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Title: The King is Dead
Source:
Sunday Herald
URL Source: http://www.sundayherald.com/analysi ... is/display.var.1168468.0.0.php
Published: Feb 3, 2007
Author: James Cusick
Post Date: 2007-02-03 16:56:30 by aristeides
Keywords: None
Views: 81
Comments: 1
The King Is Dead
By James Cusick, Westminster Editor
Scotland Yard’s investigation into cash for honours will not go away. Perhaps it’s time the PM did.
WAVING FLAGS, cheering crowds, carefully chosen faces lit with broad smiles - the well-planned political choreography that welcomed Tony Blair and New Labour to Downing Street in 1997 was no accidental outbreak of national joy. Ten years on, similar plans are said to exist for his departure, centred on a farewell festival for Labour's most successful leader. But a rear-door exit or accelerated withdrawal now looks increasingly likely. And this is the timetable Blair never wanted.
Although the prime minister told the BBC on Friday morning he "was getting on with the job" and "you will have to put up with me for a bit longer", his failing authority, severely damaged by the fall-out from Scotland Yard's cash-for-honours investigation, means, according to one Cabinet source, it would "now take only the slightest public nudge from a senior minister to end it".
An advertising executive who worked for Labour's shadow communications agency - which fought against Saatchi and Saatchi's successful selling of the Tories in the mid and late 1980s - said Blair's determination to tough it out until June or July was like "leaving rotting meat on supermarket shelf. Nobody wants it, nobody will buy it, and eventually the stench will stop people coming to the store".
This was echoed by those still close to Blair. Hazel Blears - Labour's chairperson and deputy leadership contender - parked her usual reflex loyalty when she admitted the 10 months of police questioning, inquiry and arrests were having a "corrosive effect" on British politics. Harriet Harman, the constitutional affairs minister, added that the inquiry was "eroding trust".
How it will end is now the bloodsport dominating Westminster affairs. Blair's private valedictory timetable has the finale for his long goodbye in July, at the close of the current parliamentary session. But it seems unlikely that even a politician of Blair's ultra-durable character can survive another six months of similar pressure.
It is thought the Parliamentary Labour Party will this week try to squeeze one final concession from the man who has led them since 1994. They know Blair intends to go in July, but one MP claims: "Just getting him to say it may ease the pressure."
But worse for Blair would be an earlier departure, in the aftermath of questioning by the police and noising off from the party. This would almost be an admission of guilt, even though no charges have been laid at anyone's door, let alone at the steps of Number 10. For one Tory MP it is "like watching a slow-motion crash that oddly seems very familiar to those of us who saw the departure of Margaret Thatcher".
For Blair, and the aides close to him, the Thatcher parallels are misplaced. Her exit in 1990, after 11 years at Number 10, was a collective act of revenge by senior figures in the Tory Party ranks. According to one Labour MP, many in the parliamentary party are already looking past Blair to Brown. Revenge is not part of what may now happen. "His authority is already rock-bottom, so what we are seeing is real crash-and-burn stuff. The reality is that there is no comfortable way of leaving."
Sir Winston Churchill, shortly before he left office in 1955, complained that talk of his resignation was undermining his authority. After leaving office, Thatcher wrote: "Without authority you cannot be an effective prime minister." For Blair to continue until July he would have to recover the lost power and authority needed by a functioning prime minister.
If his interview with the BBC's John Humphrys on Friday is anything to go by, Blair clearly believes such a recovery is still possible, despite the controversy over his second interview by the police, despite his chief fundraiser and confidant Lord Levy being arrested and questioned for the second time in connection with the honours scandal and an alleged cover-up, and despite Downing Street's director of government relations, Ruth Turner, also being arrested and questioned on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.
Blair says he thinks it will be only a matter of "a few weeks" until the Scotland Yard investigation "runs its course".
The prime minister told the BBC: "I hope it will be wound up, and let's see where we are then. And in the meantime, despite what people say, I get on with the job."
