The Downing Street Mafia

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Everyone in Westminster, and probably the country at large, knows that the trade in honours goes on. John Yates of the Yard knows it too but was not willing to say so directly when he gave evidence yesterday to the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC may have a boring title, but it is the most lively and effective select committee in the House of Commons). The Committee itself informed Yates at the start of his 16-month investigation into the sale of honours that everyone knew it went on in secret and that he would not get anywhere unless he had hard evidence (under the 1925 Honours Act) that was too elusive to pin down in our political black economy. There is a strange paradox in the current concern over political corruption. On the one hand, great effort has gone into cleansing political life of corruption; on the other hand, the political class still "don't get it". Politicians and their aides continue to practice all sorts of dodges, largely for party and personal political advantage and not pecuniary motives, and to take advantages of the manifold opportunities that present themselves in the porous structures of British governance. They also insist that it is they in the political sphere who should exert control over their practices, not judges, not official commissioners, and certainly not police officers. Elizabeth Silkin perished because MPs of all parties, and at the apex of the parliamentary system, refused to accept her judgments on their often improper conduct. John Yates came up against a "Downing Street" mafia that closed ranks, regarding his investigation as a political matter, and not criminal; and masterminded an outcry when one of their number was subjected to a comparatively mild form of dawn raid that is properly reserved only for "real" criminals and terrorists, real and not-so-real.