Like most East Coast Scots, I have only a passing knowledge of the East side of Glasgow. My view of the political culture of Strathclyde as a whole has been pretty jaundiced. Historically it has had a very nasty political culture, dominated by a single party practising machine politics and indulging in every conceivable form of corruption – known in Glasgow as graft. As individuals, the politicians that system has produced have been the nastiest and least principled of their breed. If I tell you that by local standards John Reid is considered charming, that should give some measure of the scope of the problem. This was borne out last night by the graceless vituperation of the defeated New Labour candidate, the shrew-faced bitch Margaret Curran, who made the least pleasant candidate’s speech since the rotten-toothed Doug Hoyle spat his foul-mouthed venom at Roy Jenkins in Warrington.

For a small inner city seat the declaration came remarkably late, and was delayed still further by a pointless Labour demand for a full recount (which slightly increased the Scot Nat majority). A friend of mine at the count overheard a conversation which led her to believe that New Labour were deliberately holding everything up to try to ensure that the result was too late for the later editions of the London newspapers. I was watching events live on Sky News, and Adam Boulton repeatedly expressed consternation at the delays to the count and the apparently lackadaisical attitude of the returning officers. They of course would be from the New Labour controlled regional council. In Blackburn at the last election I encountered continual bias from the New Labour hack officials running the election. It is an essential reform in the UK for election administration to be taken out of the hands of the highly politically partisan local authority chief executives who are normally the returning officers, and for the role of the Electoral Commission to be extended to the actual running of the elections.

Anyway, very well done to the voters of Glasgow East for ditching the numptie war criminals at last and moving towards a more hopeful future for Scotland.

The Catholic Orangemen of Togo is a prequel to Murder in Samarkand. Catholic Orangemen is a gentle memoir of my African years, with some thoughts on African development issues and the complex and continuing ramifications of colonial rule. The best Chapter is called Almost Gabon, in which I nearly go to Gabon, but then don’t. I might stick that here somewhere as a sample chapter.

How an elegaic memoir of ten years ago can generate such heat is hard to understand. But then there is this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/05/98/arms_to_africa_row/211704.stm

I suspect that what Schillings are trying to block is the story of how Spicer escaped prosecution, the role of Number 10, and the origin of New Labour’s love affair with mercenaries. Or maybe it’s the bit about when I missed my flight to Gabon.

Nobody can accuse New Labour of being half-hearted in their embrace of New Colonialism. But even given the dynamics of the rush for hydrocarbons, Gordon Brown’s commitment to embroil the British military in the troubles of the Niger Delta is appalling.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/britain-to-train-army-in-nigeria-to-combat-delta-rebels-865822.html

We have got so used to military adventure abroad that there has been almost no reaction – despite the fact that we are going to support the most corrupt regime in the world, in an area where the pollution, social deprivation and political repression spawned by the oil industry are legendary. I know the Niger Delta very well indeed, having served four years in the commercial section of the British High Commission in Lagos. I have seen the environmental degradation, and met with the thuggish local police and military commanders in the pockets of Shell. The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa was one of the rare moments the World focused on the repression in the Niger Delta, but that was the tip of the iceberg of political violence against the local population.

The rebellion in the Niger Delta is not a spontaneous evil, a mindless outbreak of anarchic violence that must be met with still more violence. It is paused by the grinding poverty and economic ruination of one of the most economically productive regions on earth, with the profits channelled to billionaires in Nigeria and to big oil.

Of course, British military involvement in Nigeria is hardly new. The majority of Nigeria’s military dictators were Sandhurst trained (but not Abacha, contrary to popular belief. He attended lesser English military colleges).

African Union prevarication over Mugabe opens eyes to the continuing venality of much African government, but there is perhaps not enough understanding of how far that permeated through into the United Nations (where senior staff require de facto approval of their home governments for appointment). “Professor” Ibrahim Gambari is Under Secretary and Special Adviser on Africa to the UN Secretary General. Gambari was one of Abacha’s closest cronies. It was Gambari who said “Nigerians don’t need democracy because democracy is not food. It is not their priority now.” It was Gambari who told the United Nations that Ken Saro-Wiwa should be hung because he was “a mere common criminal”. It is therefore a certain sign of the bad faith of Nigeria’s negotiation that they pressed for Gambari to be appointed mediator with the rebels.

The only UK connection to this dispute is that the appalling practices of British oil companies have helped create the resentment that turned to rebellion. We should not get involved in more killing for oil.

