Boulter vs Fox

The Liam Fox imbroglio has just started to make more sense. The original story was broken by The Guardian (of whom more later) and the main source appears to have been one Harvey Boulter, an American mogul whom Fox fatally agreed to meet in June at the suggestion of his friend Adam Werrity. It was the kind of meeting that a civil servant would never have arranged. Boulter was, to use a political term, toxic. He was being sued for blackmail by 3M, in a court case being fought in London, and after landing this meeting with the UK Defence Secretary he tried to use it as ammo. According to 3M’s lawyers, he told them that unless this blackmail malarkee was settled quietly and out of court then his new mate Foxy would discuss at Cabinet rescinding the knighthood recently given to 3M’s chairman Sir George Buckley. A lunatic suggestion – as any Brit knows, knighthoods are not rescinded by a Cabinet discussion. But it may have sounded less implausible in America than it does here.

In this way, Fox stumbled into the middle of a lethal blackmail lawsuit. Ka-boom. But Iain Dale has significant new details now. As Dale puts it:

“So it is clear that from Mr Boulter’s point of view, if he can discredit Werrity and Fox as witnesses it will be ‘job done’. In essence, that’s what all this seems to be about. And Boulter thinks he has done a pretty good job so far.”

Dale’s scoop is an email from Boulter’s law firm, confirming that the subject of a knighthood did not come up. His blog asks why The Guardian – which broke the original story – did not report this part of it. Meanwhile The Guardian has more details for tomorrow’s paper (pictured, above), seemingly more ammo from Boulter. Details that he paid £10,000 a month to lobbyists trying to get closer to Fox. The story is here. Fox has made many errors, and apologized for them today. But it all makes more sense in the context of this American blackmail battle, in whose crossfire Fox is now caught.
 
The Boulter vs 3M story was originally reported with this intro: “It is a rare and wonderful case that brings together the British defense ministry, the maker of Post-Its, the dread MRSA staph virus, and competing accusations of corporate blackmail and legal-ethics breaches.” This story contains a whole lot more now. But for all his errors, is Fox actually guilty of wrongdoing? I think not, which is why I suspect he’ll survive. But it seems the mud-slinging is not over yet.

UPDATE: Tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph has a splash (below) presumably discovered in the vaults of its still-excellent-value computer disc on MPs expenses: Fox paid Werrity £690 in National Insurance in 2005/06 (I suspect this is the earliest year for which the Telegraph’s disc has data). Its significance?

“The payment suggests that he had been employed by Dr Fox in the previous year. At the time, Mr Werritty was the director of a company called UK Health. Since Mr Werritty has never been issued with a House of Commons security pass, the payment will raise questions about what work he was doing for the MP’s office.”