The disgrace of the Lords is a parable for the end of New Labour

Fraser Nelson says that the ‘cash for amendments’ scandal dramatises the accelerating decay of the Brown regime — economic, political, constitutional. A saga that began in 1997 with grand promises of reform is entering its last bleak phase

Even at the ripe old age of 79, Lord Taylor of Blackburn knows how to strike a bargain. ‘Some companies that I work with will pay me £100,000 a year,’ he told the undercover reporter posing as a lobbyist. ‘That’s cheap for what I do for them.’ What he claimed to do for them was help mould the law of the land for a fee — all, he later insisted, following the rules. And thus the final curse descended on Gordon Brown. He now has Callaghan’s economics, Foot’s unpopularity, Kinnock’s poll ratings and Major’s sleaze — a full house of political misery.

The scandal is unlikely to end with Lord Taylor and the three other Labour peers embroiled in what has inevitably become, since the original Sunday Times revelations, the ‘cash for amendments’ scandal. Already, newspapers are on the trail of other lords who have tabled parliamentary inquiries linked to their paid advisory roles. Follow the money, and we find things like the curious £3,000 gift made to Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, by one of the companies Lord Taylor advised. A sleaze trail has been uncovered, and there is no telling where it may lead.

What makes this especially toxic for Mr Brown is that he can hardly claim that the House of Lords is an innocent retirement home. Whole families of stoats will have given their lives for the ermine draped on the shoulders of Peter Mandelson, Paul Myners and Shriti Vadera — all ennobled by this Prime Minister and parachuted straight into the very heart of his government. While peers may have made up the numbers in Tory governments, they now hold great power in Mr Brown’s.