UK revolving door

Direct action events such as the recent Heathrow airport ‘flashmob’ protests lend weight to the argument that pressure groups are instruments which reinforce democratic pluralism. However, there is a disturbing report in the Observer about the emergence of a revolving door involving former Labour government officials and the BAA.

‘Senior MPs are demanding a Commons investigation into evidence of a “revolving door” policy between Downing Street, Whitehall and airport operator BAA, following last week’s decision by ministers to approve a third runway at Heathrow. MPs believe that BAA and British Airways were able to crush the environment lobby thanks to an intricate network of contacts with the government and the Labour party.

Concerns over their influence have been heightened by the presence of Tom Kelly, formerly the official spokesman for Tony Blair when he was prime minister, who has taken charge of “all aspects of BAA’s communication activity” since being appointed as group director of corporate and public affairs for the company in late 2007, when the campaign for a third runway was in full swing. Kelly heads a network that plugs BAA directly into government and Labour, several of whose senior figures are involved in the pro-runway campaign. Julia Simpson, another former adviser to Blair, left Downing Street in 2007 for BA.’

If the report is accurate, then this is a worrying development in British politics since the revloving door phenomenon was something that was largely the preserve of American Politics textbooks, where the overlap between membership of Congress and K Street employment is used as an argument to suggest that pressure groups in the USA preserve elite power.

Certainly I’ll be using this as a basis for discussion when we move onto the comparative paper later in the year.