Levy and Blair
Listening to radio 5 this morning Politaholic gathers that Lord Levy and Tony Blair are not on speaking terms; and Levy (and the donors) question the account Blair retailed (presumably under very deferential questioning) to the police. On the Andrew Marr show Greg Dyke and Marr seemed to agree that Blair must have known - and agreed - to what was going on. The question raised was: "Will anyone take the bullet for him?". Will anyone agree to be the patsy? I don't think Levy will sacifice himself. Politaholic still thinks it unlikely there will be prosecutions; if only because it is hard to see how a prosecution could avoid ensnaring Blair, and in the British system that is just unthinkable. If Levy makes it clear that if he goes down he'll take Blair with him he should be home and dry, and the same goes for all the other players in this drama.
One way of looking at all this is to adopt a worldly-wise phlegmatic attitude: peerages have always been sold, its hardly as if New Labour invented the practice. True enough. But that corruption has always been tolerated is no reason to go on tolerating it. (I wonder how the "everyone does it" defence would play for someone accused of benefit fraud. "Oh, OK then, that's all right"). The Blair Government promised to be "whiter than white", introduced new legislation regarding donations, and then circumvented its own legislation by deviously soliciting loans. The "pretty straight sort of guy" is as bent as a nine-bob note.
One way of looking at all this is to adopt a worldly-wise phlegmatic attitude: peerages have always been sold, its hardly as if New Labour invented the practice. True enough. But that corruption has always been tolerated is no reason to go on tolerating it. (I wonder how the "everyone does it" defence would play for someone accused of benefit fraud. "Oh, OK then, that's all right"). The Blair Government promised to be "whiter than white", introduced new legislation regarding donations, and then circumvented its own legislation by deviously soliciting loans. The "pretty straight sort of guy" is as bent as a nine-bob note.
posted by Politaholic at 12:25 pm
1 Comments:
P'holic
Yes, suppose I agree but it is easy to be so morally stern when one is not responsible for running a party and a campaign. Loans were the only way to raise cash in 2005 and Blair -maybe in a form of panic- took the option. I doubt if Tony will in the event walk the plank but he'll be a bit scared and his successors more careful. The cause and not the symptom is the awful state of party funding. Now what DO we do about that?
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