The Paymaster: Geoffrey Robinson, Maxwell and New Labour
Tom Bower
Simon & Schuster £17.99, pp272
Buy it at a discount at BOL
'Lucky bloke. If he inherited millions by shagging a rich old woman, he was cleverer than most.' This, says Tom Bower in his controversial book on Geoffrey Robinson, was the reaction of many MPs when stories broke revealing that Tony Blair's Paymaster-General was a beneficiary of an offshore trust worth millions.
Bower, one of the country's most formidable investigative journalists, sets out to prove that serendipity had nothing to do with Robinson's accumulation of wealth and ministerial office.
The author paints a portrait of the man who claimed to be 'New Labour before anybody had thought of it' as a ruthless operator who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. From giving sexual favours to the elderly heiress Joska Bourgeois in return for a $20 million inheritance, to befriending naive Egyptian academics in order to profit from their patents, Bower offers Robinson no ounce of dignity.
Bower's previous books - on Maxwell, Tiny Rowland and Richard Branson - are often described as demolition jobs. His method is based on interpreting every action of his prey as being motivated by avarice and malice. With the Daily Mail, where Bower's wife is deputy editor offering serialisation rights, this is perhaps not surprising.
Yet so effective is Bower in destroying Robinson's character that I actually found myself feeling a touch of sympathy for the former Paymaster. Robinson, the son of a furniture-maker, was a talented sportsman and linguist who joined the Labour party after being moved by civil rights activists while he was at Yale. After being spotted by Harold Wilson, he was sympathetic to trade unions, and as an MP sided with Tony Benn in attacking America's war in Vietnam. Surely there is some good in the man?
Not according to Bower. Even when Robinson first enters the Treasury after Labour's election victory in 1997, he is attacked for being too too 'touchy-feely', putting his arms around shoulders and squeezing arms. To Bower, this is not genuine excitement and bonhomie, but some evil ploy to win friends.
As always, Bower excels at unravelling financial chicanery, and there are pages of detail analysing Robinson's wheeler-dealings. Unless you're a forensic accountant this will probably be deadly boring. Still, The Paymaster was not meant to be a bestseller but a news story, and there are two accusations which must be taken seriously.
First is the claim that in 1990 Robinson, while an MP, asked for and received £200,000 from Robert Maxwell for managing Hollis, one of Maxwell's engineering firms. Robinson has never declared this payment. When the scandal over Robinson offshore accounts broke and his links with Maxwell became embarrassing for the Government, the Paymaster-General denied he'd received any money from the disgraced tycoon. Robinson's line was backed fully by Blair and Brown.
Bower has uncovered fresh documentary evidence that pretty much proves beyond doubt that this payment was both requested by Robinson and paid personally to him. Parliamentary sleaze watchdog Elizabeth Filkin will now get her teeth stuck into this evidence, and it is hard to see how Robinson will escape censure.
Thankfully for Labour, still reeling over the Hinduja revelations, Robinson is yesterday's man. Far more alarming is Bower's claim that Trade Secretary Stephen Byers 'buried' a DTI investigation into Robinson's business affairs which discovered the £200,000 payment.
Bower claims that Byers came under pressure from Downing Street, which feared that Robinson - bitter after being sacked for lending money to Peter Mandelson - was about to publish explosive evidence of ministerial wrongdoing in his forthcoming memoirs.
This is a serious allegation and, if true, hits right at the heart of an administration elected on a promise of 'fairness not favours'. Did Ministers pull strings to help out a 'deceitful' businessman who had given them hospitality at his luxury homes around the world?
Byers says no, and is threatening legal action against Bower and the Mail. Bower does not provide any hard evidence to prove his version of events.
Still, if I were Byers, or in the Labour party high command, I would not want this to go to court. After all, Bower would get access to hoards of documents, and his lawyers would be able to cross-examine witnesses from Blair's private office to the Chancellor himself. Now that would make a bestseller...
Despite its shortcomings, I would urge every Labour Minister, every ministerial hopeful, every special adviser or spin doctor to read this book. It contains one vital lesson: self-made millionaires with offshore bank accounts should be kept miles away from government. The questions is, will Labour learn to steer clear in the second term?
