When our beleaguered prime minister complained that he and the Downing Street
staff were the victims of outrageous leaking in the cash for honours police
inquiry, I felt no sympathy.
It is true that someone — the Metropolitan police I assume — has been
supplying the media with information (and probably disinformation) in
industrial quantities. The practice is indefensible. But when the Met locks
antlers with the government it is as though the Leviathan of leak and spin
had engaged the Behemoth of spin and leak. It would be perverse to feel
sorry for either.
Hard on the heels of Tony Blair’s not very heartrending whinge, a massive
amount of briefing was issued to the media on the terrorist plot allegedly
uncovered in Birmingham. Information that you might expect to emerge only in
court, maybe not before the end of a trial, spewed forth. There was a plot,
we were told, to kidnap, torture and behead a Muslim British soldier.
Some newspapers made clear that the information came from Whitehall, not the
police. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, wrote to the home
secretary asking whether his special advisers had given off-the-record
briefings. It is the sort of question that a clever person asks only if she
already knows the answer perfectly well.
Briefing the media was, at least, irresponsible. At the time nobody had been
charged. Three of those detained have been released since without charge.
News of the alleged crime has evidently exacerbated tensions in the West
Midlands. It may have caused Muslims genuine anxiety about persecution. It
has certainly provided hot-heads with a valuable propaganda tool and some
so-called community leaders have used it to stir the cauldron of grievance.
But the leaks rescued John Reid. Blanket coverage of the alleged plot swamped
newspapers and news bulletins. There was no room left for the story that had
filled them in previous days: the crisis over Britain’s overfull jails, and
Reid’s responsibility for the mess. The agenda was back where he wanted it.
He believes that terrorist threats cast him in the best light. Last summer
he positively basked in the publicity surrounding the alleged conspiracy to
destroy aircraft with bombs mixed in flight.
Chakrabarti was quickly on to another point. If Reid’s advisers are behind
these leaks, then they would be the very same people who brief the media on
why Britain “needs” to extend to 90 days the period that terror suspects can
be held without charge. So, Chakrabarti implied, they might be putting at
risk the police investigation and the chances of a fair trial as part of a
party political campaign to change the law. Incidentally, could such a
delicate media briefing operation be conducted without the home secretary’s
authorisation?
It looks as though someone close to Reid had the bright idea of digging him
out of the prison places mire but has landed him in a deeper bog. As the
veteran Tory MP Kenneth Clarke (and former home secretary too) put it, if
the Home Office is found to have leaked over the terror inquiry, Reid will
find himself in a very difficult position. “Yet again”, he might have added.
One man detained in the West Midlands and then released without charge has
vociferously denounced the police inquiry. His name is Abu Bakr. He shares
that name with the companion to the prophet Muhammad who became the first
Muslim ruler after him. Indeed, dispute about whether Abu Bakr violated the
prophet’s orders or whether he was his rightful heir is the principal issue
that divides Shi’ite from Sunni. One wonders whether Mr Abu Bakr of
Birmingham was born with that famous name or adopted it.
He works at the Maktabah bookshop, which sells literature and DVDs that might,
to put it mildly, tend to encourage Muslim radical sentiment. Reportedly one
pamphlet found there discusses the best ways to kill homosexuals.
So when Abu Bakr says that Britain has become a police state for Muslims I ask
myself what sort of state he would like us to live in. His claim is
certainly wrong, and undermined by the fact that he was free to make it. In
the fight against terror it is natural that more people will be detained and
interviewed than are eventually charged. Given the nature of the threat it
is not surprising if most, maybe even all, those detained are Muslim. Maybe
those who work in bookshops that sell inflammatory literature will be more
likely to be detained than others.
Had he said instead that Britain has become a liar state (and not just for
Muslims) I would have come closer to agreeing with him. We have reached the
point where we do not trust anything that the government tells us.
Last week newspapers published the transcript of conversations between air
controllers and the American pilots whose planes killed Lance Corporal of
Horse Matty Hull and wounded four other British soldiers in Iraq. For years
the British Ministry of Defence said that the tape did not exist.
In fact it had been carefully studied, and British officials knew it because
they were involved in the US inquiry that found the pilots blameless. Indeed
they knew enough about the incident for a British board of inquiry to
conclude that the airmen had acted without authorisation.
Tony Blair told the Commons last week that he regretted the distress caused to
the Hull family by the delay in hearing the inquest. More to the point, they
have been caused huge anxiety over a very long period because officials, who
work ultimately for Blair, misled them. But there seems to be no question of
punishing them.
The Ministry of Defence, which I once headed and which I respect, sadly goes
for denial and obscurantism as its initial reaction to most problems. It is
disgraceful that the impact of its bureaucratic arrogance and indifference
is felt most by service people and their families who deserve the simple
truth.
Last week another group of people who should be treated better brought its
case to the High Court. They lost their occupational pensions when their
employers went bust. The savings built up over a lifetime have been taken
from them due to the failings of others. Such losses became a matter for the
government after Robert Maxwell, the late owner of the Mirror newspaper
group, plundered the pensions of his employees. Labour then legislated to
prevent such a thing happening again. Pension funds were required to
maintain a stipulated minimum level of funding.
On the basis of what ministers told us then it was reasonable to believe that
pensions would in future be protected. In fact there was a 50% chance that
they would not be. The parliamentary ombudsman, Ann Abraham, reported that
official advice had been “sometimes inaccurate, often incomplete, largely
inconsistent and therefore potentially misleading”. She called on the
government to compensate those who lost their money after the new law was
passed. But the government is fighting the case.
So it is not just officials who prevaricate and obstruct. They take their
example from ministers. It is hardly surprising then that Blair did not
offer to root out the miscreant inside the Ministry of Defence in the Hull
case. He would have been greeted with derision. By the end of the week trust
in ministers took another hit. They had downplayed the possibility that bird
flu had reached Suffolk from Hungary. Of course, that now seems the most
likely route.
The manipulation of information has been both Blair’s making and undoing. A
decade ago brilliant use of spin deluded the British electorate into
believing that he would usher in a new political dawn. But manufacturing a
“dodgy dossier” of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq shattered
trust in him irrevocably.
As he totters towards his end he remains anxious to define his legacy. It is
already established. Nobody now believes anything that the government says.
michael.portillo@sunday-times.co.uk
