When Tony Blair leaves No. 10 Downing Street on June 27, Lord Levy, the prime minister’s personal envoy to the Middle East since 1999, will also step down. We have learned the hard way that Blair has poor judgment when it comes to filling senior positions. For example, two of his Cabinet ministers had to resign twice! Lord Levy, with whom Blair plays tennis at Chequers, was yet another highly criticized individual from the start.
I once had a meeting with him in the House of Lords, arranged by the Foreign Office, after I had written a critical article about him. I found him personally intelligent and charming — though seriously miscast.
He was born in 1944 to a traditional Jewish family and attended Hackney Downs Grammar School in London’s East End.
Having qualified as a chartered accountant, he moved into the pop music business. He had the ability to pick gifted but unknown singers and to turn them into international pop stars. He made a considerable fortune.
Lord Levy has raised well over £50 million for the Labour Party in Britain, and also considerable sums for the Labor Party in Israel. He was nicknamed “the Cashpoint” in Israeli political circles. He cut his teeth fund-raising for Jewish charities.
According to an article in The Sunday Times in 1994:
“Levy met Blair at a dinner party thrown by Gideon Meir, a senior Israeli diplomat in London. When Blair entered the Labour leadership race soon afterward, Levy took him under his wing and became his sponsor and ‘manager’. He became a familiar figure in Blair’s inner circle, with his predilection for gold signet rings, his ‘big’ hair and his Bentley”.
For ten years Blair has demonstrated an exaggerated respect for wealthy entrepreneurs. Presumably he appointed Lord Levy as his envoy on the grounds that he wanted to thank him and he was a person whom he could trust. At the time I detected considerable unease within the British Foreign Office, which is always apprehensive over a prime minister having special envoys abroad. Diplomats noted his lack of experience in international relations — apart from his British-Israeli links — and they feared that wires might get crossed. He still has an office within the Foreign Office.
Senior Foreign Office officials felt bound to defend him. I remember being told that the British Embassy in Damascus had welcomed Lord Levy’s calls on President Hafez Al-Assad, during which the former tried to persuade the president to negotiate seriously with Prime Minister Ehud Barak over the Golan Heights and Israel’s security needs. Once I received a furious phone call from Derek Plumbly, the director for the Middle East, (who went on to become ambassador to Saudi Arabia) attacking some comments I had made on Lord Levy.
However, Sir Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to America (1997-2003) in his book “DC Confidential” gave a fascinating account of what was really thought of Lord Levy’s performance:
“At some point in 2001 he announced his intention to come to Washington. This was the kind of news that chilled to the marrow even the hardiest ambassador. Levy, I was told, wanted to be seen as a latter-day Kissinger of the Middle East peace process. He shuttled around Israel and the Arab countries, giving birth to voluminous reports to London in which he played a prominent role.”
Lord Levy’s close ties with the Israeli Labor Party — at one stage his son worked for Ehud Barak — turned into a liability when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took over. He was now regarded with deep suspicion.
In 2003 his role was extended, surprisingly, to Latin America, which he knew even less about than the 21 Arab States. Some embarrassing reports appeared in The Sunday Times concerning his personal tax affairs and little more was heard of this new area of responsibility.
Today attention is focused on Michael Abraham Levy, Baron Levy of Mill Hill in the London Borough of Barnet since 1997, for a reason that has little to do with the Middle East. He finds himself right at the heart of the so-called “cash for peerages” scandal. His astonishing talents as a Labour Party fund-raiser have been the subject of a massive police inquiry by detectives from Scotland Yard. Detectives wanted to know if potential donors had been offered seats in the House of Lords in exchange for their cash for the Labour Party, which would be illegal. Their report is with the Director of Public Prosecutions.
