Anyone else eager to hear Liam Fox's statement to the House?

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I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all and I look forward to hearing it at 2.30pm today.

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/datablog/2011/oct/10/liam-fox-and-adam-werritty-links-liamfox

Certainly v.close friends judging from that list. Little Britain character Sebastian (PM's aide) keeps coming to my mind

'He apologised for giving the impression of possible wrong doing'
yeah that's the problem with his apology right there-he didn't actually apologise for doing wrong, merely for giving that impression

how bloody mealy-mouthed is that.
he's done wrong, of course he has! It's just not normal to have your mate following you around at work! I've said it before but what the hell was adam werrity getting out of this? because there will be something and it will be dodgy as hell.

tories think they can do all their dodgy mates favours and the little people don't need to know about it or if they accidentally find out then an insincere apology is enough to get them off the hook. well frankly that bloody stinks and I am sick of it!

Cat, I couldn't agree more!
The only time I worked with someone who consistently brought other people (hubby & kids in this case) into the workplace, we felt that they were being used as a distraction so the boss couldn't tackle her in their presence (she was massively underperforming). Now, I know that's not the case in this situation, but have to ask why did he need to take his chum everywhere?. And what was his purpose in being there?

It's not quite that simple in my opinion. AW was interested in politics and ran LF's political charity, he's quite an obvious person to take around with him, surely?

And all he's been accused of so far is giving the impression of wrongdoing. If there are other charges, he'll have to answer to those, but it seems the wording of the rule he's broken is to give the impression and that could be quite significant.

"Are they naive or do they genuinely think it's ok to behave this way?"

I think it's towering arrogance unusual even by Westminster standards Littleredant

I'm now actually following this thread just to see starrywillow's increasingly bizarre justifications.

As I've said, Atlantic Bridge was not a charity. It breached the Charities Commission's rules on political activity. That's why the Charities Commission ordered it to be wound up last year.

According to the reports I've read it took Werritty until last month to get round to it. I imagine his globetrotting got in the way.

Atlantic Bridge was a money-making enterprise and provided a fig leaf for Werritty.

Any proper inquiry should look into that. The first few questions should be what Fox thought he was doing by setting up a bogus charity, whether it claimed tax relief and why it is considered that someone who had done so should now hold public office.

tianc

I'm not justifying anything. I'm simply saying what the few facts are that have been given to us among all the pointless insinuations and they are few and far between. I don't know if LF is guilty of anything, but neither does anyone on here either. I watched his statement, the questions he was asked were really poor, it might have helped if they'd been rather more probing but they weren't.

If you read my posts as a determination to protect LF at all costs then you've misread my intention, I just don't like people to be condemned without evidence and I certainly don't like any of the innuendo that the media is passing off as important to the issue. There are two sides to every story and since everyone on here has already decided he's guilty, I see nothing wrong with pointing out that nothing has been proven as of yet. Just because he's a politician doesn't mean he's not entitled to a defence. ;)

Which justifications have been bizarre though? The ones seggesting he's not necessarily gay or the ones that he's not necessarily guilty of wrong doing?

He didn't set up a bogus charity, he set up a charity which was stopped because it was thought of as too political after LF went into government if I'm right. If I'm wrong, I'm perfectly happy to be corrected, I'm not pretending to know everything about this issue at all.

AW was a lobbyist, so why is it so odd that he was interested in lobbying political people on trips with LF?

It's not odd that Werrity was interested in it. It's odd that Fox allowed/enabled it.

Werrity's been handing out business cards using the portcullis logo while accompanying a government minister. The receiving governments like the Sri Lankans were under the impression he was there in some official capacity, and yet he had none.

If we go with the other explanation, that he was just socialising with Fox while they both happened to be abroad in the same city, then he had no business being at the official events.

And it's bloody odd that he was using Fox's office at Portcullis House as his own. WT actual F? If I did that to any of my employers, I'd have been out of the door for gross misconduct faster than you can say "Fox fucks facts fix".

It has been portrayed as being odd that he would have any reason to be interested in it, if you don't think it's odd then I don't need to argue that in this comment.

There are lots of questions about the business that still need answering and maybe you know some answers or have picked up on things I haven't. When was the card shown? If LF told him to stop in June, is he still using it with the Portcullis or was this from before June?

Can you have an official capacity on behalf of an MP without having to declare it? I don't know but there have been suggestions that you can as long as you aren't saying you're there on behalf of the cabinet minister. Maybe this is wrong.

Why shouldn't AW arrange meetings with LF and someone else from his own contacts? What are the rules about that?

And if LF set up the charity, what are the rules about using his office as a base?

I couldn't care less if LF is hetro/homo/bi/tran sexual. It doesn't directly concern me and doesn't interfere with the job that I pay him to do.

