Alvin Stardust and the sale of honours

I was sorry to hear of the death of Alvin Stardust. His first hit reminds me of my first months in Market Harborough. The song was played for what seemed like months by Radio Luxembourg before the BBC took it up and made it a hit.

Rather improbably, I find that he inspired one of my columns for Liberal Democrat News back in 2006.

So, by way of a tribute here it is again. The investigation into Lord Levy came to nothing, though all parties sell honours to some extent.

Identity crisis

Identity can be a complicated business. Take the case of young Bernard Jewry, who developed a love of rock music and hung out with a band called Johnny Theakston and the Tremeloes. In 1959 the band sent a tape to the BBC under the name Shane Fenton and the Beat Boys. Then tragedy struck: Johnny died.

When the BBC wrote back asking Shane Fenton and his band to play on a live radio programme Bernard Jewry became the new Shane Fenton - he even changed his name by deed poll - and a pop career was launched.

But musical fashions change, and after four hits Shane Fenton faded from view. Until in 1973 he was reborn as Alvin Stardust with the single "My Coo Ca Choo".

There are two reasons why the career of Bernard Jewry/Shane Fenton/Alvin Stardust is topical.

The first is that makes you wonder how the government's identity card scheme would cope with him. According to Joan Ryan at home office questions on Monday, everything is in on course. Cards will be phased in from 2008. "I repeat: 2008," she added, on the basis that if you say something often enough it must be true.

If you prefer to believe the officials working on the scheme, then the current plans are not remotely feasible. According to leaked e-mails, they fear a botched introduction that could delay ID cards for a generation.

Of course, for Liberal Democrats that would be very good news. But we must be wary of relying solely upon government incompetence to see ID cards off. We must continue to argue about the principle, showing people how these cards threaten a fundamental alteration in the relations between citizens and the state.

The second reason for being interested in Alvin Stardust is that his manager was a streetwise young accountant called Michael Levy. Today he is better known as Lord Levy.

What would people in 1973 have made of the idea that one day Alvin Stardust's manager would be arrested and there would be excited talk of the prime minister resigning?

Lord Levy once said that he and the prime minister were "like brothers". I doubt he would say that now. Tony Blair will have to find someone else to be his coo ca choo.

Take it away, Alvin...

Peter Watt on Gordon Brown

Tomorrow's Mail on Sunday has an article based on the memoirs of Peter Watt, a former Labour Party general secretary.

Various claims are made:

• Mr Brown’s Cabinet ally Douglas Alexander said the PM’s inner circle wanted an early Election partly because even they didn’t like him – and they feared the British public would soon form the same view.
• The day Mr Brown called off the 2007 Election, denying he had ever intended to hold one, Labour chiefs had a fleet of limousines circling Parliament Square ready to take Ministers on the campaign trail, and had 1.5million leaflets ready to be posted.
• No10 is ‘completely dysfunctional’ under Mr Brown, who runs the country ‘by making it up as he goes along’.
• Sulking Mr Brown walked out of a Downing Street dinner party with US politicians because they sat down without his permission.

The article also claims that:

Mr Watt also reveals for the first time the inside story of the ‘Donorgate’ scandal which led to his resignation when The Mail on Sunday exposed how tycoon David Abrahams had secretly given £600,000 to Labour in other people’s names, in breach of electoral laws.

Mr Watt claims the scandal was not his fault and alleges Mr Brown ‘stabbed him in the back’ by pledging to stand by him, hours before branding him a criminal in public.

That at least explains why Watt has written this book and sold the serialisation rights to the Mail.

Iain Dale has more on the background to this book and the Mail story.

BBC: No charges on "Cash for Honours"

If the BBC report is true, it seems to me that Guido Fawkes will have no alternative but to resign.

March in Liberal England

Last month was a record one for visitors to this blog, at last beating the extraordinary spike that accompanied the decline and fall of Charles Kennedy in January 2006.

Two stories in particular helped to boost visitor totals. The first was Lord Goldsmith and his injunction. The second was the death of poor Bob Woolmer.

A sad reflection on human nature is that in the past few days most of the people who have arrived here because of the latter story have been searching for Bob Woolmer jokes.

Well, you are wasting your time. You won't find any reference here to the Jamaican Bob-slaying team.

Cash for Honours yet again

And we're off again. The BBC is reporting this evening:

One of the PM's closest aides Ruth Turner wrote of her concerns that "Lord Levy had asked her to lie for him".

This emerged in court when the BBC was granted permission to report the reasons an injunction was served about a cash-for-honours news story.

The judge who granted the injunction at the police's request said "there is a substantial element of truth in what the intended BBC broadcast was to say".

Guido Fawkes suggests that the actual words used were rather stronger.

There were also a couple of interesting reports in the Sunday Times yesterday.

After the BBC injunction row

Now that the fuss has died down about the BBC and that injunction, there are a couple of good articles giving a considered view of the issues involved.

