Anthony Barnett (London, OK): On Newsnight Michael Crick said that he thought David Leigh and Rob Evans Guardian story on how, in the summer of 2005, Labour peer Doug Hoyle who works as a lobbyist for the arms industry, took money to introduce his client to Lord Drayson the Minister of State for Defence Equipment was not a big scandal as nothing illegal took place. Your Lordships have got to earn a living you see.
Hmmm
At the same time the Common's Public Administration Select Committee was interviewing John Yates of the Yard about his investigation of cash for peerages. According to Jane Merrick in the Daily Mail,
In a dramatic moment, Mr Yates was directly asked: Have you discovered there is a trade in peerages?'.
After pausing for several seconds, he pointedly failed to deny the dynamite suggestion, replying: "I think I've done my job. I followed the evidence. I provided that evidence to the CPS and they made their decision."
The minutes of the meeting will be published here. According to Quentin Letts all the Committee could do was complain about the police leaking to the press, stock in trade to the politicians, as Letts pointed out, who seem to be offended by any breach of what they regarded as their monopoly. But what struck me was Letts' account of the behaviour of the Committee's chairman Tony Wright:
"We know there's a trade in honours that goes on," he bellowed, leaning forward and staring at Mr Yates with strange hostility. "But it goes on in covert ways. We said to you, "that's the way the world is". We knew you weren't gonna get anywhere'.
That's the way the world is. Did Tony Wright really speak these words as a justification for opposing a criminal investigation? One of the theses of Peter Oborne's new book, The Triumph of the Political Class is that the political class belive that they can behave differently, even illegally, with impunity - that the rules which apply to the rest of us do not apply to those who rule us.
Wright's words, if these are indeed on the record, seek to legitimise this state of affairs as a fact of life. They make the laws, don't you know, but they themselves are above, or perhaps one should say below, the law. It seems that no Tory or Lib-Dem member of the Committee objected to their Chairman's description of political life in Britain today.
