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.