On Comment is Free Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger explains why the Attorney General's attempt to prevent the paper reporting the story fell apart. And on the BBC site Torin Douglas looks at some of the wider questions the affair raises.

BBC injunction: New developments

Tomorrow's Guardian thinks it knows what all the fuss has been about:

Detectives are investigating whether Lord Levy, Labour's chief fundraiser, urged one of Tony Blair's most senior aides to shape the evidence she gave to Scotland Yard, the Guardian has learned.

Police have been investigating whether Ruth Turner, the prime minister's director of external relations, was being asked by Lord Levy to modify information that might have been of interest to the inquiry. Officers have been trying to piece together details of a meeting they had last year. Ms Turner gave an account of it to her lawyers and this has been passed to police.

Thanks to Liberal Democrat Voice.

BBC Injunction latest

Auntie is now permitted to report the following:

The e-mail which triggered the probe into an alleged Downing Street cover-up was sent by Number 10 aide Ruth Turner.

It was sent to Tony Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, and concerned Labour's chief fundraiser Lord Levy.

The injunction barring reporting of any details of the e-mail was amended on Monday so the BBC could say who sent the e-mail but not its full contents.

And the Sunday Herald said yesterday:

Scotland Yard's injunction against the BBC, preventing it from broadcasting new details in the cash-for-honours investigation, is expected to be lifted this week when a team of detectives led by the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, John Yates, has completed a new focus of its inquiry.

The Sunday Telegraph on Goldsmith's injunction

It is probably worth noting that this morning's Sunday Telegraph puts together two points mentioned in my first posting on the subject and says:

A confidential Downing Street email was at the centre of the dramatic intervention by the Attorney General into the cash-for-honours investigation, it can be revealed.

Details of the email relating to one of Tony Blair's closest aides and a senior Labour Party fund-raiser had been obtained by the BBC which was preparing to read excerpts on air as evidence of a Downing Street "cover-up".

The email is understood to relate to Ruth Turner, the head of government relations, and Lord Levy, Labour's chief fund-raiser, who have both been arrested over the alleged awarding of honours in return for big loans to the party.

Scotland Yard sought the 11th-hour assistance of Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, amid fears that its year-long investigation was about to be undermined by the television broadcast.

Why the Attorney General sought an injunction

A report on the BBC website confirms that the Attorney General sought an injunction against the Corporation because the Metropolitan Police were concerned that a planned news story could compromise their investigations. The planned story focused: "on an e-mail between two members of Tony Blair's inner circle".

The BBC report also suggests that the investigations in question concern "allegations of attempts to pervert the course of justice".

Thank you, Lord Goldsmith

Thanks to my posting on Lord G and his injunction, today is already the best day for visitors in the history of Liberal England.

I wouldn't claim it was my best ever post, as I was largely passing on second-hand gossip. But I did have the story about the injunction being sought to avoid the investigation being prejudiced before BBC2's Newsnight did.

Cash for honours and the BBC injunction

Iain Dale sheds a little light:

I understand it is to do with an email that incriminates someone in a fairly drastic way. I do not know what the terms of the injunction are, but isn't this an injunction which the Labour Party should have asked for rather than Her Majesty's Government?

I am aware of the identity of the individual who is the subject of the email, but I think if I name them I'll probably be banged up at Heathrow on my return! And, dear reader, you wouldn't want that, would you?

Later. A number of bloggers are pointing out that the BBC originally accompanied their report on the injunction with a picture of Ruth Turner. It has since been taken down.

Others suggest an e-mail "with Lord Levy's fingerprints all over it".

Later still: The International Herald Tribune casts a little more light:

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that there were concerns that disclosure of information would impede the investigation, and that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, was acting "completely independently of government and in his independent public interest capacity."

Cash for honours: Blair in the frame

Later (2 March): There is a little more here on the injunction against the BBC.

Labour Watch has this:

This piece originates from the Evening Standard [actually the Daily Mail] on Saturday; although foreign papers have picked up the story, it hasn't received widespread coverage here yet.

Blair to be named in police file over cash for peerages Published: Saturday, 17 February, 2007.

LONDON: Tony Blair will be named in a police file to prosecutors on the cash for peerages affair, the Standard revealed.He remains one of four suspects at the heart of government who are at the centre of the Scotland Yard investigation.

Detectives are believed to have compelling evidence against individuals and are preparing to submit an evidence file to the Crown Prosecution Service which they believe is "110% strong". They realise the inquiry will come under intense scrutiny if it goes to court and the case against any suspects has to be watertight.

The revelations partly explain the lengthy delay in bringing the investigation to a conclusion. Insiders say it is now almost inevitable that police will bring charges against individuals. Detectives are focusing on the so-called Gang of Four they believe to be at the heart of the inquiry.

They are the prime minister, his chief of staff Jonathan Powell, Labour's chief fundraiser Lord Levy and key Downing Street aide Ruth Turner. Significantly, all four are referred to as "suspects" by sources close to the investigation.

Your mate's down the corridor and he's singing like a canary

The News of the Screws makes some remarkable claims this morning:

Shock admissions by one of Tony Blair's closest aides are set to lead to three people being charged in the Cash For Honours scandal.

