Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese - readers on this side of the Irwell might remember his dog-in-the-manger rubbishing of the BBC move to Salford Quays - has launched an astonishing attack on Peel Holdings for criticising Labour’s congestion charge.
The astonishing thing is not that he has criticised Peel’s views, but questioned whether they should be entering into the public debate in the first place:
Sir Richard Leese has accused Peel Holdings of `supporting overt political activity, although not declaring so publicly’ over their opposition to the scheme.
This is utter humbug. Peel are entitled to make representations and public pronouncements just the same as any other company or individual. Kellogg’s did so today, and I assume they will be next in front of Sir Richard’s firing squad.
It seems that Sir Richard is only concerned about companies supporting “overt political activity” when they disagree with him. I didn’t see him ranting and raving in the Manchester Evening News when the CEO of Ask Developments waded into the debate - but then Ken Knott was agreeing with him.
Ask are also of course a major donor to the Manchester Labour Party - and if that isn’t “overt political activity”, I don’t know what is!
Being a donor as Ask is of course overt political activity and it gets recorded at the Electoral Commission etc. Whittaker has gone bonkers over the possibility of congestion charging for a rush hour either end of the day, easily avoided by shoppers and workers alike at his various humungous car parks across the region.
Don’t know whether Whittaker or Peel have appeared on EC registers? They have a rep for being a donor to your party. But I’ve no idea whether that is on the up and up. But they are clearly in a grey area backing the position of one party only with hundreds of posters and dozens of bill boards and lots of press and PR and so on … and not declaring their support.
Whittaker has his mum’s car enshrined in the Trafford Centre. His plaints about selling off the airport - he being a willing buyer and the owner of Barton - are clearly self interested in the extreme.
My point is Chris that Richard’s only problem with Peel’s intervention is that they don’t agree with him. I don’t think anyone involved in the debate is unaware of the interests that companies like Peel Holdings (and Ask, for that matter) hold and those interests do not and should not proclude them from entering into the debate.
I’m not aware of any past Peel donations to any political party, but they have of course worked very closely with Salford City Council on a number of major projects (including most recently the Media:City development) - one could hardly consider them political partisans. There does seem - looking as an outsider - to be a good deal of friction between the MCC leadership and Peel (not sure how that started) but that is hardly grounds for accusing them of being closet Tories!