When faced with a political scandal, a competent politician finds ways to divert our attention. But a clever one like Tony Blair uses the catastrophe to increase his power. The prime minister may be blown away by the loans for peerages scam, but if he survives he will exploit it to boost the dominance of the executive, augment the authority of his whips and make life cushier for the Labour party.
If you do not understand the thrill that lures people into politics and becomes addictive, consider this. The prime minister is tottering towards retirement on a high wire. The loans scandal is highly dangerous. The police investigation may bring him crashing down, destroying his career and reputation. But if he remains aloft he could, in his last months, accomplish changes that will secure his place in history (oh, and further weaken our constitutional safeguards).
The stakes are high following the arrest of Des Smith last week. He worked for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and in January suggested to an undercover Sunday Times reporter that those who offered sponsorship for city academies (Blair’s flagship secondary schools) would receive honours. Lord Levy, the prime minister’s special envoy to the Middle East and Labour’s most successful fundraiser, is president of the trust.
In these days of electronic communication our most foolish e-mails and text messages come back to haunt us. Who knows what ill-considered remarks may come to light as the police probe both those who sought donations and those who made them (since the 1925 Honours Act makes it a crime both to corrupt and to be corrupted)? Certainly the prime minister cannot know what may have been promised in his name.
The government pretends that it is merely the victim of a bad system that “everyone” agrees needs reform. That is why Blair invited David Cameron to discuss new rules on party funding. The Tory leader would have done better to refuse. The ploy distracted the media from the main point: that Blair had connived to circumvent the legislation that he himself had introduced to fulfil his pledge to clean up politics. But the Conservative party was not thinking straight, embarrassed that it, too, was using loans (in place of donations) to avoid identifying its financial backers. Cameron also hoped to secure a ban on trade union funding which gives Labour a built-in advantage.
Lord Falconer was sent out to the media to float another red herring: House of Lords reform. The message was that Blair had striven heroically to bring the second chamber into the modern age. Of all people he could not be blamed if parliament had left things in such a mess that an honest prime minister conscientiously going about his constitutional duties risked being accused of flogging peerages for cash.
Raising the issues of party funding and House of Lords reform was more than good diversionary tactics. If out of all this the prime minister can secure the state funding of his party and a house of peers that will give the government less trouble, he will have achieved a stunning coup.
The political parties face financial ruin. They have ceased to be big subscription bodies and are now dwarfed by the National Trust and many other popular organisations. Few companies dare to make political donations because they fear a row with shareholders. Blair does not enjoy taking money from the trade unions because it evokes memories of Labour’s bad old days. His legislation has killed off donations from individuals who value their privacy. The miracle that Blair and Levy worked to turn rich men’s gifts into loans (while keeping the party treasurer in the dark) has landed them in hot water.
If the parties could just help themselves to taxpayers’ money, all their problems would be over. Indeed, skilful exploitation of the scandal could mean that “everyone” will agree that state funding offers a better way forward. Or, if it still proves unpopular, at the very least the Conservatives will share in the opprobrium.
Expect politicians to behave with new arrogance once you are funding their offices and researchers. Imagine the extravagance, luxury and waste that will follow once the drip feed of citizens’ cash guarantees the parties’ survival. Think how much harder it will be to call foul when the government spends money so as to maximise the advantage of the party in power. Blair may yet give the Labour party reasons to revere his memory.
The prime minister rarely admits to having changed his mind so when he does so it should arouse our suspicion. Until the loans scandal broke he was known to be in favour of an appointed Lords. Now he wishes to see it mainly elected. A cynic might say that he used to believe that he could fill it with placemen and donors, but now he has reached the end of that road and recognises that he must accept democratic progress.
Such cynicism falls well short of the mark. Blair is far more Machiavellian than that. After all, this is the man who massively increased the power of the parties in the name of introducing a more proportionate voting system. In elections to the European parliament the voter now has almost no influence on which people are given power. We can put our cross only against the name of a party. Those who will take the seats and claim the salaries and expenses have already been selected by the party and appear on its list. The names at the top are unstoppable. Some members of the Scottish parliament owe their positions to the same system.
Blair now sees that the unwelcome by-product of the appointed Lords is that it allows in experienced people of independent mind. Being life peers they are not reliant on Labour for re-selection. An elected Lords will be different.
It will not attract those scientists, High Court judges and academics who have stood up for civil liberties and repeatedly rejected the government’s populist and authoritarian bills brought forward in the name of fighting terrorism. No retired field marshal will step forward at the polls, and so the government will in future be spared the embarrassment of valiant men who have commanded in battle attacking its policy in Iraq.
In elections to the Lords we can expect candidates every bit as craven and ambitious as those who offer themselves for the Commons (as I did). The party selection committees will vet them as best they can to ensure that they are unimaginative conformists. Before crucial divisions the government whips will threaten the elected peers with trouble in their constituencies if they fail to bow the knee. Government defeats in the Lords will become as rare as they are in the Commons. Just think, if Blair can secure the double whammy of a Lords elected from party lists, he will really hit the jackpot.
Recently a Labour peer, a highly intelligent man, told me that he would vote for a largely elected Lords. When I told him why I thought it a bad idea he did not dissent for a moment. “It is the zeitgeist,” he shrugged, “it is what Tony wants.”
The irony is that what we have now is close to a system that could command public respect. The hereditary peers represent a rump of 92 in a house of 724. Anyone who dies is replaced by another elected from their number, but that could be changed to allow the hereditary element to wither over time. There is now a House of Lords Appointments Commission with two functions: to make recommendations for non-partisan peers and to vet those with a party affiliation who are nominated by the party leaders. The system evidently has teeth since four of Blair’s protégés and one of Cameron’s did not make it onto the list of new peers published last week.
Without having to change anything we can be sure that party leaders will be much more wary about whom they propose in future. However, we could increase the power of the commission and reduce that of the party leaders merely by fine-tuning.
If Blair is not scourged from Downing Street by loans for peerages, I shall be mildly surprised. But I can see how he plans to turn disgrace to advantage. He may yet pull off the taxpayer funding of parties and a more compliant Lords. As the outcome to his latest political scandal, that would be truly shocking.
michael.portillo@sunday-times.co.uk
