EU foreign minister Baroness Ashton, who has never had any elected office, is a typical ambitious left-wing apparatchik.
The foreign policy interests of the European Union have been represented since 1 December 2009 by Cathy Ashton, the wife of Peter Kellner, and a former vice president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Having attempted to bury her leftist past, imagine her embarrassment when Bruce Kent wrote to The Times protesting that he had no knowledge of the Kremlin’s funding for the CND, and insisting that when Cathy was the organisation’s treasurer, up until 1983, her behaviour had been beyond reproach.
Fortunately for Cathy, MI5’s former director of F Division, Charles Elwell, is dead, but he would have had much to say about the the past of Baroness Ashton of Upholland and her husband since 1988, Peter Kellner. Once a hardline Maoist, and editor of Marxism Today, Kellner and his wife are now part of the New Labour aristocracy, but few would know of their militant pasts.
Ashton, who has never had a serious job in her life, nor any elected office, is a typical ambitious left-wing apparatchik, moving from one advisory role to another charity post, networking and in denial of her grammar school roots, at least to the extent of preventing others the same opportunities. As a foreign policy figure, representing the European Union, she is regarded by her New Labour colleagues, their Lordships and European parliamentarians, as a (literally) unqualified joke.
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As for her husband, the millionaire pollster has made his huge fortune from the public offering of YouGov.com, and in his current Who’s Who entry omits to mention much about his past beyond his employment by The Sunday Times.
Similarly, his wife’s past, which included sharing a house with a CPGB member and succeeding another CPGB figure, John Cox, as CND’s vice president, has been air-brushed out of history. Fortunately, the Security Service keeps a record of such matters.
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