But I would rather that he did not take me, and all other taxpayers, for a fool.

He might not have done anything legally wrong that would stand up in court but I think he has a few more questions to answer.

Back when LF was Health spokesman AW ran a health advisory company. When LF became Shadow Defence Secretary he set up a security consultancy. What's the betting if LF had been given Education then AW would have done something in that field.

'what are the rules about that'?

well, quite. What ARE the rules? and are they satisfactory rules anyway? I am sure we all remember the lovely Margaret Beckett braying to Paxman about how 'I have broken no rules and done nothing wrong' over the MPs' expenses debacle. Therein lay the problem.

The rules - such as they are - are part of the problem.As far as I am concerned the sooner the Houses of Parliament cease to be a self regulating body the bloody better.

Clearly the 'charity' was as dodgy as fuck and I hope that's where the attention is going to turn now. Setting up an alleged charity to lobby for right-wing politics and pay for expensive flights and hotels for one's best chum is appalling behaviour.

The fact that he refuses to resign is a clear indicator of the type of man he is. Redolent of Rumsfeld refusing to hang up the gloves in shame after Abu Ghraib.

This is getting even more interesting now that it becomes apparent that Werritty was paid by rightists to act as an unofficial adviser to Liam Fox, as they were afraid that normal special advisers (the ones paid for by taxpayers, and subject to civil service rules) weren't right-wing enough.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15269215

It's all quite disturbing and makes one wonder if left-wingers who see anything the coalition does as a vast neocon conspiracy are actually right.

Lots of questions still to answer of course but the suspect meeting at least, was as incidental as had been claimed.

"Boulter, despite trying to knife Fox, admitted it is true that he met Werritty entirely by accident in a restaurant in Dubai, and that they then set up the talks with Fox. ?It was coincidental that I bumped into him in a restaurant in Dubai.? The idea of such an accidental meeting was jeered in the Commons but it turns out to be completely true. Boulter had given the impression to several newspapers that the meeting was agreed ahead of Fox's arrival - but he now clarifies that he had asked for one long before, which is not the same thing at all."

politics.standard.co.uk/2011/10/fox-friends-turn-on-walter-mitty-werritty-.html

MooncupGoddess, LF is to the right of the party, DC isn't. The right of the party is a pain in the backside to DC and he spends a lot of his time trying to tone them down so I wouldn't assume LF is part of a coalition conspiracy, maybe part of a far right one. He is their favourite (or was) to be leader.

The wrong doing here has nothing to do with whether Fox is sleeping with his friend or not. He's our Defence secretary, fgs - the man who, above all others, is responsible for our national security! He doesn't make me feel safe at all ...

He probably discusses all sorts of secrets with his friend - the owner of a defence company.

Liam: 'Adam, there's going to be a nice little uprising in Libya tomorrow. I'd get over there if I were you, and sell a few thousand guns to the government. I'd go myself, but I'm just about to send another dozen young men and women to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. And yes, why not pop in there on your way back? They're always on the look out for good guns. Pay good prices, too.'

I want rid.

What's a 'defence' company? (I think I meant arms). Does he own an arms company? I think I read it somewhere ...

Anyway, you get my point.

That is true starrywillow, fair point. Doesn't make Fox's behaviour any less shocking, though. Surely DC will have to get rid of him now it's clear Werritty was a right-wing mole smuggled into important meetings despite having no official permission?

I suppose it depends on whether LF is proven to have known everything. The latest line of defence seems to be to distance LF from AW and say AW was the one at fault and using LF and his position for his own gains.

Also, DC really really doesn't like getting rid of his cabinet ministers (or anyone) and if he does get rid of LF he will have a dangerous loose canon of the far right on the backbenches gathering support against DC so politically, he'd want to avoid that if possible. He did get rid of Andy Coulson but he hung on as long as he could get away with. I predict he'll try and weather the storm and then if it's impossible in every way not to keep him, sack him.

It will depend on what's unearthed by the inquiry, mostly.

Agree that DC is doing his best to keep LF to avoid the loose cannon situation you mention... but given that LF set up the dodgy charity Atlantic Bridge, which seems to have paid for AW's flights and hotels, there's no way LF can escape culpability. Also, his attitude that he would rather have AW as his 'adviser' than a properly appointed one shows a real fuck-you attitude to House of Commons process and regulations.

Yes, it is all rather depressing. But there have been a few scandals that I haven't expected to blow over and then they have. I think the only resignations so far have been David Laws and Andy Coulson and yet there's been Vince Cable, Chris Huhne, William Hague, George Osborne, Ed Balls and DC himself so you never know, LF might just hang on too. The results of the inquiry are due 21st Oct.