An inconvenient truth

The cast of 2020 BBC drama Our friends in Northumberland

If you were looking for a lesson in getting yourself out of a scandal the last person you would go to would be former 'leader' of Northumberland County Council Grant Davey. Grant's problems were mostly of his own making. When they weren't, his attempts at defending himself often served to make his hole deeper and harder to get out of.

That's why it's unlikely that Labour's national party chairman Ian Lavery will be breathing a sigh of relief that Honest Grant has gone in to bat for him over the recent political policing interference scandal involving him and former Police and Crime Commissioner Dame Vera Baird.

Lavery has been criticised this week for calling a meeting with Baird to discuss potential criminal investigations he would have been the subject of. The details of reports made by the council were embargoed by Northumbria Police while their enquiries took place. When the force dropped its investigations a public report laid bare details of how Ian Lavery and his family benefitted from the council's development company Arch.

Throughout the investigation Labour's Northumberland 'leader' Grant Davey called the investigations false news and a witch hunt despite reams of evidence supporting the charges. This was in no small part due to the central role of Honest Grant's friend Graham Harper who benefitted from a lucrative remuneration package including a car, a house and tens of thousands of the taxpayers' pounds while Honest Grant ran the council.

Honest Grant recently shared an anonymous Labour blog post* claiming that 'at last the truth can come out'. In the past he has called the accusations against him and others a 'political witch hunt' and 'Tory lies'. Unfortunately for Honest Grant, the political policing interference scandal is far from a Tory witch hunt. The Times newspaper's source isn't a Tory councillor or right-wing press baron. It is in fact Honest Grant's own Member of Parliament and Labour colleague Ronnie Campbell!

The conclusion? No matter how many blog sites Davey's ally sets up the inconvenient truth is coming out. Putting his fingers and pretending it's a targeted attack won't make the accusations against Davey, Lavery and Labour's abysmal council administration any less true but in the end people will make up their own minds.

*Widely believed to be authored by Berwick's Labour-supporting clerk Gareth Davies. Davies' has been spinning since the days of Blair but has been called out for his nonsensical rantings. Official response in due course. Probably on an anonymous blog.

Pressure growing on Vera Baird amid cover-up allegations

Ian Lavery pictured with former Arch Chief Executive Peter McIntyre. McIntyre used Arch to purchase his own house at a loss to the council. He was also appointed to the board of Ashington Football Club while Lavery was Chairman.

Dame Vera Baird is facing growing pressure following another exclusive report in a national newspaper. The report criticises a meeting she held in private with senior Labour figures her force was supposed to be investigating on allegations of corruption.

The Times reported today that former Police and Crime Commissioner Vera Baird failed to properly declare a meeting with Labour chiefs who had been reported to the police. This has led to some people accusing her of covering up the meeting in case she was accused of political interference in a police investigation.

Labour's national party chairman Ian Lavery met with Vera Baird and the former 'leader' of Northumberland County Council Grant Davey, who could also have been implicated in investigations that the police force were due to conduct. Northumbria Police dropped investigations in March 2019.

The development company Arch made significant payments including a house to Labour spin doctor Graham Harper (who had previously been convicted of fraud) and the company also bought its Chief Executive's house at a loss to the. Arch was recently dissolved by Northumberland County Council who fully owned the company.

Although Northumbria Police records show that a meeting took place between Vera Baird, Ian Lavery MP and Ronnie Campbell MP, the records omitted to include that Grant Davey also attended the meeting. Davey was a close personal friend of Graham Harper, securing him a job at a charity of which he was a trustee and he later tried to force Blyth Town Council to create a role for Harper after the charity went bankrupt.

Northumbria Police instructed the council to withhold certain publications from the public domain while their investigations took place, but there is no evidence that interviews ever took place. When a report into Arch was made public it revealed that the council spent over £22,000 on hospitality at Ashington Football Club while Lavery was chairman. Despite this, Labour blogs (widely believed to be authored by Berwick town clerk Gareth Davies) defend council money being spent on bar bills. Arch also spent £2.32 million on a contract with a firm employing Lavery's son and brother despite failures in the tendering process.

Vera Baird has previously denied interfering in a police investigation for political gain but the nature of the meeting remains unclear.

Did Ian Lavery lean on Vera before she cut and ran?

