Friday, January 11, 2008

Not such a little earner

Tony Blair's new role as a JP Morgan adviser is just the latest evidence of his brazen avarice

Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Friday January 11, 2008
The Guardian

".....Other prime ministers have looked for nice little earners after retirement, by way of unreadable memoirs or dubious directorships, but there has always been an almost admirably brazen quality to Tony Blair's avarice. Within months of leaving No 10 he has picked up several million for his memoirs, £250,000 a time for speaking engagements, and now an annual £500,000 for providing "strategic advice and insight" to Morgan, the US investment bank, which will take him a few days a month. As the 19th-century Earl of Glasgow might have said, a fellow can jog along on that.......

Referring to the ghastly speech ("this is the greatest nation on earth") with which the prime minister announced his departure last May, Alan Bennett observes in the London Review of Books that, to Blair, "the real importance of his premiership is as a stage in his spiritual journey". Or is it his financial journey? "

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