Book review: For whom the Bell tolls Following a recent blog posting on a speech by former BBC war correspondent and independent MP Martin Bell at Loewy Group’s monthly speaker’s club, his publishers very kindly sent me a copy of his new book The Truth That Sticks: New Labour’s Breach of Trust. A chronicle of the corruption and abuse of public fund – not least to say good will – that Bell alleges to have witnessed first hand at Westminster, if this tome was handed to every citizen in Britain we’d be battering down the doors of Parliament like Citizen Smith armed with the zeal of Guy Fawkes.

Bell’s central driving force isn’t a naïve shock to find that British politics is far from clean, he centres more on the UK Government’s incredible capacity for hypocrisy, seeking to impose ‘democracy’ on countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan when the self-styled ‘Mother of all Parliaments’ herself far from represents a good model of democracy in practice. Bell appears to argue that corruption and lack of accountability – in the modern era, at least – hit a zenith during Tony Blair’s premiership, with the invasion of Iraq the rancid icing on a dirty, seedy cake.

Bell’s arguments are passionate, often siding with the foot soldiers at the coal face as he himself once was both as a Corporal and news reporter, but if you’re familiar with the works of Rory Bremner and his ilk then you’ll have heard all the charges before: Blair lied about supposed Iraqi WMDs, New Labour rewarded some of its paymasters with peerages, Alistair Campbell elevated spin to unprecedented levels. The differentiator about The Trust That Sticks, however, is that Bell has been on the inside of the House that claims to represent us, and it’s riddled with flaws. This should concern us and we should all strive to make a difference, which I imagine is Bell’s key objective in writing this book.

Labels: PR

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