to revere the very richest, the activity of paying incentives to managers to buy players suddenly takes on the darkest of associations.

The Lord Stephens enquiry into the scandal has requested a final two months to focus upon almost forty suspected ‘bungs’ within eight clubs. Some of the ‘dodgy’ dealings were reported by Luton Town manager Mike Newell, others by the Panorama team, and some doubtless came up in due process. Among the recorded Panorama evidence was a ten minute interview with popular Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp who, after being led on by an agent to believe that a Blackburn defender was available, clearly stated on camera that he ‘liked the player’. A shocking revelation indeed, and a damning indictment of the behaviour of the modern manager. Naturally it would have been far more serious from a legal standpoint if the Harry had claimed that he did not like the man. With such serious matters afoot, it is hardly surprising that a judicial review, conducted by a small and costly army of judges, lawyers, accountants and police officers, should be needed to bring such heinous activities to an end.

In a parallel, but perhaps not entirely unrelated police enquiry, questions are still being asked of senior government aides surrounding large ‘loans’ which were made by wealthy individuals to both political parties, many of whom subsequently received nominations for knighthoods and peerages. Loans you say, well I suppose we do live in a debt culture? However, police are investigating whether the loans were actually 'soft', that is to say that they were not really lent on a genuinely commercial basis, in which case there was a legal requirement that they should have been publicly declared.

Both parties of course have denied any wrongdoing. Despite their massive debts and huge planned electoral spending, they would of course in time have repaid the loans in full…well at least in kind. After all, the going rate for a Lordship must be at least £2 million, but it’s only a straight million for a knighthood. Three individuals have been formally ‘arrested’ during the course of the investigation, Lord Levy, Mr Blair's chief fundraiser; Des Smith, a government advisor; and biotechnologist Sir Christopher Evans, who lent the Labour Party a cool £1 million before the last election.

The web of society intrigue does not stop there (as opposed to grubby-handed and common football managers taking dirty ‘bungs’. Bob Edmiston, a Conservative donor was questioned ‘under caution’ as part of the ongoing 'loans-for-peerages' scandal. Bob loaned the Conservatives around £2m, although he since was reported as having said that he did not want the loan repaid. Unfortunately for Bob, his entirely coincidental nomination for a peerage was blocked by the House of Lords appointments commission, although this was allegedly in relation to tax issues rather than his non-returnable ‘loan’. Perhaps his loan will now be able to be returned to the Inland Revenue where it is sorely missed.

However the focus of ‘scrutiny’ has now turned towards Mr.Blair, who seems to be suspiciously central to all of this… The police have said hello to Ruth Turner, Tony’s director of government relations, and also to his director of political operations ‘John McTernan’. Leading Tory lights, Lord Laidlaw, Lord Ashcroft, and Swedish sports equipment tycoon Johan Eliasch, are also thought to have been ‘questioned’. Naturally with all the dealings, loans and financial interests of many recent Labour Lords and Knights, otherwise known as Tony’s cronies, now open to intense public scrutiny, Tony must be growing increasingly uncomfortable in his nest.

To make matters worse, Mr.Blair will himself be questioned by police before the end of October. He will be asked if he knows anything about these allegations that peerages were traded directly for cash. All roads lead to Rome, apparently, and the involvement of Number 10 looks decidely less tenuous than the allegations of impropriety levelled against football managers. In fact the scale of the Blair bungs fiasco has become increasingly evident, with as much as 80% of donations to the Labour Party coming from people who have recently been ‘ennobled’. Such covert borrowing by the Labour Party and Number 10 may amount to as much as £14 million, or around twenty football bungs. In fact the term bung should become the new international currency of large scale financial transactions, saving accountants all of those tiresome zeros. This October, the monthly trade deficit was an estimated 4,200 bungs…

Clearly Tony should have gone to the professionals, and recruited some football agents to raise his Party campaign funds. Not only would the bungs have been bigger and better, but the cash would have disappeared without a trace, leaving him looking sweeter than a good Premiership Manager. After all, a poor man’s bung is a rich man’s donation…