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Sunday 27 May 2012

Top 50 Political Scandals: Part Two

Part Two of The Spectator’s Guide to the Top 50 Political Scandals — counting down from No. 25 to No. 1

5. The great expenses scandal, 2009

It didn’t have to be like this. The mood of fear, loathing and recrimination currently reverberating around Westminster didn’t have to be so severe or pervasive. After all, the honourable members had plenty of warning about the brewing expenses scandal. As far back as January 2008 — when Tory MP Derek Conway was busted for dubiously siphoning thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ cash into his son’s bank account — it was obvious that the parliamentary gravy train was a clear and present danger to our democracy. Yet instead of stopping it in its tracks back then, the political class simply allowed it to keep on rolling.

DAVID Cameron did withdraw the party whip from Conway. And all the party leaders spent much of 2008 talking about a ‘new politics’ which would be more open, transparent and honest. But the upshot was negligible. The publication of MPs’ expenses was actively resisted and continually pushed back, while the bluster about ‘new politics’ soon subsided once the economy became the issue du jour. It seemed that most MPs hoped this particular episode could be swept under the trough, so to speak.

But then, throughout early 2009, the rules of the game started to change. A series of revelations — including news that the then home secretary Jacqui Smith had claimed for items including porn films (viewed by her husband) and a bath plug — brought grim confirmation that someone was hawking a full set of expense receipts to the press. Panic descended on the Commons, as rumours circulated that a newspaper was poised to buy the entire bundle. And there were reports that some MPs had been put on ‘suicide watch’ as a result. Whatever the truth of those reports, events had clearly run way, way ahead of the politicians. Anything could happen next.

And then came the storm. On 7 May 2009, the Daily Telegraph revealed that it had got its hands on the receipts, thus beginning a process of naming and shaming which was a triumph for the editor Will Lewis, and continues apace. There are — alas — far too many receipt offenders to give them all a mention here, except to say that MPs have made claims for duck houses, massage chairs and moat-cleaning; they’ve been had for claiming interest payments on mortgages they’ve already paid off; and — irony of all ironies — they’ve enjoyed tax advice at the taxpayer’s expense. The scandal has even spawned a new verb — ‘flipping’ — the practice of swapping your first and second home designations to maximise your expenses claims. Yep, a lot of MPs have been exposed as serial flippers.

Incredibly, much of this great bonfire of public money has been within the parliamentary rules on expenses. Yet, as highlighted by the bombshell election of two BNP candidates to the European parliament in June, that hasn’t stemmed the public’s anger with the mainstream parties, nor prevented the political system from falling into unhappy disarray. For their part, the party leaders have responded with a display of what Ann Widdecombe memorably called ‘my shirt is hairier than yours’. MPs have been sacked, suspended and forced to pay back dodgy claims; a Speaker of the House of Commons — Michael Martin — has been forced out of office for the first time in 300 years; and various parliamentary, constitutional and electoral reforms have been proposed and introduced for the purpose of restoring faith in the system. Even so, there are persistent indications that the political class still doesn’t quite ‘get it’. When parliament finally published ‘details’ of MPs’ expenses, they were so full of redactions and omissions that it sparked yet another uproar. Transparency certainly doesn’t come easily to this lot.

The ongoing nature of this particular scandal makes it difficult to finish on either a note of optimism or one of dreary pessimism. Thanks to all those receipts, we might — might — get the change we need and deserve: a political system that’s fairer, cleaner and more open. But it remains disheartening that a national newspaper had to go on a political killing spree, exposing grand trough-ery and borderline criminality as it did so, before our parliamentary representatives decided to get up from their massage chairs and actually Do Something About It.

Either way, there’s an air of futility about parliament’s new-found reformist vigour. Whatever MPs do, however much they bark about ‘change’, you still feel many of them are just hunkering down, waiting to be blown away come election time. Voters, fix your bayonets.

