Red Star Research investigation into Tony Blair and the Labour Party's links with big business and the rich elite
'Tony's cronies have old guard on the retreat' - 09/04/97 Mandelson: "Isn't it good to get all these bright young Blairites into the House?"
Tories accuse New Labour of profligacy - 28/01/98 the Conservatives are attacking Labour's spending on advisers, trips, parties and decorating
Blair shows old school loyalty - 10/02/98 He has appointed his old school housemaster to the two-days-a-week, £25,000 a year chairmanship of the National Heritage Memorial Fund
Tories attack the messenger - 01/04/98 Campbell ticks off cabinet ministers who fail to obey orders
Commons committee to quiz Campbell - 05/04/98 about his role - in particular his role at Cabinet meetings. He has been dubbed "the 23rd member of the Cabinet"
Campbell attacked for 'untrammelled power' - 24/04/98 Mr Kilfoyle denied claims that the politically impartial press service was under Labour's control: "Mr Campbell is the government spokesman. He has a duty to make sure that the government's message goes out."
PM attacked over lobbyists - 08/07/98 William Hague accused the prime minister of surrounding himself with "feather-bedding, pocket-lining, money grabbing cronies"
Hague hammers Blair over sleaze - 08/07/98 for encouraging a "culture of cronyism."
Cabinet tells Blair to ditch lobbyists - 12/07/98
Budget leak claim in 'cronyism' row - 13/07/98
Labour dominates trust appointments - 15/07/98 Labour activists appointed to NHS trusts outnumber Tories by seven to one in the past year
Crony row over TV chief made peer and minister - 04/08/98 Gus Macdonald, one time lefty; now a multi-millionaire
Scottish Office minister rejects 'crony' charges - 04/08/98
Labour blocks inquiry into special advisers - 11/08/98 Select Committee "nobbled" by ministers
Ex-lobbyist Draper pens TV satire - 16/08/98 Disgraced 'cash for access' lobbyist Derek Draper has written a TV satire on Labour cronyism
Labour's top donors pick up key posts - 31/08/98
Blair gives close friend key role 22/10/98 He has placed his one time flat mate Lord Falconer, on 14 Cabinet committees
Prescott aide in 'crony' row - 26/10/98
No 10 backs 'crony' aide - 27/10/98
Cash for spin - 16/11/98 Blair's official spokesman and chief spindoctor Alastair Campbell earns more than £90,000 a year
Hague condemns 'House of Cronies' - 25/11/98
Cronyism: The new sleaze - 23/12/98/p>
Dome stars are dragged into 'cronyism' row - 13/01/99 "curious" link between donations to Labour and the award of plum roles in the marketing of the Millennium Experience
Cronyism claim over TV woman's countryside job - 25/01/99 Ms Goodman is a friend of Peter Mandelson
Blair escapes tribunal appearance - 22/02/99 Two women have lost their attempt to make Tony Blair appear before an industrial tribunal involving "jobs for the boys" allegations against the Lord Chancellor
Blair escapes call to appear before 'cronyism' panel - 23/02/99 Mr Hart, 57, is the godfather of Mr Blair's daughter. He was appointed to the £73,000-a-year post, which was not advertised, in March 1998
No 10 job for Red Ken's ex-aide - 01/03/99 Bill Bush, head of BBC Analysis and Research and former chief of staff to Labour left-winger and London mayoral hopeful Mr Livingstone
Lord Irvine to appeal bias ruling 27/03/99 Lord Irvine's appointment of Garry Hart was unlawful as the post had not been advertised
Labour's 'cronies' cashing in on cushy NHS posts - 11/04/99
Labour to create new peers - 17/06/99
'Crony' row over new BBC chief - 25/06/99
'Faceless wonders' attacked by Prescott & Heseltine - 08/07/99 What irks Prescott is the increasing number of advisers, such as David Miliband, head of the Number 10 Downing Street policy unit
A government of Blairites - 29/07/99
New Labour, more travel - 02/08/99 Government special advisers have made 360 foreign trips costing almost £500,000 since Labour was elected
Cronyism row over TV licence fee report - 05/08/99
Labour 'crony' backed higher fee two years ago - 06/08/99
Concern over Blair's 'increasing' advisers - 20/08/99 the network of advisers "amounts to an unofficial prime minister's department in Downing Street"
Yeah, minister: Civil service modernises - 15/12/99 civil servants complained about the increasing politicisation of their job
Conduct code for government advisers - 09/01/00 without tighter controls, Labour could build up a campaign team for the next election at the tax payers' expense
Labour spindoctors 'lack propriety' - 10/01/00 Labour is creating an "alternative civil service" as spindoctors and political advisors wield influence across Whitehall
The advisers: Modernisation or politicisation? - 12/01/00 John Major had a mere eight special advisers in Downing Street. Tony Blair has 20. Worse, he has changed the rules to enable (force?) them to be politically biased in his favour
The Neill Committee: Key recommendations - 12/01/00 There should be a transparent and coherent code of conduct for advisers which should clarify the nature of the role that they play in relation to the work of civil service information staff
Tories fear 'House of cronies' - 20/01/00
Lords face flood of 'Tony's cronies' - 21/02/00
You can't spin London - McLaren - 24/02/00 "voters will not tolerate the Labour party trying to manipulate the city into accepting a candidate that nobody wants"
Blair network forging a new elite - 25/02/00 although they wield great power and influence, none has been elected... the media's leading lights play a significant role
Doing the quango tango? There ought to be a task force - 25/02/00 The result is a steady drizzle of recommendations from clever people who will find out what it is we're doing, and pass rules to stop it
Has Britain been quangoed? - 25/02/00 The British establishment has been swept away by a new Blairite elite, says a report. Are we really ruled by unelected quangos of showbiz, media, and business figures?
