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The rise of the sleaze-ocrats in Britain's ruling class

PETER OBORNE: 

Last updated at 22:53 02 September 2007

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Five years ago I spent several weeks in Zimbabwe reporting on the way that President Mugabe was brutalising his people, in part thanks to the inertia and complicity of the Tony Blair government.

After I returned, Sir Patrick Cormack, a Conservative Party backbencher, invited me to his room. He wanted to ask what questions he should put to a government minister who would soon be giving evidence on Zimbabwe to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, of which he was a member.

So I told Cormack about a strange event that had occurred the previous month. President Mugabe had been invited to Paris by President Chirac for a summit meeting. This example of European approval of a barbarous dictator caused uproar.

When Downing Street was asked about the episode, it gave the impression to reporters that it had neither been consulted nor informed, while ministers spoke out angrily against the invitation.

John Prescott and Tracey Temple: However willing she was during their affair, he held power over her

In fact I was able to show Cormack evidence that the British government had known all along about the invitation, raised not the slightest objection, that its protestations of ignorance were false, and that the angry pronouncements by ministers were no better than a cynical device. I suggested to Cormack that he should expose this wretched business at the Foreign Affairs Committee, and offered to draft him a list of questions.

Sir Patrick gazed around his large and beautifully appointed Commons office. He looked appalled. "Oh, I could never do that," he stated. "It might embarrass the Government."

Since then I have often noted Sir Patrick nod with vigorous approval from the Conservative side as Tony Blair spoke from the dispatch box. I have seen him cross the floor of the House to offer sympathy and support to a government minister in trouble.

I have also been reliably told that he wrote a letter of rebuke to a younger Tory MP in a neighbouring constituency who attacked the Government. "That is not the sort of thing we do in Staffordshire," declared Cormack.

Cormack has his fans who believe that he represents a 'civilised' kind of politics. I cannot agree. Voters put their MPs into Parliament to represent their interests and articulate their concerns, and sometimes anger, not to form part of a comfortable club, or to collude with opposition parties.

Sir Patrick is one of hundreds of Members of Parliament who now belong to a Political Class that has become entrenched at the centre of British politics, government and society.

This new Political Class has emerged over the past three decades to become the dominant force in British public life - and increasingly pursues its own sectional interests oblivious to the public good.

It encompasses lobbyists, party functionaries, advisers and spindoctors, many journalists, and increasing numbers of onceindependent civil servants. All mainstream politicians of the three main parties belong to it. Gordon Brown is a member, so is the Tory leader David Cameron.

Indeed, as the case of Sir Patrick Cormack shows, MPs from different parties now have far more in common with each other, as members of the Political Class, than they have with voters. They seek to protect one another, help each other out, rather than engage in robust democratic debate.

As a result, the House of Commons is no longer really a cockpit where great conflicts of vision are fought out across the chamber. It has converted instead into a professional group, like the Bar Council or the British Medical Association.

This means that the most important division in Britain is no longer the Tory versus Labour dividing line that marked out the battle zone in politics for the bulk of the 20th century. The real division is between a narrow, self-serving and - as we will see - increasingly corrupt Political Class and the mass of ordinary voters.

Just as it was impossible to understand how Britain worked 50 years ago without grasping the significance of the old Establishment, today it is impossible to grasp how power operates without understanding the nature of this Political Class.

Its most noticeable characteristic is a chronic lack of experience of and connection with the world outside politics. Its members make government their exclusive study and tend to have no significant experience of industry, commerce, or civil society.

The former Tory Cabinet minister Michael Portillo - a pioneering member of the Political Class - lasted a very short time working for a shipping company where he developed a "deep distaste for his clerical and administrative duties".

Michael Portillo (left) had a deep distaste for clerical duties, while Boris Johnson could not work as a management consultant and stay awake

The Conservative MP Boris Johnson worked as a management consultant after leaving university. "Try as I might," he later stated, "I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth/profit matrix, and stay conscious."

The only Cabinet minister in Tony Blair's 1997 administration with any experience of work in the commercial sector was the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who had been a ship's steward in the 1950s.

He was joined in the Cabinet in due course by Alan Milburn, whose commercial experience was limited to a short period running Days Of Hope, a Marxist bookshop known to its patrons by the spoonerism Haze Of Dope. Milburn was nevertheless handed the task of running the National Health Service, the largest employer in the world outside Indian Railways and the Red Army.