4. The dodgy dossier

In May 2003, BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan alleged that the intelligence dossier justifying the Iraq invasion was ‘sexed up’, that the government knew that at least one of the claims it was making was false. A senior government source had informed Gilligan that intelligence chiefs had reservations concerning the 45-minute claim. Immediately pressure mounted on Alistair Campbell and Tony Blair — accused of lying to take the country to war.

Downing Street began to rebut Gilligan and the BBC. In the ensuing furore, the government scientist and weapons expert Dr David Kelly (pictured) was identified as the mole.

Kelly appeared before a hostile foreign affairs select committee on 15 July. He was under visible stress and spoke in a voice so quiet the air conditioning had to be turned off. Andrew MacKinlay MP described Kelly as ‘chaff… thrown up to divert our questioning’. He disappeared, committing suicide three days later.

Critics of Blair and Campbell argued that the government’s spinning had placed Kelly under such pressure that he had killed himself. Blair immediately conceded an inquiry, headed by Lord Hutton. However, it found against the BBC and exonerated the government.

3. Brown envelopes, 1994-1997

Cash for questions was the biggest scandal of the 1990s. It involved two of the most incorrigible figures of British public life: Neil Hamilton, a Tory minister, and Mohamed Fayed, the owner of Harrods. It is a tale of inquiries, lawsuits, profanities and brown paper envelopes stuffed with cash: money which — according to Fayed — was paid by him to Hamilton for asking questions in the House of Commons.

Fayed wanted a British passport, and was (and remains) furious that the government would not give him one. So in 1994 he decided to cause John Major’s government a whole load of trouble. He told the Guardian that Mr Hamilton and his fellow junior minister Tim Smith had asked questions on his behalf in the Commons through a lobbyist named Ian Greer. He claimed to have been told by Greer that ‘You need to rent an MP just like you rent a London taxi’, and that he was shocked to find that democracy was for hire. But not so shocked that he didn’t pay, by his own admission, £8,000 a month for such questions.

Smith confessed and resigned, but Hamilton and Greer decided to sue for libel. (Hamilton had successfully sued the BBC eight years earlier for claiming he had links with far-right groups.) Hamilton had allegedly asked ten questions for Greer in the late 1980s involving eight early day motions. He resigned as corporate affairs minister in order to clear his name, but it all came to nothing. He and Greer dropped their lawsuit against the Guardian just hours before the case was due to start, blaming lack of funds.

By then, the stench of sleaze was overwhelming. The Sunday Times had earlier that year launched a separate ‘cash for questions’ operation, in which its reporters paid £1,000 to Tory MPs in exchange for asking questions about government contracts. Polls show two thirds of the public considered the Tories ‘sleazy and untrustworthy’.

In the 1997 election, the court of public opinion delivered its verdict. The white-suited BBC correspondent Martin Bell stood on an anti-sleaze ticket against Hamilton and won easily.

Two months later a delayed report by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Sir Gordon Downey, said there was ‘compelling’ evidence that Hamilton had accepted Fayed’s bribe. Hamilton disputed this and sued Fayed over the allegations. He lost. Hamilton and his self-styled battleaxe of a wife Christine didn’t slink away though. Instead, in a desperate bid to raise money, they became ever-present on the celebrity humiliation circuit. Hamilton still defiantly maintains his innocence.

2. The dog gets it, 1961–1979

There has been no more bizarre scandal in British political history than the one involving Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott. Thorpe was a dashing young Liberal MP, elected in 1959 aged 30. A former president of the Oxford Union, everything was falling into place for him. But in 1961 he met Norman Scott, a troubled individual who would plague Thorpe for the rest of his life. Scott claimed that Thorpe had sex with him, an act that would have been illegal at the time.

IN 1962 Thorpe helped Scott avoid a charge of theft. But that was just the beginning of Scott’s odd behaviour. Meanwhile, Thorpe’s career prospered, and he became Liberal leader in 1967. Scott went to the press in 1969 with allegations about their relationship, but the papers wouldn’t publish. In 1973, he moved to Thorpe’s constituency, bringing trouble.