The News of the World can reveal that the Prime Minister's political secretary John McTernan "started the dominos falling" when quizzed by cops.

These dominos are expected to come crashing down around Blair, who yesterday pleaded with the Labour Party to be allowed to stay on in Downing Street. We can reveal:

• The new evidence led to two arrests and Mr Blair being questioned by detectives.
• Now three people, including two of the PM's closest aides, the Prime Minister's fundraiser Lord Levy and his head of government relations Ruth Turner, are set to be charged.
• Substantial new evidence, including McTernan's diaries, has now been disclosed to the Crown Prosecution Service.
• Mr Blair may now be questioned again, possibly even under caution, after he failed to give satisfactory answers to police.
  

That was the week that was

Apologies for the lack of updates since Monday. I did warn you. Here are some meaty stories that came up during my absence from the blogosphere...

From politics.co.uk:

Former home secretary David Blunkett has admitted that anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos) are not working and are seen as a "badge of honour" by some youngsters.

The Sheffield Brightside MP was asked if he still had faith in the measures that, although introduced two years before his time at the Home Office, he championed. He replied: "Not wholly."

From Hot Ginger and Dynamite:

the priority and ordering of the stories on Newsnight last night was bizarre in the extreme. The lead story was a hack job by Michael Crick, along the lines of “On the day that the Tories launch a campaign for more success in the North ... a Conservative activist was found to have sent an email to a Conservative Councillor in Bradford, in which he called the local Labour Party Chair a cripple”. 

This may have merited a story in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, but to lead Newsnight with it was very curious. To place that story ahead of the dawn arrest of the Prime Minister’s Director of Government Relations in connection with sale of honours, which seems likely to be the greatest scandal of the Labour Government, is shocking.

From Guido Fawkes:

Guido is given to understand that the police have recently discovered an evidential "smoking gun" and that they are now more confident that this will all see the light of day at the Old Bailey. There is increasing confidence that the CPS will be compelled, by the evidence, to bring prosecutions.

The denizens of Downing Street can huff and puff all they like, but their house is coming down...

Labour in the red

A cheering story from today's Independent:

Labour is in no fit financial state to fight the next election because it has been "bankrupted" by the cash for honours affair, senior Labour MPs have warned.

MPs, including those on Labour's ruling body, say the party does not have the cash to pay back almost £10m in loans due to be repaid this year.

Labour figures are also bracing themselves for a massive legal bill for advice to party figures caught up in the police investigation into cash for honours.

The scale of Labour's debt is so large that all money coming into the party, which could have been channelled to vulnerable seats, will have to be diverted to pay off a huge number loans.

I think we see why state funding of political parties is suddenly on the agenda.

Lord Levy: The story so far

The BBC reports:

Tony Blair's chief fundraiser Lord Levy has been arrested and bailed in connection with the "cash-for-honours" inquiry by the Metropolitan Police.

Guido Fawkes has been on Levy's case since March. Today he has published an invaluable summary of links to all his postings on the man.

This is the place to go for the inside story.

Blair and Lloyd George

A piece of history from the Irish Student Law Review. You may care to consider the parallels between Blair and Lloyd George as leaders without parties:

The sale of honours became particularly blatant and reckless under Lloyd George. The reason was that while he had won the 1918 general election he had broken with the Liberal Party, the coalition government he headed having a Conservative majority. In order to fight the next election he needed to found his own political party, which would need an enormous campaign fund. To sell the necessary honours he set up a brokerage system with a go-between, J. Maundy Gregory, who would have a near monopoly on official patronage. Lloyd George was the first Prime Minister to set fees for the sale of honours, which were publicly revealed by the Duke of Northumberland in the House of Lords on July 17, 1922: £10-12,000 for a knighthood, £35-40,000 for a baronetcy.

King George V was, according to one of his biographers, seriously disturbed concerning four aspects of the distribution of honours in the period 1917-22: "They were the failure of the Prime Minister to consult him before promising titles to certain political and financial supporters; the number of honours recommended by the Prime Minister; the character of the recipients; and the use of go-betweens to sell the royal prerogative in the market-place."

Despite the misgivings felt from the King down, things did not come to a head until the Robinson scandal. The honours list published to mark the King's birthday on June 3, 1922 included the names of five new peers, of which four were met with derision. The most controversial was the South African mine-owner Sir Joseph Robinson, who had paid £30,000 for his peerage. He had chaired a company to which he had sold, at an inflated price, mining freeholds, which he had previously bought in his own name. The South African courts had ordered him to pay £500,000 compensation and his appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was lost in November 1921.

The Lords, some of whom had sat in judgment on him, were furious at this new addition to their number, Lord Harris laying before them all the details concerning Robinson on June 22, 1922. The King was also furious and the storm was such that Lloyd George forced Robinson to decline the honour. This brought the scandal of the sale of honours to the surface and was a factor in Lloyd George's fall from power.