No 10 under pressure as cash-for-honours inquiry reopened

Scotland Yard are to reopen the Cash for Honours enquiry in the dying days of Blair's premiership, casting the shadow that the prime Minister may be interviewed again, and that this time it will be under caution. Blair only avoided being interviewed under caution last time because he let it be known that he would resign if the police made this a requirement.

It's somewhat bizarre that a man who took the nation to war without a UN mandate, a war which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, now finds himself being hounded by an old law that few of us even knew existed. Many of us can foresee a day when Blair has to stand in a courtroom and account for his actions, but I certainly never expected it would be over which old fart received which gong for how much money.

In a sign that the Crown Prosecution Service is taking the case extremely seriously, police have been told to find key pieces of evidence to strengthen the case. The move will unnerve Downing Street staff, who have been privately expressing confidence that nobody will be charged in the affair.

Angus MacNeil, the Scottish Nationalist MP whose complaint to the police led to the launch of the inquiry, said the news increased the prospect of another police interview for Tony Blair.

"This is clearly going to reverberate around the dying days of the Blair Government, and once Blair has retired it might be more interesting still," he said.

It was always unlikely that Blair would be prosecuted whilst he was a sitting Prime Minister, but that will all change very shortly.

This leaves the Labour Party in a terrible financial mess as auditors are currently going through their accounts and may very well be unlikely to sign the party off as a going concern as the £10 million in loans was supposed to be paid off this year. If the party finds this impossible to do, and there is every indication that this is the case, then members of the party's governing body, the National Executive Committee, will become personally liable for the party's debt.

And strangely enough, all these problems stem from Blair's attempts to distance the party from the unions. This ended with Blair's Faustian deal with Lord Levy, where Levy would secure large loans from private individuals as long as New Labour became pro-Israel and stopped the criticisms of Israel's actions that had defined past Labour governments.

Indeed, Blair's own demise can be traced from that same deal he cut with Levy, for it was Blair's refusal to call for a ceasefire in the Isreal-Lebanon war last summer that finally - after the debacle of the Iraq war - became the straw that broke the camel's back and set off a backbench rebellion which forced Blair to concede to last years Labour Party Conference that he would never again address them as their leader.

And now that same deal promises to follow Blair even after he has left office.

It's almost bankrupt his party, it's led to him having to announce he would stand down, and the police are examining whether or not what took place was actually criminal.

It's fair to say that this was a deal that we can assume Blair will come to regret.

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Tags: Blair, Levy, Cash for Honours