Anthony Barnett (London, OK): A copy of the "Briefing memorandum" codenamed 'Blackbird' and put together by "Merrill Lynch, Citi and the Blackstone Group" for the sale of Northern Rock was apparently leaked to the Financial Times. An injuction was placed on it to prevent its publication. Thanks to Guido Fawks, who has a good post on this, you can read it the full document here. There is an entertaining, aka shocking discussion of what happened on the FT site here. Will Hutton today wrote an angry case for nationalisation rather than permit a billion pound plus plus rip-off of the taxpayer. He outlines as much as he can of what has been gagged in the memorandum, describes as "jaw-dropping" the prospective government subsidy to the circling city sharks, insists that having taken all the risk with public money the Treasury must protect this investment by nationalisation and, later, a full-value sell-off and not allow us to be swindled. Darling, says Hutton, "must bite the bullet and for his own reputation and that of the government, he must do it soon". Clear fighting prose, Will. But what if Darling doesn't? As for the gagging order, Guido says, and it sounds right to me, "The reasons for this being suppressed are not commercial, they are political. Everybody in the City already knows what is in the memo. The government just doesn't want the political embarrassment".
To give credit where it is due, Brown has been exceptionally good in his statements of support for Freedom of Information, and OurKingdom celebrated this. But when it comes to walking the walk...
PS: there is an excellent account by Anatol Kaletsky in the Times and I should have hat-tipped the early, thorough diagnosis of the flawed bail-out by our Editor-in-Chief Tony Curzon Price.
