Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has been suspended from the Labour Party in a “case for access” scandal. Mr Straw has been accused of being a politician for hire. He was one the MPs who were secretly filmed by the Daily Telegraph in a joint investigation with Channel 4’s Dispatches programme.
Undercover reporters posing as representatives of a communications agency called PMR based in Honk Kong made contact with MPs Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind and offered to pay in exchange of assistance in hiring senior British politicians to join the company’s advisory board. During one of the meetings, Mr Straw allegedly described how he operated “under the radar” to exercise his influence to change EU rules for a commodity company, which paid him £60,000 annually. According to the newspaper, he claimed to have used “charm and menace” to persuade the Ukrainian prime minister to mend the rules to facilitate the same company.
Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has been suspended from the Labour Party in a “case for access” scandal. Mr Straw has been accused of being a politician for hire. He was one the MPs who were secretly filmed by the Daily Telegraph in a joint investigation with Channel 4’s Dispatches programme.
Undercover reporters posing as representatives of a communications agency called PMR based in Honk Kong made contact with MPs Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind and offered to pay in exchange of assistance in hiring senior British politicians to join the company’s advisory board. During one of the meetings, Mr Straw allegedly described how he operated “under the radar” to exercise his influence to change EU rules for a commodity company, which paid him £60,000 annually. According to the newspaper, he claimed to have used “charm and menace” to persuade the Ukrainian prime minister to mend the rules to facilitate the same company.
Mr Jack Straw has a long history of dealing and lobbying for the Iranian regime. In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, Mr Straw along with Britain’s Ambassador to Tehran, Richard Dalton, negotiated a notorious deal with Iran, which stipulated that coalition forces would bomb defenseless Iranian dissidents residing in Iraq in exchange for a guarantee of non-interference with the US-British invasion. From Iran’s side, the current president, Hassan Rouhani, who was then head of the Supreme National Security Council and then Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharrazi, were involved in the deal.
The bombing, which was carried out by the coalition to honour its part of the deal, claimed the lives of fifty non-combatant Iranian dissidents. The Iranian regime still went on to break the deal, and as of now, is deeply involved in Iraq’s affairs. Shiite militias affiliated with the terrorist Qods Force are carrying out murderous campaigns against Sunnis in certain provinces of the war-torn country.
Mr Straw remains a lobbyist for the Iranian regime. In September 2014, he wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph, which expectedly sang praises for President Rouhani’s government. He went on to suggest that Iran ought to be allowed to proceed with its research on nuclear technology and called on the West to extend cooperation to Iran for sake of peace and stability in Syria, northern Iraq and Lebanon. Being aware of Iran’s role in aforementioned regions, Mr Straw was perhaps actually proposing to reward the Iranian regime for its nuisance value. Also in 2014, he traveled to Iran – all expenses paid by the regime – and later told Radio 4’s Today programme how he along with four MPs had been visiting Tehren to determine whether any fresh and favourable prospects were developing under President Rouhani’s government.
British commentator, Christopher Booker, write in an article published on January 14, “It was Jack Straw who admitted, when he was home secretary in 2001, that it was “at the behest” of Tehran that he had proscribed the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI), part of the main Iranian dissident movement, as “terrorists” – a ruling the government only reluctantly withdrew on the orders of Chief Justice Phillips, when he ruled that it had not been able to produce a shred of evidence to support Mr Straw’s actions.”
As someone with a history of lobbying for the Iranian regime and against the interests of repressed people and their aspirations for peace, Mr Straw’s involvement in corruption scandal doesn’t come as a surprise.