New Labour hates independence of mind, and unsurprisingly therefore views Andrew Mackinlay as a threat. I doubt there is a more genuine and well-intentioned person in the House of Commons than Andrew. For years he has been devoted to the democratic development of Eastern Europe, and he is a mainstay of the all-party committees on the region. He is also an outspoken champion of the rights of Parliament against the Executive, and he asked the best ever question of Tony Blair at Prime Minister’s questions. After one toady New Labour MP after another had asked questions written in No 10 for Tony Blair to look good with a sharp answer, Andrew Mackinlay stood up and asked:

“Does the Prime Minister recall that, when we were in opposition, we used to groan at the fawning, obsequious, soft-ball, well-rehearsed and planted questions asked by Conservative members?”

The House roared with laughter at an embarassed Blair, who was lost for words as things went so badly off message. He eventually replied with a thinly veiled threat that he would make sure Mackinlay remained always a backbencher. As Andrew Mackinlay has absolutely no desire to do other than serve his constituents, and has a Trollopean respect for the House of Commons, that was no great threat.

Media sources tell me that New Labour are now whispering to everyone who will listen (only the Daily Mail has half bought it) that Andrew Mackinlay is a Russian spy and a tool of the oligarchs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030235/Labour-MP-pulled-chief-whip-inviting-Russian-spy-tea-Commons.html

An article saying so has turned up in a Bulgarian newspaper as evidence. Evidently MI6 are losing their touch – they might have at least got it published somewhere outside the EU. Maybe Russia would have been more convincing.

Andrew Mackinlay’s sharp and very well-informed interest in foreign policy has made him a mainstay of the Foreign Affairs Committee for over a decade, where he has frequently exposed and embarassed the government. I can give first hand testimony that the New Labour government and the security services absolutely hate him. They have also tried to discredit him before. In 16 April 2003 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office continued its camapiagn of internal vilification against me with the shocking revelation that I had been to a jazz bar with my secretary. In the same letter, they made the claim that I had been in strip clubs in Warsaw with Andrew Mackinlay. http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/murray/Butt.pdf See Murder in Samarkand p252.

This claim is utterly untrue. I have never hidden the fact that while in Warsaw for four years I went to a strip club on two or three occasions. But I never saw Andrew Mackinlay in or near one, and to my knowledge he has never been in a strip club, in Warsaw or anywhere else The question is, why was the FCO in 2003 libelling Andrew Mackinlay in this way, particularly in the context of a letter about Uzbekistan? Andrew had no connection with Uzbekistan. I had known him in Poland on official business as chairman of the British-Polish parliamentary group, but in 2003 I had had no contact with him for five years, so why bring in a totally irrelevant libel? Were they hitting two Iraq war sceptics with one stone? When I did contact him in summer of 2004, our telephone conversation was definitely bugged, as explained in detail in Murder in Samarkand.

Well, now they are trying to label him a Russian spy or stooge. Contempt for civil liberties has grown so strong in this country that the media has failed to focus on the truly appalling aspect of this case: when Chief Whip Geoff Hoon called Andrew Mackinlay in to dress him down for meeting with a Soviet diplomat, he knew the detail of their conversation. An MP had been bugged by MI5 inside parliament. Just ten years ago that would, quite rightly, have caused a scandal and ministerial resignations. Now it appears nobody cares.

One of the reasons the security services have targeted Andrew Mackinlay for years is that he has been a leading opponent in parliament of their exponentially increasing powers to bug citizens at will. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo030703/debtext/30703-27.htm

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/01/331667.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3295393.ece

As for the odious Geoff Hoon, Chief Whip from Minister of Defence? It seems the hopelessly impotent Hoon is given increasingly unimportant jobs until they find one he can actually do – a reverse Peter principle I hereby christen the Geoff principle. Personally I suggest they put him in charge of a sub-Post Office, and then close it.

Andrew Mackinlay is worth ten thousand of Geoff Hoon. Anyone who doubts that for a minute should read the speech he made in the House of Commons on this subject.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080522/debtext/80522-0009.htm

He is one of the very few independent spirits remaining in the Houses of Parliament. How the Establishment hate him – as I say, I can give eye witness evidence of that from many years on the inside.

I am no fan of the Putin-led Mafia/KGB hybrid that still rules Russia. But Russia and Eastern Europe are huge factors in future world development. We are sinking to the depths of cold war paranoia, that one of the most interested and informed MPs is smeared by the security services for having Russian contacts. Andrew Mackinlay is no Russian stooge and in nobody’s pocket – and that goes for New Labour too.