Invisible Sleaze

Published: 23/07/2007

Invisible Sleaze
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
I was quite prepared to do the decent thing and back off. We had reached the end of the road on the cash for peerages investigations and that we sceptics had to accept the adjudication. I have often found CPS decisions not to prosecute baffling and at times infuriating. This one does both. Until four weeks ago the service, working with the Met apparently believed there was a case to answer. Then, says my source, it got wobbly and felt ’almost sick at the implications- what would happen if the cases were lost or won?’ These were, after all, top people and you don’t mess with them unless utterly, completely sure. For the CPS there is ‘insufficient evidence to enable an overwhelming inference to be drawn’ that donors of vast amounts of money to the Labour party were promised and given honours and peerages. The two words ‘insufficient’ and ‘overwhelming’ told us what we needed to know. Absolute linkage, cause and effect is almost impossible to prove in this country where clubby establishment favours are bestowed with subtlety, wordlessly often with nods and winks, understandings.


I believe jurors should have been presented with the circumstantial evidence and that this is political caution gone mad. The CPS decided otherwise. No matter. That is how justice works in our democracy. That would have been the end of it had it not been for the merriment, din and dust kicked up by the cabal of Blairite journalists, the suspects, their best friends, wives and sundry others.

Peter Mandelson, that upright man who has never misled the public accused the police of using the media, (Imagine!) to ‘create a false impression of Tony Blair and to undermine public trust in the government.’ Levy drank expensive champagne and complained it was awfully ‘personally damaging’. A press loyalist wrote a complete vindication of the life and times of Tony Blair:’ It was an instructive glimpse into the not particularly edifying intestines of the political system which morphed into a general get Blair binge’. Sarah Helm, once of this independent profession, now married to Jonathan Powell, once of the unelected, immensely powerful cell in 10 Downing St, complained about ‘her family’s ordeal’ ( some mums at the school gate seemed a little unfriendly) and felt for Ruth Turner, another from that ring of insiders, subjected to ‘Gestapo tactics!’ ( her exclamation mark)- a vulnerable woman, living alone, was deliberately chosen to be ‘given a scare’.

Faith in the system should be strengthened by the fact that the straight, meticulous Assistant Commissioner John Yates conducted his difficult inquiries without fear or favour. And the end of this affair is not the end of the matter, not in the eyes and nostrils of the public. Just as the Hutton report never brought closure. I don’t believe it is divine coincidence that rich people who donate money to parties just happen to get on the honours lists. (a word in your ear- private records do allegedly exist to show mutually advantageous deals but we may not know more) Oh cynical me, one of the treacherous who drag politics into the gutter and spread disillusionment with democracy among the masses.

Worse still for our sickening democracy I don’t believe either that Alistair Campbell’s dairies tell us the unexpurgated, contemporaneous truth and nothing but. Anything but. Trust me, come with me, he beckons, into the corridors of power and old enemies thrill at the invitation, follow the PR Pied Piper. Easily and brazenly the blemished story of the last ten years is thus recast. The greatest scandal at the BBC this month was not the trite fixes in populist programmes and misleading edits but that the ‘impartial’ broadcaster gave free propaganda time to this unstable, unelected courtier who bent the media to his will at a time of the greatest crisis this country has experienced in half a century. The interview with Cherie was almost as misguided. The Lady was not for repenting and the programme- bar one or two uncomfortable moments- gave her a terrific send off .

And if you need further proof of how Labour sleaze is now odour free and invisible to the keen eye, come to Ealing Southall, my area, a fiefdom where we have yet another Labour Asian, male MP, a placed man who knows how murky was the selection process. The promised all women short list was vapourized and ugly ethnic politics prevailed. Apparently, Keith Vaz who expertly corrals Asians for his grateful party had this list ditched. One leaflet with Prime Minister Brown’s grinning pic, claimed the other two main parties did not want a crackdown on crack cocaine, terrorists and career criminals. Another referred to the Labour Candidate Virendra Sharma as an MP already. The loser was Cameron who doesn’t quite get the dark art of spin, yet.

It won’t end here. Don’t be surprised if there is a new campaign to free Blair from any blame for the Iraq fiasco. In the last six months Neocon Brits and Americans have been going on about undiscovered WMD sites in Iraq, secret tapes, ‘scientific’ evidence and a concealment programme. Expect devotees of the New Labour messiah to flag up this dangerous rubbish with the kind of sophistry they have mastered in the last decade. Sometimes the whole business feels like political scientology. Blair rode in waving a clean, anti-sleaze flag which he duly soiled. He rode out believing history would, nevertheless, judge him an illustrious and honest leader. After the last few weeks, I can see how he can be sanguine. If the hideous Campell can be ecstatically rehabilitated while the decent, law enforcer John Yates is loudly discredited, all is not yet lost. One day soon, Blair too will get his makeover into a flawless hero. Makes sense in these extraordinarily immoral times.

Published in The Independent