Dobson faces attack over NHS 'cronies' - 13/03/00 a report condemns the politicisation of appointments to the NHS since Labour came to power... NHS trusts are packed with Labour activists
Report reveals cronyism in NHS appointments - 22/03/00
Labour under fire for health 'cronies' - 22/03/00
Milburn is forced to end NHS 'cronyism' - 23/03/00
Blair is attacked over 'cash for coronets' - 01/04/00 Blair was accused of being the biggest dispenser of patronage since the Fifties
Limit spin doctors, committee insists - 14/06/00 a clear distinction should be made between political and expert advisers... concerns about the cost of political advisers to the taxpayer
The secret world of a crony with the Midas touch - 26/06/00 Lord Lavy has been cited as an example of the Prime Minister's heavy reliance on an unelected and unaccountable inner circle
The reason why Tony's cronies make us angry - 26/06/00
Ken Follett - 'No longer a luvvie' - 02/07/00
Labour faces more 'spin' attacks - 03/07/00 Tony Benn accused the prime minister of running Britain "like some medieval monarchy", surrounded by courtiers and determined at all costs to hang on to power
Blair 'must curb spin doctors' - 04/07/00 press advisers - paid for by the taxpayer - are acting for the Labour Party, not the government
Birt crime job offer criticised - 10/07/00 Tony Blair should have learnt by now that appointing his friends to positions of influence is a recipe for incompetent government and questionable judgments
What did the leaked memo say? - 19/07/00 Pollster Philip Gould's memo - Getting the Right Place in History and not the Wrong One: "We are outflanked on patriotism and crime; we are suffering from disconnection; we have been assailed for spin and broken promises..."
Blair office costs spark 'megalomania' charge - 21/07/00 Ever since becoming prime minister Mr Blair has faced accusations of adopting a presidential style of government with power concentrated around No 10 and his own close circle of advisers
Ministers agree to limit spin doctors - 26/07/00 The number of politically-appointed special advisers has risen to from 38 to 74 since Labour came to power in 1997, costing £3.9m. As well as a doubling of special advisers across the whole of Whitehall, Number 10 alone now employs 25 political staff, three times as many as under John Major
Politicians 'stuff quangos with cronies' - 26/07/00
No immediate cap on spin doctors - 26/07/00 as the general election approaches there will be an increase in the amount of activity by political advisers
Difficult, yes, but not appalling - 09/09/00 Lord Falconer
Crony row as Blair aide is tipped for top civil service job - 10/09/00
Chequers used for Blair brother's birthday party - 15/09/00
Yesterday's cronies are today's New Labour rejects - 20/12/00
Wilson aide Joe Haines says Labour gave honours to donors - 07/01/01 Harold's cronies
Labour 'cronies' still being appointed to health trusts - 15/01/01
New Labour's broken heart? - 28/01/01 is the apparent rift between two of Tony Blair's closest advisers irreparable?