The next year Thorpe was involved in talks with Ted Heath about a possible coalition after the 1974 election. But Scott wouldn’t go away. In 1975, an ‘assassin’ was supposedly hired to kill him. The assassin executed Scott’s dog, Rinka, and warned him he would be next. In the ensuing court case, Scott stated that he and Thorpe had had an affair — the press could now report this charge without fear of being sued. The ‘assassin’ was found guilty of firearms offences and sent to jail. On his release in 1977, he sold his story, alleging he had been hired to kill Scott.

Thorpe lost his seat in the 1979 general election. Later that year, he went on trial for conspiracy to murder. He was found not guilty.

1. The Profumo affair, 1961-1963

There was never any doubt as to which scandal would be number one. The Profumo affair isn’t just the sauciest or the most outrageous political scandal to hit Britain in the last 50 years — it’s of a different order to the rest: the perfect political storm. It’s a freak, a tsunami of a story still sweeping through the public imagination, the subject of movies and pop songs and whispered conspiracy theories.

There will never be, can never be, another scandal to touch it. Just a glance at the cast list confirms its A-grade status. Our protagonist is the distinguished John Profumo, D-Day hero and secretary of state for war. Then there’s a toff, Lord Astor, given to holding saucy parties at Cliveden, his stately home, and a pimp, Stephen Ward, society osteopath and procurer of ‘good-time girls’ for the nobility; there’s a Russian naval officer — perhaps a spy — Yevgeny ‘Eugene’ Ivanov, and a West Indian gangster. Linking all these various men is their lover, Christine Keeler, showgirl and femme fatale.

That fateful meeting between Christine Keeler and John Profumo took place at Cliveden in 1961. Our cast were all assembled in that magnificent house, like the contestants in a game of Cluedo: John Profumo, his wife Valerie, Lord Astor, Stephen Ward and Christine. Christine was in love with the oily Ward (whose first London job had been selling this magazine) but nonetheless, when Profumo made a pass at her, she knew better than to turn him down.

Soon, they were having an affair. And perhaps the minister’s secret sex life would have stayed under wraps if not for the fact that Christine had been involved not only with Profumo and Ward, but also the Russian attaché, Ivanov. This was a very alarming state of affairs for MI5. Had Christine been groomed by the Soviets to spy on the war secretary? Was their pillow talk being relayed back to Moscow?

Rumours of the Profumo affair were soon rife. But they might have stayed in establishment circles, just delicious gossip for those in the know, were it not for Christine’s sordid past. One night, after a fight in Soho, another former lover of Christine’s, Johnny Edgecombe, arrived at Stephen Ward’s house in Wimpole Mews and began shooting at the door.

Christine called the police and the incident attracted the attention of the press, which began to dig around, discovering Christine’s involvement with first Ward, then Profumo.

By 1963, the affair had become so widely talked about that Profumo issued a statement of denial to the House of Commons: I did not have sexual relations with that woman. In June 1963 he was forced to admit that he had lied to the House and had no alternative but to resign from both the government and parliament. Stephen Ward was arrested for ‘living on the earnings of prostitution’. Christine Keeler gave evidence at his trial. As the case was drawing to a close, the prosecuting council summed up with a vicious speech, attacking Stephen Ward for his loose morals. That night, Ward is said to have taken an overdose and died, though the authors of Honeytrap, published in 1987, claimed that Ward didn’t kill himself but was murdered by MI5.

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan never really recovered from the whole horrid affair. He fell ill and resigned in October 1963. The Conservative party lost both its air of authority and the next general election. But the most significant effect of the Profumo scandal was the loss of public deference. Before Profumo, the public were in the dark about the private lives of members of the establishment. Most assumed that great men occupied the moral high ground with the same ease with which they occupied high society. Macmillan’s wife’s passionate affair with the bisexual MP Bob Boothby never even made the papers, though it was common knowledge in establishment circles. Can you imagine that now?

Profumo paved the way for every political scandal since. After his trial in 1963, the press would never be so discreet again, nor the public so naive.

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