These are harrowing days for Lord Levy, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s “personal envoy” in the Middle East and the Labour Party’s chief fund-raiser. Nor can it be comfortable to be the British prime minister’s director of government relations, Ruth Turner, at present.
With their versions of events apparently in conflict, the pair at the center of the “cash for honors” inquiry that is bedeviling the last days of Blair’s premiership find themselves objects of remorseless media scrutiny.
A leaked statement by Turner has indicated that Levy pressured her to change her story of the role he played in drawing up a list of possible peers. Moreover, it is now alleged that the unelected Levy not only offered peerages in return for large donations to the Labour Party but sought to influence who should be given them.
What seemed like a British Watergate-in the making, a story about a government cover-up, now seems to concern both a cover-up and the alleged corruption behind the cover-up. It is understandable if many have given up trying to follow the inquiry’s unending ramifications.
Both Levy and Turner have now been arrested twice; in the second instance, Turner was dramatically arrested in the small hours of the morning. And now, on both their behalfs, claims of victimization are being voiced. Turner is reported by her mother to be receiving no support whatsoever from a government for which she worked tirelessly, believing that Blair’s New Labour project was a noble cause. Is there a lonelier place than a police station? Mrs. Turner plangently inquired last week, speaking from America where she and her husband, who is professor of divinity at Yale University, now live.
Reportedly, Lord Levy is likewise finding the whole affair increasingly stressful. The damage to the reputation of the former music mogul nicknamed “Lord Cashpoint” is huge and has become a matter of mounting concern to fellow-Jews. Many are mindful of a potential backlash against the whole community because the behavior of a prominent Jew is being reported in ways that confirm old stereotypes of the Jewish moneyman who worms his way into a position of power and influence. In a quite extraordinary development, Lord Levy’s rabbi, Yitzchak Schochet, has now stepped forward with a bullish defense of his beleaguered congregant. In a television interview, the American-born rabbi claimed the police were deliberately briefing against Levy and portrayed him as the victim of anti-Semitism. Soon afterward, in a BBC radio interview, the Jewish businessman and television star, Sir Alan Sugar, also spoke up for Levy. Sugar stopped short of accusations of anti-Semitism but pointed out that the Daily Mail, which has made much of Levy’s predicament, has a long record of making racist innuendoes about Jews and Asians. Sugar is right to say that there has been a nasty, gloating quality about the paper’s treatment of Levy. There may be something, too, in his claim that Levy is being “hung out to dry” — that Tony Blair has fingered his “friend” as the fall guy in an investigation that threatens him as the man ultimately responsible for the awarding of honors. Blair has certainly operated on the cynical principle that “greater love hath no man than that he lay down his friend for his life”.
However, in emphasizing how much money he raised for Blair and New Labour, Sugar might have paused to consider that in view of the blighted reputation of the prime minister and indeed of the whole New Labour project, few are likely to regard this as being greatly to Levy’s credit. Indeed, the whole strategy of insisting on Levy’s selfless commitment to New Labour and the Jewish community and making him out to be the victim of racial prejudice is in danger of backfiring. It runs the risk of exacerbating the very thing his supporters fear. Certainly, there is increasing public impatience with the playing of the “anti-Semitism card” as a means of stifling comment on Jewish people and Jewish issues.
It was, it must be said, a close-run thing that the latest “revelation” regarding Lord Levy emerged at all. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith interceded to gag the BBC that originally put together the story about Ruth Turner’s conflicting evidence. Acting on a request from the police, Goldsmith declared that it was likely to prejudice the possibility of a fair trial. But this was a curious step, considering that no one has yet been formally charged. In any case, Goldsmith’s intervention failed to stop the story being published by the Guardian, which may be less readily intimidated than is the BBC in the aftermath of the rebuke delivered to it by the Hutton Inquiry over its coverage of the government’s case for going to war in Iraq.
Now there is much debate about whether it can be right for the attorney general to pronounce on questions concerning the propriety of government conduct when he himself is a member of the government. Many feel that Lord Goldsmith’s supposedly impartial legal advice is especially liable to appear compromised since he is an old friend of Blair’s. It was Goldsmith, it will be remembered, who provided the last-minute legal “justification” for the Iraq war, having previously doubted its legitimacy.
In the midst of all this, the prime minister — who has himself been twice interviewed by the police in connection with the cash for peerages Inquiry — has been boasting about the golden age that the arts in Britain have enjoyed during his term of office.
One art that has unquestionably flourished is the art of “spin”. It is of a piece with a time when politics has become inseparable from image mongering that even the scandals of New Labour have been more a matter of perception than of actual indictable offenses. It’s worth noting in this connection that Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Ian Blair, was recently observed in “deep conversation” with Lord Levy at the Jewish Community Security Trust annual dinner — an episode that involved no crime but which is certainly charged with unfortunate symbolism. For what signal does it send when Britain’s chief police officer not only sits down to dine with a leading suspect in a high-profile criminal investigation but is also seen shaking his hand?
It remains possible that cash for honors inquiry may never yield any convictions. On completing their inquiries, the police must submit a report to the Crown Prosecution Service and Lord Goldsmith will have a key role in deciding if there is justification for bringing charges. The whole investigation could yet amount to a vast waste of public money, with possibly ruinous consequences for the career of the policeman who has led it, Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates. The fact is that the British state has an extraordinary power to shield its inner machinations from the public gaze and parry accusations of malpractice. In many ways, it is easier to call public officials to account in the US, with its explicit constitutional arrangements.
The speedy trial and conviction of US Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on a charge of perjury would scarcely have been possible in Britain.
When it comes to defending its interests, the British establishment has few rivals.
