Andrew Blick reviews A Question of Honour: Inside New Labour and the true story of the cash for peerages scandal by Lord Micahel Levy.
(Lord Michael Levy, A Question of Honour, Simon and Schuster, 2008, 320pp)
Late
in 1973, a record called ‘My Coo-Ca-Choo' entered the UK singles
charts. It was credited to the glam-rock singer Alvin Stardust; but
customers who thought it was Stardust singing on the recording were
being had. The voice belonged to Peter Shelley, a musician with a small
share in label which released it, Magnet. The main man behind Magnet
was Michael Levy. He excuses the stunt on the grounds that it was
‘fairly standard industry practice at the time.'
This
book is the latest in a string of insider accounts of the Blair inner
circle. It charts the progress of Levy from a humble background,
becoming a chartered account, then music business magnate and finally
Peer, and tennis playing partner to and ‘Personal Envoy to the Middle
East' for Tony Blair. Most famously Levy was chief fund raiser to
Blair, popularly known as ‘Lord cashpoint'. This memoir covers familiar
ground such as the internal tensions at No.10 and disputes between
Blair and Gordon Brown, adding some interesting anecdotes.
Though
it deals with other issues, understandably the publishers have billed
it as ‘the true story of the cash for peerages scandal'. Levy was at
the centre of a police investigation which was triggered when the press
learned that a number of individuals who had provided undeclared loans
to the Labour Party to fight the 2005 General Election and had
subsequently been proposed for peerages, which were queried by the
House of Lords Appointments Commission in November 2005. After a
complaint in March 2006, an inquiry began into whether an attempt had
been made to confer peerages in contravention of the Honours
(Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. The investigation was later broadened
to include possible violation of the Political Parties, Elections and
Referendums Act 2000 and perversion of the course of justice. All three
major parties were under investigation. Ultimately in 2007 the Crown
Prosecution Service determined that it would not bring forward any
criminal proceedings, but not before Levy was arrested twice (along
with three others); 90 individuals were questioned including Blair; and
immense and deserved negative publicity was generated about the way
parties and senior politicians do business.