Number 10 in missile row - 02/05/01 Alastair Campbell told reporters that the planned missile shield was "broadly a good idea". His comment came only minutes after Tony Blair had refused to be drawn on the issue in the Commons... Iain Duncan Smith asked whether it was the prime minister's official spokeman and not Mr Blair who was running the country
Blair's aide ends dithering on Star Wars - 03/05/01 remarks seen as reflecting Blair's real thinking and Mr Campbell's growing influence at the heart of the Government
Speaker clashes with Tory MPs over Blair - 03/05/01 He allowed Blair to avoid answering a question about the collapse of the Wembley stadium project... the opposition see Mr Martin as biased towards the Government and say he is not up to the job
Senior MPs link up to protect Parliament from No 10 - 07/05/01
Straw accused of Wembley 'cronyism' - 10/05/01 his best man and school friend Patrick Carter, a non-executive director of the Prison Service with no experience of stadium construction or management, was appointed adviser on the future of the floundering English national stadium project by the committee, which is chaired by the home secretary
Blair aide heads for safe seat as David Clark quits - 11/05/01 South Shields is the second safe Labour seat in two days to be suddenly vacated, making room for high-flying Blairites
Blair may knight old friend Clinton - 11/05/01
Voting Labour is a luxury that not everybody can afford - 12/05/01 who should vote Labour...
Woodward peers at Labour safe seat - 12/05/01 Someone high up in the Labour Party - he has not said who - suggested that he might like to become Lord Gilbert of Dudley, and be a minister in Tony Blair's first government
Election notebook: School lesson on undermining democracy By W F Deedes - 12/05/01 Blair is offering peerages to Labour MPs of a certain age, to procure their seats for younger men of his choosing. This is a kick in the teeth for local Labour parties, who have Mr Blair's favourites thrust upon them
Stitch-up row mars Blair's big speech - 14/05/01 Shaun Woodward, a millionaire Tory defector close to Mr Blair, was "parachuted" into the safe Labour seat of St Helens South. Party activists and trade unionists complained of a "stitch up" after no local candidate was shortlisted for the seat by the party leadership
Blair plans to evict peers from Lords - 15/05/01 The commission would seek to "rebalance" the Lords both politically and socially
Pity the poor Labour voters of St Helens - 16/05/01 The last time I wrote about Shaun Woodward in this column, I described him as "an unprincipled creep on the make". As most people agreed, this was a very fair assessment of the man. Mr Blair knows that Mr Woodward would never have been picked to fight this safe Labour seat if the St Helens CLP had been given a free choice. So he stitched the selection up for him
Woodward to face challenge - 17/05/01 from a party activist who is to run against him as an independent socialist
Labour to eject Woodward rebel - 25/05/01 Lord Stoddart of Swindon will be ejected from the party after endorsing a breakaway candidate standing against ex-Tory Shaun Woodward
Tony leaves cronies to run the country - 26/05/01
Blair accused of 'suspect judgment' in Microsoft visit - 30/05/01 Bill Gates's closeness to Downing Street has caused unease because his company has been the subject of investigations by the European Union and the American Justice Department
Land Rover 'to halve workforce' - 31/05/01 Staff cuts have been delayed until after the election as the West Midlands has a lot of marginal Labour seats. First Microsoft, now Ford!
Campbell's pay-off queried - 31/05/01 ...public perception that Labour was receiving an "inappropriate subsidy from the taxpayer"
Reshuffle shows 'cronyism' says Labour MP - 12/06/01
Sacked Hoey puts the boot in - 17/06/01 you'd have thought the government was being run by Fifa
Bucking the system - 28/06/01 Anyone who believed the second New Labour government would be humbled by its massive victory and start behaving less like an elected dictatorship after 7 June will have been disappointed by its behaviour so far
Milburn adviser 'is privatisation expert' - 28/06/01
Blairite is elected as MPs' 'shop steward' - 11/07/01
Blair faces a public challenge over his peerages for 'cronies' - 12/07/01
Blair stands on ceremony for the Bush visit - 15/07/01 Blair's formal treatment of Bush shows how much of a crony Bill Clinton was
a strong advocate of the euro and one of Labour's rich business friends - 06/08/01
Head of rural affairs gives small farmers little hope - 12/08/01 Lord Haskins, the Irish multi-millionaire appointed by his friend Mr Blair as "rural affairs co-ordinator", began by betraying astonishing naivete about his new role