When Milburn left the Government he was succeeded as Health Secretary by John Reid, whose private-sector experience was confined to a brief spell in the insurance industry during the 1970s. Not one of the Gordon Brown Cabinet formed in June 2007 had any serious private sector experience.

The culture of incompetence which has become a special hallmark of modern British government is the direct result of the absence of any meaningful managerial experience among the Political Class. Very serious decisions are made with a lack of elementary preparation or understanding on a scale which would be completely shocking in the private sector.

Recent examples include catastrophic IT systems breakdowns in Whitehall departments; the failure to prepare for the post-war situation in Iraq (an act of gross negligence of historical magnitude); the nationalisation of Railtrack; the mismanagement of NHS reforms; the Millennium Dome; the collapse of the Home Office as a functional organisation in 2006; the shambles over Home Information Packs; and the handling of the 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis.

Alan Milburn (left) ran a Marxist bookshop, while John Reid was a ship's steward

But it is on moral standards in public life, rather than mere practical competence, that the closed world of the Political Class has had its most malign effect.

The Political Class is metropolitan and London-based. Its members perceive life through the eyes of a member of London's affluent middle classes. This converts them into a separate, privileged elite, isolated from the aspirations and the problems of provincial, rural and suburban Britain.

This means, in turn, that the Political Class has come to embrace a separate set of values. Its members tend to assert that they perform an almost priestly function and that especially rigorous and exacting ethical standards apply to them. Take this pronouncement by the former Downing Street aide Geoff Mulgan:

"We expect leaders to abide by far more demanding rules than the rest of us. So, for example, we expect them to suspend personal considerations when exercising impersonal power: not to give special favours; not to treat people well just because they like them. We don't let them use their power to enrich themselves, or gain sexual favours."

This is a fascinating passage, gaining special weight because Mulgan was head of policy inside Downing Street when he wrote it.

The particular interest lies not in the series of assertions that Mulgan is making about politicians, but in the assumption he is making about wider society. He is not just saying that voters are making extraordinary demands on politicians when they insist that they do not show favouritism to friends or use their power in order to obtain sexual favours.

He is also assuming that ordinary people - as Mulgan puts it, "the rest of us" - do indeed behave in exactly the corrupt manner he describes.

This attitude amounts to a misunderstanding of normal, civilised conduct. The casual assertions made by Mulgan about ordinary people are false and insulting: they are nevertheless a symptom of the estrangement of the Political Class from civil society.

It is emphatically not acceptable in everyday life to abuse power to enrich yourself or obtain sexual favours.

To give two examples, it is a sackable offence for a company buyer to augment his salary by setting up sidedeals for private benefit, or for the personnel director of a large company to use the status his position gives him to find a job for a friend or relation.

It would probably be against the law as well. It would certainly be against the law if he abused his power to pressure potential employees into consenting to sex.

Any civil servant, member of the armed forces or employee of a private-sector company would be severely disciplined or worse for engaging in the kind of behaviour which Geoff Mulgan claims to regard as normal.

The reality is exactly the other way around. Members of the Political Class have exceptionally poor standards in comparison with ordinary people. They constantly conduct themselves in a way that would be unacceptable in any mainstream organisation, whether in the private sector or in a public body.

A very telling example of this disparity of standards is the affair between the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and his secretary Tracey Temple, which became public knowledge in April 2006.

Prescott would have been sacked on account of his conduct had he worked in practically any other walk of life, as the following account, written by the City journalist Chris Blackhurst at the height of the storm over Tracey Temple, suggests: "At a dinner party I was forcibly struck by the anger in the business community about John Prescott. Around the table were the chairman of one of our largest retailers, the chairman of a pubs group, the spokesman for a major broadcaster, and one of Prescott's Cabinet colleagues.

"The latter said little about Prescott, although her view was obvious. She was forced to listen as one by one the other guests said that if anyone had behaved like that in their organisations - a man having an affair with a woman who directly worked for him, and having sex in the office - they would be instantly dismissed. No question.

"The retailer was able to recall cases where shop managers had been found out and fired. The pub company boss said the same of his staff. But they didn't just say the stricture applied to juniors - if anyone at the top, including themselves, was doing what Prescott did, they would be out.

"It was the fact that Tracey Temple answered to Prescott that riled them - that, no matter how willing she was, he held power over her.

"He could, if she'd refused, have made her life a misery; had her moved, blocked her promotion. It would be her word against his and he was John Prescott."

