Howl, howl, hoot, hoot ... o we do love to moralise... the on and offline media are rubbing their self-righteous hands at the prospect of Tony Blair being hounded from office poisoned with shame ... The single characteristic that these 'commentators' share is their complete lack of any practical political activity. Analysis of recommendations in the Local Government Bill, perhaps? Spare them the tedium! Yet meetings of the East Area Committee in Islington - which considers planning, parking and other matters with real impact on daily life - are often packed and can be extremely heated.
Ruth Turner, Blair's head of government relations, apparently wrote 'something' (it may not be an email, it may or not have been sent) for his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, about his special envoy and chief fund-raiser, Lord Levy. Forgive my naivety - but might that not be what she is paid for, to inform her colleagues of possible responses to potential crises?
There is apparently an obvious moral in this loans for honours 'scandal', but I am hard pressed to see what it is. The Lords in my view is not part of the direct democratic process. It is not a senate, a body for which we have no need, and it is not a Commons, a body which we already have. At its best it is type of jury, a group of random individuals with a great mix of experience and expertise. It is not there to make laws but to stick its heels in, ask questions, get a bit bloody-minded and provide a decent ceremonial backdrop for Her Majesty. It is beyond me why people who make substantial contributions to legitimate political parties - in time or money - should not get a seat there. At a £1m, it is not especially prohibitive.
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The person I really felt sorry for today was Elizabeth Butler Schloss, the poor judicial dogsbody recently demoted from Deputy Coroner to the Royal Household to Assistant Deputy Coroner for Inner-West London, who has the unbelievably tedious task of dealing with Mohamed Al Fayed and his obssessive-compulsive conspiracy theories. Prince Philip and MI6 plotted to kill Diana and Dodi - a theory for which Dame Butler Schloss gently explained there is not a 'shred of evidence'. Never mind that - no one cares about evidence. Al Fayed's barrister, Michael Mansfield, waved the objection aside. He is being paid £1k an hour (a lordship is well within his means) and has no time for trivia.
I thought the coroner was painfully sensitive to these rackateers and lunatics, agreeing to spend 10s of millions of the state's money putting such urgent matters as the identity of the driver of a Fiat Uno that was apparently also in the underpass that fateful night, whether Diana was pregnant and her 'fears for her life'.
Al Fayed has a similar approach to justice as the plodding officers running the year-old loans for honours inquiry - keep at it until someone gets so thoroughly weary of it that they try to shake you off, then slap them with accusations of a cover up.
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