The Middle East, the foundations of an international post-Kyoto climate deal, the loose ends of a return of the Northern Ireland assembly, a desire to install mechanisms that will continue policy reforms - these are what Blair means when he talks about his "job".
But the PM, delusional or hard-headed, cannot escape the impact of a police inquiry whose shadow has blighted his authority and the government's integrity. After last week's questioning, a blackout of the meeting was requested by Scotland Yard. Blair agreed, telling nobody, including his official spokesman Tom Kelly.
The prime minister left London a week ago on Friday, travelled to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, gave a long interview to CNN, spoke to world leaders, gave a keynote speech, held press conferences, travelled back to London, watched as his close friend Lord Levy was arrested on Tuesday, sailed through Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday saying nothing had changed, and simply waited for the blackout to be lifted.
One Tory MP said: "That Blair is a gifted actor there is no doubt. I watched PMQs again today Friday and it's a seamless performance. Bafta should give him a special award this year."
Scotland Yard would neither confirm nor deny that their investigation, as the PM told the BBC, was almost complete. However, Downing Street's ability to second guess the state of the investigation is far from perfect. Last December, when Blair became the first sitting prime minister to be interviewed by the police in connection with a criminal investigation, the message was that as he had not been interviewed under caution and was being questioned as a potential witness, that effectively drew a line under his involvement. The assumption was wrong.
The honours scandal detectives, headed by assistant commissioner John Yates, were not winding up their inquiry. They were about to launch a second offensive centred not on the assumed abuses of the 1925 Honours Act, but on an alleged conspiracy, inside Downing Street, which sought to cover the tracks of those involved.
Yates's team is tightly run. It operates almost as a separate unit inside Scotland Yard, free from both internal bureaucratic and external political influence. One police source said: "The prime minister will not know when exactly John Yates intends to conclude his inquiry. Only John Yates knows that. And I doubt that when Tony Blair was questioned last week, he was casually told the timetable of how advanced the inquiry was. These are very committed policemen. Wouldn't happen."
Even if Blair's prediction is out by a few weeks, and it is April before the report lands on the desk of the director of public prosecutions, a decision still needs to be taken on whether formal charges will be brought. That decision, if taken before Gordon Brown is anointed prime minister and changes the Cabinet, would fall to the attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith.
If there are no charges brought, Goldsmith will be open to accusations of delivering a defiant immunity for his boss, Blair, and those close to him. If no quick decision is made by Goldsmith, he could be accused of leaving the issue to the attorney-general who follows him in the Brown Cabinet. Neither option eases Blair's immediate problem - his diminishing authority and the air of sleaze surrounding the final months of his premiership.
A formal police statement last Thursday said Blair had been "interviewed as a witness, not a suspect" in order to "clarify points emerging from the ongoing investigation". But if Blair is not a suspect, the question remains, who is?
Labour went into the last general election campaign in 2005 with a £6 million overdraft and a refusal from their bankers to extend their credit. Blair believed that to match the Tories he would need an £18m campaign to win. Levy is understood to have been personally ordered to pull out the stops and focus on wealthy Labour donors.
The alarm bells only began ringing in 2006 after Chai Patel, a healthcare entrepreneur who had lent the party £1.5m, had his nomination for a peerage blocked by the Lords vetting commission. Only a few weeks after Patel went public with his anger over being denied his promised peerage, Jack Dromey, Labour's treasurer and husband of Harriet Harman, said he was unaware of the loans that had found their way into his party's coffers. He also denied knowing about £4.5m in loans that had come from four businessmen who had subsequently been nominated for peerages.
Labour would later claim the loans were agreed on commercial terms, which meant that no laws had been broken. But in April last year, Des Smith, a teacher involved in the government's controversial academies scheme, was arrested after reports that he claimed to be able to guarantee honours for investment.
