Podcast - Blair's day of shame

Script of my Week in Politics Podcast, Episode 48, which went live today.

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Several weeks ago, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens let it be known that he intended to publish his report into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on December 14.

Political journalists who for weeks had been waiting to be told when the police would be interviewing Tony Blair over the cash-for-honours affairs immediately smelt a rat.

As one senior lobby hack wrote yesterday: “We all guessed weeks ago that this would be the perfect day for Mr Blair to invite the police in – the day the world would be transfixed by the [Diana] report.”

But it was more in the nature of bar-room gossip rather than informed speculation.
Somehow I doubt that, in their hearts, they really believed even Downing Street would be that brazened.

Well, to paraphrase a famous old saying, it seems no one ever went broke over-estimating the sheer bare-faced cheek of our present Prime Minister.

The police interview with was just the half of it. Thursday also saw the Government announce the closure of 2,500 post offices and call off a long-running Serious Fraud Office inquiry into arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

It also gave the go-ahead to a new round of airport expansion which though it will be welcomed by business leaders has dismayed environmentalists concerned at the impact on global warming.

“It looks like it’s take out the trash day today,” one Labour insider was quoted as saying.

Of course, it could all have been a coincidence. The Christmas Parliamentary recess began yesterday and, in my experience, there is always a godalmighty rush to get out announcements before MPs head off on their hols.

But Scotland Yard has moreorless confirmed that the timing of the cash-for-honours interview was determined not by them, but by Number 10.

This leads one to the inevitable conclusion that Downing Street did indeed request that the interview should take place on this particular day, with the Diana report in mind.

Should we be surprised? Given this Government’s well-deserved and hard-earned reputation for burying bad news, probably not.

Equally unsurprising was the role of the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman in denying that the interview had taken place at the very time Mr Plod was sitting down for his two-hour chat with Mr Blair.

When asked at Thursday’s 11am lobby briefing whether the PM would be interviewed by police today, Tom Kelly replied that “there has been no change in the position.”

This was later explained away by Kelly saying he had asked Mr Blair not to tell him he was being interviewed until it was all over so that he could not be accused of misleading people.

To which one can only say: how very, very convenient.

But Thursday’s rubbish disposal exercise was by no means the only breathtaking manoeuvre carried out by the Prime Minister in relation to the cash-for-honours affair this week.

A few days earlier, a plan came to light for Mr Blair to actually turn this most damaging of political scandals to his own advantage, by using it as an excuse to scrap Labour’s links with the unions.

Ten years ago in 1996, a young, up-and-coming MP by the name of Stephen Byers held a dinner with some sympathetic journalists on the eve of that year’s Labour Party Conference.

His revelation that the party was considering severing the union link was not actually a serious proposal, the aim being simply to position Mr Blair in the public’s mind as Not Jim Callaghan.

But a decade on, the idea has taken on a different context. It is now being seen as a way for Mr Blair to salvage some sort of “legacy” from the whole cash-for-honours fiasco.

Sir Hayden Philips, a retired civil servant who was asked to look at the party funding issue in the wake of the honours probe, has proposed a £50,000 cap on all party donations.

This will, of course, effectively end the big donations to Labour by trade unions which collect the “political levy” on behalf of their hundreds of thousands of individual members.

But such is the sheer scale of the opposition this has already aroused within the party that even some of the Prime Minister’s most loyal supporters have been moved to speak out against the idea.

Former Labour National Executive Committee chairman Sir Jeremy Beecham has always been one of Mr Blair’s most assiduous defenders.

But Sir Jeremy’s loyalty was finally provoked beyond endurance this week, as he publicly denounced the union funding proposals as “outrageous.”

In a similar vein, Durham MP Kevan Jones implied Mr Blair had finally taken leave of his senses saying: “The lights are on in Downing Street but no-one’s at home.”

To see these two old North-East rivals uniting against the Philips proposals ought to be sufficient warning to Mr Blair that the idea should be pursued thus far and no further.

Back in their days on Newcastle City Council days, the Beecham-Jones feud was so poisonous it permeated the entire city Labour Group and beyond, but that is not really the point.

The point is rather that, in party terms, Jones and Beecham are right-wingers, people who, far from being classed as “usual suspects,” would normally be viewed as Mr Blair’s natural supporters.

As it is, there are increasingly fewer of those to be found, as the man who promised to clean up politics continues to sully it beyond anything achieved by John Major’s administration.

And until the day he finally goes, his capacity to damage both the Labour Party and the reputation of British politics in general will remain unhindered.