Cash for honours: no charges
Posted on Friday 20 July, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized
Finally we reach the conclusion of the cash for honours affair. And, in the immortal words of the country and western song, there’s no charge.
New Labour is going to claim that 16-month investigation by Scotland Yard exonerates Levy, Turner, and Evans. It doesn’t. It simply means that there is insufficient evidence to take things further.
Let’s just say that the unfortunate fire in Lord Levy’s offices, and the subsequent theft of four laptop computers from the office of former Labour Party general secretary Matt Carter, cannot have assisted Inspector Yate’s efforts.
True, 80p in every £1 received by Labour comes from individual donors, and every Labour donor who has given over £1m has received a peerage or a knighthood. Some – such as Lord Drayson and Lord Sainsbury – have been given ministerial office.
But that is not proof of corruption. Short of catching Levy setting up a stall knocking out ermine robes two for one at Ridley Road market, it’s difficult to know what could have closed the case.
In over a decade of one New Labour funding scandal after another, not one single key player has been subjected to any greater punishment than being forced to resign a cabinet position. Even then, some of them were back round the cabinet table in a matter of months.
Certainly none has suffered a penalty even as severe as the token 18-day suspension from parliament meted out to George Galloway earlier this week.
But that’s just how things are in a country where the law seems not to apply to leading politicians from our ruling party, any more than it does to BAE Systems.
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8 Responses to “Cash for honours: no charges”
‘New Labour is going to claim that 16-month investigation by Scotland Yard exonerates Levy, Turner, and Evans. It doesn’t. It simply means that there is insufficient evidence to take things further’.
Which, er, exonerates them perhaps?
No evidence = no stain on their characters whatsover.
Just adds to the cynicism and indifference towards politicians and public life in general. The spread of the ‘dog eat dog’ rot was shown during the week with the row about the Queen. I’m sure the Queen is a sour-faced miseryguts but that the programme makers felt they had to twist the truth to interest people in their film is unethical. (Will I be imprisoned in the Tower for dissing the Queen?).
Such things are the guts – or tripes – of French politics. After a while the standard strategy of the politicians has become 1) To drag the case out as long as possible, 2) To make the affair so complicated everyone against them loses the will to live. 3) To give so many confusing details the average voter no longer understands.
I notice that on the front page of my copy of today’s Le Monde it’s all about Chirac being heard by a judge.
Now I know, first-hand, the Chriac regime when he ruled Paris. Since this is a story against myself it must be true.
My girlfriend was the ‘deuxieme adjoint’ (second in the line of command – the first was a political appointee, she, very much on the left, was a career legal civil servant) of the RPR (Chirac’s Party) Mayor of the 8eme (that’s the poshest one, though we lived in the 18eme, one of the poorest). When we were about to be evicted from our flat we applied for a council one (ELM, we had too high incomes for the HLMs).
Do you know we got one within a fortnight…
Dave,
Perfectly put.
Caroline,
In any cases ‘No evidence = no stain on their characters whatsoever = or evidence destroyed, lost etc’
insufficient evidence is not the same as no evidence, the criteria for prosecuting a case is higher than most of us would normally expect.
the prosecution, as any juror will tell you, has to prove beyond reasonable doubt the guilt of the defendant
in Lord Levy’s case there was probably plenty of guilt to go around but finding concrete evidence which proves that conclusively, is another matter.
The peerages scandal goes much further than Lord Levy and probably incorporates a dozen or so people at the top of new Labour, so prosecuting Lord Levy would have probably meant attacking the new Labour political establishment at its heart and in particular, Tony Blair, and that was not going to happen.
PS: wonders will never cease, I agree with Southpawpunch, for once!
Luke Akehurst’s take on this is a thing of wonder, by the way. Well worth a look.
If Luke Akehurst took his head out of the toilet, he wouldn’t be so wet behing the ears. What about the Tory candidate in Southall, Tony Lit, whose company gave a donation to Labour recently. How tribally Labour is he?
Well, well. It seems that far from there being insufficient evidence, key evidence was ruled inadmissible. A diary kept by Sir Christopher Evans, a biotechnology entrepreneur, was ruled by a leading government barrister, David Perry QC, as not admissible as evidence.
This one looks set to run on into next week.