The Face Of England. 21st Century "Europe Minister" Keith Vaz
pictured leaving the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London yesterday Over the last 20 years, he has veered from one extreme of his party to the other - moving from the hard-left Campaign Group of MPs to become one of Tony Blair's most unctuous New Labour supporters. But consistency, alas, has never been Keith Vaz's strongest point. Two years after being elected in Leicester East in 1987, he marched publicly with Muslim constituents who wanted Salman Rushdie's head over his Satanic Verses book. It later emerged that at the same time, he was telephoning the author to offer his private support. Once an arch Eurosceptic, he became such a strong pro-European that as Europe Minister, he threatened to hound Eurosceptics out of the Labour Party. In one leaked piece of correspondence, he was said to have written: 'We know who you Eurosceptics are and we're coming to get you in your constituencies.' Born in 1956 in Aden, he is a Goanese Catholic christened Nigel Keith Anthony Standish Vaz. His father was the correspondent in Aden for the Times of India. Vaz, pictured with Shilpa Shetty, once described himself as 'a leading member, if not the leading member, of the Asian community in this country' He was selected as Labour's candidate in Leicester East for the 1987 election - possibly in part thanks to his outspoken support for hugely controversial 'black sections' in the Labour Party. These were to be clubs closed to white party members and were designed to draw in disaffected ethnic minorities to Labour.
Vaz pictured at a reception in honour of Lord Irvine, who once described him as 'the most incredible networker I have ever met' Mr Vaz's stance is thought to have helped win him support in Leicester East, a constituency with 16,000 Muslim workers. But Mr Vaz's supporters may have been disappointed when, on entering Parliament, he reversed his support for 'black sections'.
Appointed Europe Minister in 1999, allegations of sleaze and chicanery began to emerge soon afterwards. The next year, the Parliamentary standards watchdog was called in to investigate allegations of undisclosed payments to Mr Vaz from businessmen in his constituency He was cleared of nine of the 28 allegations of financial manipulation -accused of blocking investigation-into 18 and censured for one - failure to register payments of £4,500 from a solicitor he went on to recommend for a peerage. After collapsing during a TV interview he was dropped by Mr Blair from the Government in 2001.Ill health was officially the reason given, though Mr Blair was said to believe that his continued presence in the Government was an embarrassment. And in 2002, another inquiry into whether a company connected to Mr Vaz had taken money from the billionaire Indian Hinduja brothers came to a more damning verdict. It concluded he had 'committed serious breaches of the code of conduct and a contempt of the House' and recommended that he be suspended from the Commons for a month. Yet even this humiliation was not enough to keep Mr Vaz down. After the 2005 General election he slowly worked his way back - being appointed head of an Muslim minority task force by Mr Blair in 2006. Controversially, he won the prestigious chairmanship of the home affairs select committee in 2007, replacing the universally respected John Denham. Critics say he has used the post for grandstanding and showboating. Only this week, he was criticized by commentators for inviting Cherie Blair for a high-profile appearance before his committee to discuss policing and knife crime, despite her limited expertise on the subject. Even before the latest controversy, MPs suspect that his ambitions still run deep. 'The rumor running around Labour MPs was that he would be offered a knighthood for his vote on 42 days,' said one MP who knows him. 'I think he wants to be a knight. He sees that it's unlikely he will ever be a minister again and he would like to be a peer of the realm. Whether after yesterday's disclosure such a dream is possible now seems doubtful.
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