The remarks cited in this commentary capture exquisitely the disconnection between members of the Political Class and civil society. John Prescott's conduct was not merely in flagrant contravention of norms in the private sector. In early 2006, just weeks before his transgression came to light, two policemen were convicted for the offence of having sex with members of the public while on duty.

This precedent led Alistair Watson, a retired Glasgow police officer, to make a formal complaint to the Metropolitan Police, calling for an investigation into Prescott's conduct.

Watson insisted that his motives were not malicious: "If there are rules that apply to ordinary people, John Prescott should be treated the same, or more harshly."

His behaviour even flouted the rules for civil servants in his own department, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Shortly after news of the affair broke, a newspaper reported Tracey Temple's disclosure that she and the Deputy Prime Minister repeatedly had sex behind the open door to his office while his staff worked outside.

Yet the 1,000-page guidebook for civil servants in Prescott's department instructed officials not to make "improper use" of accommodation, furniture and workspace, especially during "official time".

When these rules were drawn to John Prescott's attention, his spokesman replied that the Deputy Prime Minister had not breached the rule book.

He said: "The guide applies to civil servants, not ministers."

Here Prescott's spokesman was explicitly articulating the ethic of the Political Class, which tolerates one set of standards for politicians and a second, significantly higher standard for those who work for them. This approach was endorsed by the Prime Minister's spokesman in 10 Downing Street, where Tony Blair gave Prescott his "full support".

This kind of disregard for ordinary rules of conduct or decency is duplicated again and again. David Blunkett, a successful Cabinet minister for the first eight years of the Blair government, was a multiple transgressor who displayed a fundamental inability to understand the distinction between the public and the private domain.

His infractions occurred in a number of spheres, most famously in the case of his lover Kimberly Quinn. While Home Secretary he provided Mrs Quinn with first-class rail tickets, intended for MPs' spouses, even though she was actually married to somebody else.

He made his official car available to Mrs Quinn for trips between London and his house in Derbyshire. When his affair with Mrs Quinn reached its crisis point, two Home Office officials - John Toker, head of news, and Blunkett's private secretary Jonathan Sedgwick - attended a private meeting with her lawyers.

This episode appeared to take the two civil servants beyond their proper public role, and deep into the private domain.

Defenders of Blunkett maintained that the episodes with the rail tickets and the official car were trivial. However, if either offence had been carried out by an army officer it would have led to serious disciplinary action, potentially even court martial and dismissal.

As with the case of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Home Secretary was showing contempt for rules that were actually deadly serious for others.

The greatest culprits of all have been Tony and Cherie Blair. In September 2006 Mr Blair smashed the tight guidelines concerning leaks of sensitive economic data while making a speech to the Trades Union Congress, telling them that "tomorrow we will see a fall in unemployment, which is very welcome indeed".

It was easy to see why Mr Blair issued the information. He was expecting a hostile reception from union delegates and it was politically very helpful indeed to deliver some cheerful economic news.

Tony and Cherie Blair: One rule for the powerful, another for everyone else

Yet had an official inside the Office of National Statistics committed a similar indiscretion he would probably have been sacked. This is because the information was highly sensitive.

Sterling rose at once on the Prime Minister's speech because the solid economic news was seen as boosting the chances of an interest rate rise. But there was no apology from Downing Street and a No 10 spokesman brushed off the episode, saying that it was not a major breach.

The case of Cherie Blair provides a grotesque illustration of the attitudes and practices of the new Political Class. The Prime Minister's wife manifested a new morality in the heart of government, namely that it was acceptable to use the highest office as a method of personal enrichment.

Previous spouses at No 10 had been relatively modest and unobtrusive, and had never sought to exploit their position financially.

In the 1960s, officials warned Mary, wife of Harold Wilson and a talented poet, on no account to accept the sum of £33 for some verses she had published in a magazine.

They informed her that doing so could be seen as trading on her husband's position as Prime Minister. Mary Wilson complied without complaint. Mrs Blair could not have been more different. She placed herself on the books of the Harry Walker Agency, the New York-based company which represents clients as senior as Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger.

Though she formally marketed herself as Cherie Booth, her maiden name, Harry Walker nevertheless left no one in any doubt about her connection with Tony Blair. This connection proved profitable.

In February 2006, for example, she reportedly earned some £150,000 on a tour of the United States which involved at least five speaking engagements. The previous year she is thought to have earned at least £140,000 for eight days' work.