Sir Gulam Noon, another Lords nominee, later admitted that he had been told not to disclose money he'd given to the party. He said he was asked to retrieve his nomination form and redeclare a gift as a loan. In July last year, Lord Levy was arrested and his offices searched by police. Computers from Levy's office were also removed and examined by police.
John Yates's inquiry team started interviewing ministers and aides as the scale of their inquiry suddenly turned serious. Yates said last December he had found "significant and valuable" material.
One former Labour minister told the Sunday Herald last week: "The fact that no charges have been brought must be measured against what else we know and is widely accepted as fact. The party is damaged, Blair is damaged. Charges, if they follow, will only determine the scale of that damage. It is a f***ing mess."
Yates's team have spent 10 months interviewing almost 100 people. Their switch to focusing on an alleged internal conspiracy to block their inquiries is said to have taken place only in the last two months of their work.
They are rumoured to have found an internal email system operating outside the rules governing Whitehall. Downing Street says categorically there is no such system. There are also rumours of documented promises of knighthoods and peerages - written in loose code - having been handed to the police. The existence of a mole or inside informer is also rumoured to have been the catalyst that switched focus from the 1925 act to a cover-up. But nothing has been confirmed.
The inquiry appears to be moving towards a political show trial that could cast a shadow over large parts of the coming Brown administration. It is this fear which is said to have prompted the warning from the former Labour leader Lord Kinnock that it could take "years" for the reputation of the political system to recover from the damage caused by the cash-for-honours scandal.
Given that only three people - Blair, Lord Levy and Labour's then general secretary Matt Carter - are believed to have known about the private fundraising scheme that helped Labour during the last general election, with Carter ensuring the money was channelled through Labour's formal accounts, prosecutions on the 1925 honours law were initially believed to have a limited chance of success. One Labour backbencher said: "Many of us thought this was an accountancy scam, that given the way British politics was bankrolled for the last century, there was frankly nothing shocking." That view has changed - even in the last month.
Any cover-up involving Downing Street and, potentially, party staff, widens the ability of the police to bring charges. But if Blair is not a police suspect, then according to one leading criminal lawyer: "Those around him - if there is a case here - would have to be exposed as running covert financial operations behind the prime minister's back. And for Blair not to be implicated, his prime defence will have to be, I knew nothing of this'. What would such a defence say about the authority of Labour's long-serving prime minister?"
cash for honours' timeline
January 13, 2006 Des Smith, adviser to the city academies programme, suggests to an undercover reporter that honours can be given in return for donations.
March 8 Priory boss Chai Patel finds his peerage nomination blocked.
March 16 Labour treasurer Jack Dromey denies knowledge of loans.
March 17 Labour confirms it received £14 million in loans before the 2005 general election.
March 21 Scotland Yard says it is investigating allegations that the 1925 laws against selling honours have been broken.
March 24 It is revealed that Matt Carter, former Labour general secretary, wrote to wealthy businessmen telling them their loans would not have to be declared.
April 13 Des Smith is arrested and bailed by police.
July 12 Lord Levy, Tony Blair's chief fundraiser, is arrested and bailed by police.
September 20 Sir Christopher Evans, who lent Labour £1m, is arrested and questioned by police.
October 2 Police question four Conservative donors whose nominations for peerages were blocked.
October 23 Police question former Tory leader Michael Howard.
December 14 Tony Blair is interviewed as a witness, a first for a prime minister in a criminal investigation.
January 19, 2007 Ruth Turner, Tony Blair's "personal gatekeeper", is arrested before dawn at her London home.
January 23 It emerges that Jack McConnell was questioned in December.
January 30 Lord Levy is rearrested, then released on bail.
February 1 Downing Street reveals that Tony Blair was questioned a second time by police on January 26.
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DAMMIT! I thought it was Little Napolean chimp at first. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act - - George Orwell The King Is Dead
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
In a CorporoFascist capitalist society, there is no money in peace, freedom, or a healthy population, and therefore, no incentive to achieve these - - IndieTX
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