Alright, I admit it. I am the “anti-Blair” columnist mentioned in Steve Richards’ Independent piece today.
Steve cites an exchange between me and Roy Hattersley on the World Tonight last Thursday as evidence of the BBC’s hysteria about the questioning of the Prime Minister in the “loans for peerages” affair. We are both anti-Blair, you see, even though Roy defended Blair and against my charges on this occasion.
“Parts of the BBC had been waiting for this day so long that when it arrived they could not contain their excitement. The normally sober World Tonight ran an overexcited report followed by an interview with Roy Hattersley, who is a Blair critic, and then an interview with a columnist who is well-known for believing that Blair is corrupt. That was it.”
Steve describes himself as a fan of mine, which is nice as I am a fan of Steve’s too. But every now and again Mr Richards gets all soppy about the Prime Minister and I have never quite understood why.
I’m not sure I’ve ever said the Prime Minister was corrupt, as Steve suggests. I simply believe, as do the police, that there is a prima facie case for investigating the loans for honours scandal. Even if honours weren’t for sale, on the face of it these do not look like commercial loans and the whole system of soft loans appears to have been set up to side-step the government’s own legislation.
I think Steve is wrong to say I am anti-Blair per se. I have defended the PM’s stance on radical Islam both in print and on the television to the extent that some have seen me as an apologist for the neo-cons.
When I told Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight that there would be a Blair-shaped hole when the PM quit office, I was treated to an “alert” of my very own on Medialens – the self-appointed watchdog of the yellow corporate press.
I still think it’s odd that political commentators can’t see how serious the loans for peerages investigation is and how it gnaws away at the body politic. This is not the fault of the BBC, but of the politicians, Labour, Tory and Lib Dem, who allowed this corrupting system to survive for so long.
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