Gerald Warner: Just sign on the dotted line, Mr Blair

"HEY! Look - I mean - come on - I’m a pretty straight kind of guy!" The cracked gramophone record of injured innocence is on the turntable again, as the Great Charlatan, alias Anthony Ecclestone Hinduja Blair, trawls for the dwindling support of that part of the electorate that is in the market for the Brooklyn Bridge and Venezuelan watermelon mines.

The Labour lie machine has lost its potency, as witness the dire soundbite "Garbagegate". Millbank, once compared to the German war machine in 1940, now resembles the Wehrmacht in 1945.

It was the head of our "purer than pure" administration who wrote to Adrian Nastase, the prime minister of Romania, on July 23, in support of the bid by Lakshmi Mittal to buy the Romanian steel industry: "I am delighted by the news that you are to sign the contract for the privatisation of your biggest steel plant Sidex with the LNM Group. I am particularly pleased it is a British company which is your partner."

A British company? Mittal’s holdings are based in the Dutch Antilles; he himself is an Indian citizen; of his employees worldwide, estimated at between 80,000 and 125,000, around 85 are in Britain. Beyond that, this icon of British patriotism has also donated, through his American subsidiary, 420,000 to the Stand Up for Steel group, lobbying to place tariffs of 20% to 40% on steel imports to the United States, a market worth 250m a year to Corus, the British steel manufacturer.

It is also alleged that Mittal’s companies owe 471,000 in unpaid VAT to British Customs and Excise. That figure is dwarfed by the millions they owe to creditors following their failed steel operation in the Irish Republic, the largest corporate collapse in Irish history, many of whom are British companies facing consequent job losses.

On the other hand, if that appears to be an unconvincing chronicle of support for British interests, Lakshmi Mittal has performed one transcendent act of British patriotism: he gave 125,000 to the Labour Party during the last general election.

There is a school of thought which sees that gesture of selfless philanthropy as the motive behind the prime ministerial support he enjoyed during his sensitive negotiations with the Romanian government.

By July of last year, Mittal’s bid was being threatened by competition from Usinor, the French steel giant. On July 20, Mittal returned to London. On July 23, the same day on which Lionel Jospin, the French prime minister arrived in Bucharest to promote France’s commercial interests, Blair sent his supportive letter to Romania. As an added inducement, it was heavy-handedly hinted that co-operation by Bucharest would assist Romania’s ambition to join the European Union. On July 25 Mittal arrived back in Bucharest to sign the contract.

All of that would have been a creditable promotion of British interests, but for one detail: the company being supported was not British and was in aggressive competition against UK firms.

In the House of Commons on February 13, Blair refused three times to answer the question whether he knew that Lakshmi Mittal was a donor to the Labour Party. Such silence is eloquent. Downing Street was "unable to rule out whether the Prime Minister might have met Mr Mittal at a social event as we did not track every single person he saw".

Lord Macdonald, trade minister, appearing on the BBC’s On the Record programme, was asked more than 10 times how often Tony Blair had signed such letters of support, but refused to say. At the same time, there was evidence of panic in the Fhrerbunker.

At a lobby briefing held on February 11, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said that Tony Blair had written such letters in support of British interests to Russia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

At a later briefing, on February 14, the Czech Republic had mysteriously disappeared from the canon. It has since emerged that Lakshmi Mittal is currently engaged in negotiations to purchase the Nova Hut steel plant in the Czech Republic and has been given exclusivity in the talks until May. Sick-minded cynics wonder if there are any other interesting Blair autographs blowing around in the winds of Mitteleuropa.

New Labour is a fish that is rotting from the head down. There is still wide support - or, rather, tolerance - for the Great Charlatan; but it is shallow. If we had an opposition whose idea of renewal was a little more ambitious than support for homosexual marriage, it would without difficulty evict this discredited regime at the next election.

"Hey, I’m a pretty straight guy!" Why don’t you go for a wee-wee, Blair?