Only in England could a leader be in danger of losing power because he sold admission to an exclusive club to those with the money to pay for it (the word ‘allegedly’ apologises for its absence from this sentence).
This week’s scandal enveloping Tony Blair’s government concerns ‘cash for peerages’. Facing a financial crunch in the run-up to last year’s general election, the Labour party accepted several anonymous seven-figure loans from rich businessmen. Shortly afterwards, some of these tycoons were mysteriously nominated by the prime minister for membership of the House of Lords.
Of course, only a cynic would suggest that a link may exist here between cash paid and goods delivered, especially given this government’s remarkable record of honesty. But it seems that we live in cynical times. There has been talk that this week’s scandal could be Blair’s last, that he is now so damaged by continuous allegations of sleaze that his party may finally force him from office.
Some commentators have drawn comparisons with the dog days of the last Conservative government, when each passing week seemed to bring news of a fresh scandal for a party which had simply been in power too long.
Would that this were the case. For in its heyday, Tory sleaze was magnificently entertaining. Conservative scandal tended to be sexual, involving comely young actresses or respectable family men asphyxiating themselves with oranges. Labour wrongdoing by contrast tends to involve brown paper envelopes held by businessmen who have been soundly thrashed with the ugly stick. Wrong, but not amusing.
This latest scandal is particularly dry. The allegation is that Blair sold entrance to the House of Lords at a million quid a pop. So what? The real scandal here is that the prime minister can decide who sits in the second chamber in the first place. Call me old-fashioned, but in a democracy, shouldn’t membership of parliament be decided by the great unwashed?
Not if that democracy is British. The ludicrous House of Lords is filled with ex-politicians (who were once popular enough to get themselves elected to the Commons), friends of ex-politicians (who were popular enough to get sent to the Lords by their mates) and various men who don’t have to be popular with anyone, because their ancestors chose the right side in the War of the Roses and they’ve owned half of Northumbria ever since.
In such a supremely-elitist place, why not let a few businessmen buy their way in? Perhaps Blair is actually an agent provocateur, blatantly selling titles to expose the inherent unfairness of the House of Lords.
It would be laughable for Blair to be deposed in such circumstances, for further corrupting an already corrupt system. But it would be a matter of regret if any domestic scandal were to bring him down. No amount of influence-peddling or nest-feathering can ever compare morally with Blair’s participation in an illegal war which has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
If anything other than Iraq forces the PM from office, future generations will scratch their heads in puzzlement. For Blair to lose his job over cash for gongs would be like sending Al Capone to Alcatraz for not paying his income tax.
With each passing month, the evidence of Blair’s deliberate lies in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq becomes ever more damning. Next to this, the current row over peerages seems a matter of no import. For those who care to look, there is a growing body of evidence that Bush and Blair agreed on war long before March 2003, that all their pious talk of war being a last resort was pure fiction.
And that makes them war criminals.
I am indebted to a friend of mine for this quote from the Nuremberg trials which surely fits those who planned the invasion of Iraq: "an aggressor is a state that is the first to commit such actions as invasion of its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State."
The tribunal went on to declare that war of aggression is: "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." In other words, every wrong committed in war is ultimately the responsibility of those who initiated hostilities in the first place.
Given the immensity of human suffering inflicted on Iraqi civilians by Blair and company, how can we call cash for peerages a ‘scandal’?