To most people in Northumberland Vera is little more than a lovable DCI who films her crime dramas here in our county. However the Labour Party’s own Vera who used to run Northumbria Police has possibly been using her creativity to cover up real stories of alleged criminal activity by her MPs and councillors.

The claims of criminal activity centre around a number of dubious transactions while Labour controlled the county council. The development company Arch bought its chief executive’s house, for example, with no benefit to the taxpayers who owned the firm. The same company used taxpayer’s money to pay a luxurious package to a Labour spindoctor with no evidence of work undertaken and millions was put into Ashington Football Club’s new stadium leaving people outside of Ian Lavery’s executive box rightly asking where their share is!

Now it has been reported in the national press that senior Labour MPs and councillors held a meeting with Vera shortly after Labour lost control of the council. The meeting was held in secret although details of what might have been discussed are starting to emerge thanks to whistleblowing MP Ronnie Campbell. Vera Baird previously denied she tried to influence the investigation into Arch at a public meeting of Berwick Town Council.

A great deal was made of the alleged corruption while Labour ran Northumberland County Council and it was probably true because infamous liar Grant Davey called it fake news. Strenuous denials and attempts at deflection appeared on the various blogs of blinkered headbanger Gareth Davies and we await the official denial of that in due course.*

Vera Baird has now moved on. There is £5 sat on the desk at Murky Towers who can find a regular man or woman on the street who can name the pigmy that Labour have put in her place. But Labour’s national chairman still has some very serious questions to answer. 

Until Ian breaks the habit of a lifetime and tells the truth about what went on this won’t be going away any time soon!

*UPDATE: Since the publication of this article, Grant Davey has shared an article with all the hallmarks of Gareth Davies where he describes the stories outlined in official reports as 'Lies, spun news and smears'. The article's author is unclear as Davies is reluctant to write in his own name (due to trouble he's in with his present employer) but the tone of the article suggests Gareth was sufficiently wounded by our statement to publish a response.

A change of leadership won’t stop the rot inside Northumberland Labour

Labour in Northumberland are derided by members and supporters of their own party elsewhere in the North East. The cause of the party’s recent decline, Grant Davey and David Ledger, have stepped down from their leadership roles to make way for a seemingly less toxic political brand. But Northumberland Labour is now rotten to its core, and no change of leadership will address that.

The fundamental problem facing the party is an outright denial of objective facts. The transactions of the development company Arch were regarded by many as criminal, and at the very least were morally repugnant no matter which side of the political fence they are viewed from. Yet a hardcore rump of Labour supporters continue to maintain that the company provided good value for taxpayers’ money. That’s because as union officials and 'clurb' committee members, Labour’s councillors in Northumberland live in a world where benefitting from the people you’re supposed to represent is par for the course.

Die-hards maintained for a long time that the allegations against Arch were nothing but innuendo, which was of course true when the independent report into Arch was supressed by Northumbria Police, but now its findings are a matter of public record. Taxpayers' money to prop up a non-league football club, trips abroad for Labour politicians, failures to declare members' interests, multi-million pound contracts paid to firms employing Laverys, and extraordinary payments to Labour spindoctor Graham Harper all feature, and that's just what's currently in the public domain, but the charge sheet doesn’t stop there. The council paid over £2000 for booze at Ian Lavery’s private executive box while he was chair of Ashington Football Club. Only in warped Labour minds is that good value for taxpayers.

On social media the very characters that cost Labour so many seats in 2017 are still the party’s A Team with the names Sambrook, Whisson and Tyler trying desperately to defend the regime they were a part of. Seeking to clear your own name is understandable, but when other names like Bell, Matthewson and Wilczek take to defending the old crimes of their new paymasters, there is little to suggest different leadership will stop the rot.

Labour have lost almost every by-election since their wipeout in May 2017, demonstrating deeply rooted attitude from residents against their lavish self-indulgence. Even in their Ashington heartland an independent candidate managed to make them work for their reduced majority. It’s little wonder that they have retreated to their formerly safe havens to drum up support for their lacklustre mayoral candidate whose has only further damaged his party’s brand in the county where their reputation hasn't got much further to fall.

Scott Dickinson and Susan Dungworth are slightly less tainted by the toxic Northumberland Labour brand than Honest Grant and Junket Dave were, but until the party's grassroots activists and disgraced former councillors accept the damage done by their former leaders, the change at the top will make no difference at all.