In June 2005 she was paid some £30,000 to be interviewed before an audience by the CNN anchorwoman Paula Zahn, while Tony Blair was on an official visit to the White House. Sir David Manning, British ambassador to Washington and seemingly willing to stretch any point well beyond the cause of duty as far as Tony and Cherie Blair were concerned, made a warm-up speech.

When questioned over the trip, Downing Street insisted that it was "normal procedure" for the British ambassador to accompany or to introduce "any prominent British citizen visiting Washington".

Mrs Blair's behaviour on this occasion nevertheless stretched the tolerance of the Prime Minister's civil service advisers past breaking point. She was strongly advised in advance not to take up this engagement by Cabinet Secretary Andrew Turnbull.

Turnbull urged her not to embark on the undertaking at all, adding that, if she did insist on going ahead, she should donate her fee to charity. Cherie ignored this advice, saying: "Maybe we should not have done this, but we are in too deep."

Mrs Blair's speaking tour of Australia at the start of 2005 was another notable infraction. She agreed to make a series of speeches, one to raise funds for the Children's Cancer Institute Australia, a research charity.

Rather than do the work free - as would have been expected of a Prime Minister's wife - Cherie Blair shockingly agreed to accept money.

According to the publicity literature, a VIP table for ten to include "pre-dinner cocktails" and a "photo opportunity" cost £4,100.

According to the provisional schedule of expenses agreed for the tour, Cherie Blair was to receive the prodigious sum of £102,600 for the tour, while the charity was booked to receive a 'minimum' fee of £99,900. Whether it did remains open to question.

It later emerged that the function breached local fundraising laws. An investigation carried out by Consumer Affairs Victoria, a state agency, found the vast bulk of the earnings of the event went on the dinner itself and the guest speaker. Mrs Blair's fee is estimated to have been significantly larger than the sum raised for charity.

The second way that Cherie Blair used her position in Downing Street to leverage personal financial advantage was the extraction of discounts and even giveaways from retailers. She was flagrant about this.

One Christmas she rang Greg Dyke, in his capacity as a board director of Manchester United FC, to ask him if he could arrange a discount on a club shirt for her son Euan. On overseas trips she was yet more demanding.

In Melbourne in 2003 Mrs Blair and her children visited the designer store Globe International, where as a courtesy she was invited to help herself to a "few items" as a gesture of "hospitality to the wife of the second most powerful man in the world".

She responded by helping herself to 60 pieces or more. According to one witness: "It was an invitation to pick out a few items and they walked out with 70."

Downing Street later stated that Mrs Blair had repaid in full the £2,000 value of the goods taken.

According to staff at Tongs Jewellers, in Beijing's Pearl Market, the Prime Minister's wife achieved discounts of 50 per cent or more on her jewel purchases. The staff said that while ordinary customers might achieve a 10 or 20 per cent discount, "for her we do 50 per cent".

They said that she had paid some 5,000 yuan, or around £335, for a three-string necklace but that "normally the price is 5,000 yuan for one string".

During these bargain-hunting trips in China, Mrs Blair used British diplomats as her 'personal shoppers'. Consulate staff visited a Shanghai silk shop, and ordered made-to-measure dresses on behalf of Mrs Blair.

This aggressive pursuit of goods from shops and designers fitted into a pattern of behaviour also manifest in the Blairs' predatory search for holiday villas, where they were not expected to pay the bill, or at any rate not much of it.

Only last week Samantha Cameron, wife of the Tory leader, laid herself open to similar charges when she used a magazine interview to promote goods sold by the company she works for.

What we are seeing here is a special aspect of Political Class behaviour: a catastrophic confusion of private interest and public role. Cherie Blair is a frightening illustration of the rise of a kind of predatory individualism which uses public life as a method of self-enrichment.

By the end of her stay in Downing Street, Mrs Blair had become a leading member of what was in effect a British version of the old Soviet nomenklatura, a member of a privileged elite who did not have to adhere to the rules and norms set down for the bulk of the population.

This estrangement is very perilous for British democracy. It is the reason for the collapse in trust in the British political process, and the sharply falling turn-out at general elections.

Instead of serving the people, the new Political Class looks after its own interests. And as I will show tomorrow, the effect on our institutions of government has been nothing short of disastrous.

• The Triumph Of The Political Class by Peter Oborne (Simon and Schuster, £18.99) is due to be published on September 17. To order a copy for £17, P&P inc, telephone 0845 606 4213.