Levy may turn on the Labour Party if they hang him out to dry.

I wondered the other day whether or not Labour are preparing to hang Lord Levy out to dry as it appeared to me that sustained leaks concerning the Cash for Honours enquiry were moving all the focus onto Levy and away from Downing Street and the original charges.

It appears that the same thought has crossed Levy's mind and there are signs that he might be about to turn against Labour with a series of comments emerging from family and friends that suggests that the public unity that has lasted up until now might be about to implode.

Now a cabinet minister close to Tony Blair's chief fundraiser has raised the stakes, telling The Independent on Sunday that Lord Levy "feels badly let down".

"He feels that he has given the party everything. He's helped raise between £60m and £80m for us. Without that money we might not be in government, and yet people are not standing by him.

"He feels badly let down, not so much by Blair but by others who he feels could be showing a bit more public support right now."

Some ministers fear that Lord Levy is about to "implode". "If Michael [Levy] were to feel that Tony has left him to swing in the wind over this one he would be a very dangerous animal," a minister told The Times.

Indeed, he would be. Levy knows where the bodies are buried so it would be very foolish indeed to offer him up as some form of sacrificial lamb. Levy's friends are becoming noticeably more vocal recently, although the line of defence they are taking is, I think, a bad one.

For months Lord Levy has been publicly silent, but he now appears to be fighting back through friends. Yitzchak Schochet, a rabbi at the Mill Hill synagogue that Lord Levy attends, Sir Alan Sugar and David Rowan, editor of The Jewish Chronicle, have all rallied to his defence in recent days.

"There is a general feeling that this is all about 'get the Jew'," Rabbi Schochet told The Daily Telegraph.

I think it's dumb to cry "anti-Semitism" over this as it makes Levy look desperate. Almost no-one outside of the Jewish community believes that what is happening to Levy has anything to do with his religion. It is rather that he is not a member of the cabinet which accounts for why many surrounding Blair might prefer Levy to carry the can for this. After all, were a member of Blair's inner circle to be charged then Blair would certainly face calls for his resignation, from within his own party and from outside it. Blair's supporters will go to great lengths to avoid this.

Levy's supporters would do better to point out this fact rather than imply it is because of his religion, as the latter does him no favours at all.

Were they to concentrate on the real reasons for Levy's scapegoating then he might win much more public sympathy and whoever is leaking against him might feel more reticent about doing so. The cries of anti-Semitism suit the Blair camp; it is for that reason that the Levy camp should stop making this false charge and concentrate on why the only stories in circulation always seem to be attacking the only person in all of this who is not a member of the government.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Cash for Honours, Levy, Lord Levy, Labour Party, Tony Blair, anti-Semitism