James Naughtie's "The Rivals" - 30/08/01 a true account of the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown
New Labour: out with the red rose and in with the Big Mac - 30/08/01 Blair is to attend a £15,000 reception at the party's annual conference paid for by the burger chain McDonald's... who are anxious to receive the implied endorsement of Mr Blair and other ministers
Campbell ousts the Chief Whip - 07/09/01 Tony Blair has given his director of communications, Alastair Campbell, his own house in Downing Street!!! Tony Benn: "it just tells you everything about what is going on"
Court of King Tony takes centre stage at Peter Brook's Hamlet - 08/09/01 a night of champagne socialism... no one was rude enough to glance at the Prime Minister when Hamlet spoke his concerns about "the insolence of office"
Gavyn Davies is BBC chair - 19/09/01
Tories attack new BBC choice - 19/09/01
Anger over £.5m bill for Blair's aides - 01/10/01
Blair 'will quit' so Cherie can become a judge - 01/10/01
Speaker attacked for 'impartiality lapse' - 30/10/01
Aide who was too 'posh' for Mr Speaker - 05/11/01 sacked for not being scum
Lord Irvine cleared of cronyism - by his cronies! - 23/11/01
Aboard the ship of fools - 11/12/01 the allocation of influential jobs seems to depend on who knew Tony at what stage in his career
Tories attack quango system - 20/01/02
Labour's cash, cronies and favours - 17/02/02
Sunday Times leader: A soiled reputation - 17/02/02 the government is finally paying the price of its arrogance and contempt for anyone who questions it
BBC gets its way 'thanks to the old boys at No 10' - 21/02/02 says Tim Allan, one of Mr Blair's former "spin doctors"
Again, Labour fails to answer the charges - 25/02/02 The press chiefs of most major departments - who used to be career civil servants - have been replaced with former journalists sympathetic to Labour
Bashing Sir Humphrey - 25/02/02 The institutions of the state, from NHS trusts to the BBC, have been put under Labour placemen
Rory Bremner: When I play Tony, I see what has gone wrong - 10/03/02 Who runs the country? Half a dozen of Blair's closest friends
McLetchie highlights Labour's jobs for the boys - 09/05/02 McCronies
Blair accused of putting youth first in promotions - 04/06/02
Labour warned of cronyism as peer heads new media watchdog - 26/07/02
Clinton defends Blair on Iraq - 10/09/02 risking allegations of meddling in internal Labour politics
Sainsbury's £2.5m tops donations - 13/05/03
Holiday reading: the playboys and business titans who make up the exclusive Club Blair - 25/05/03
Rapid rise of Tony's school crony - 13/06/03
Blair reshuffle under fire - 13/06/03 Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews: Charlie Falconer's appointment is nepotism ("Lord" Falconer was Blair's flatmate)
Blair forced Irvine to resign in humiliating reshuffle row - 15/06/03 lawyers are very concerned that a new appointments body for the judiciary will be overrun by Labour "placemen"
Tories angry over new CPS boss - 05/08/03 A QC who co-founded Cherie Blair's legal chambers has been named new head of the Crown Prosecution Service amid allegations of "rampant cronyism"
Cherie's colleague is named as DPP - 06/08/03
Caplin stripped of No 10 pass that Cherie arranged for her - 12/09/03
Tories renew 'cronyism' attack - 19/12/03
Campbell 'still close to Blair' - 10/01/04
John Scarlett is new MI6 chief - 06/05/04 He was in charge of drawing up the government dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction!
Curtains for Blair's 'sofa cabinet'? - 15/07/04
Cronyism rules 'need tightening' - 19/01/05
Blair under fire over reshuffle - 10/05/05
Euan Blair accepts US internship - 25/06/05
Quango chief denies bias towards Labour - 14/07/05 Labour activists are more than three times as likely to be appointed to quangos than their Conservative counterparts
Sleaze row as election donors get peerages - 08/11/05
Blair sets record for rewarding party donors with life peerages - 14/11/05
The irresistible rise of 'Tony's crony' - 17/11/05
'Chance missed' to stop cronyism - 15/12/05
Clinton backs Blair as UN chief - 14/01/06
Every £1m Labour donor has been given honour - 15/01/06
Broker loses peerage in ‘donor crony’ row - 12/02/06
Watchdog warns Blair off ennobling Labour donors - 05/03/06
Peer nominee in £1.5m Labour loan - 11/03/06
Heritage candidates 'too Tory for Tessa' - 23/12/06 forget our heritage - New Labour wants Britain to look like one big vandalised bus shelter
Brown's Downing St 'humbler, more austere' - 30/12/06 Blair supports like Prescott, Hutton, Jowell, Armstrong and Lord Falconer will be history
Hewitt is accused of NHS trust cronyism - 13/02/07 after packing NHS trusts with - guess what - Labour activists!
Tories: New BBC chief is another Brown crony - 05/04/07
Tories accuse Brown of 'cronyism' - 31/05/07