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The crofter who dared to question cash for honours

Nick Cohen

ANGUS MACNEIL'S family croft (as Scots call a small farm) on the island of Barra is about as far as it is possible to get from London and still be in Britain. Barra's hills so effectively shield the croft that his parents couldn't get a television signal to bring the chatter and bellows from Edinburgh and London to his family home until he was 10.

Mr. MacNeil, who to the best of his knowledge is the only crofter ever to sit in the House of Commons, is the Scottish Nationalist party Member of Parliament who initiated the police investigation into the sale of honours which may yet end the Blair years. Mr. MacNeil has caused havoc by asking a very good and very simple question: "Isn't it illegal to sell honours?"

As a Scottish nationalist, he felt more keenly than most the suspicion of central government, the London media and the City (London's financial district) that is the dominant national mood. I sense that the clubbable nature of Westminster, where the British Parliament is located, started to turn him when he got there, as it has turned so many outsiders before. He says he had beers with politicians he had only read about and found to his surprise that even "Ian Paisley [the Northern Ireland Protestant leader] was quite a gregarious character."

What got him "fizzing," to use his favourite word, was their nonchalance. When he told MPs from other parties that donors to the SNP were not recommended for honours, they looked at him with incredulity. We would never be able to raise enough money if we did that, they countered.

The unclubbable Geoff Hoon, Minister for Europe, pushed him over the edge in March. Chai Patel, the founder of the Priory rehabilitation clinics which help wealthy people tackle problems such as depression and addiction, had just revealed he had loaned Labour £1.5 million and been offered a peerage, membership of the House of Lords, which includes not just a title but also speaking and voting rights in the Upper House, a few weeks later.

The SNP leader, Alex Salmond, asked Mr. Hoon about the "groundswell of support for a debate on the marketplace for honours" he alleged the government had established. "Is it not the case that 80p out of every £1 of individual donations to the Labour party comes from people who are subsequently ennobled or knighted by the government?" he thundered.

Mr. Hoon gave a typically New Labour answer. On the one hand, he rightly pointed out that Labour had introduced safeguards the Tories refused to contemplate in their 18 years in power. But he also dripped with condescension when he sneered at Mr. Salmond: "Clearly, my political antennae are not as well attuned as the honourable gentleman's. I have not detected a great groundswell."

Fizzing with rage once again, Mr. MacNeil went to the Commons Library and discovered that the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 is a refreshingly straightforward piece of legislation. It says you can't buy them, you can't sell them and if you do either you can go to prison. He complained to the London Metropolitan Police and had his first stroke of luck. For the first time in living memory, the police decided to investigate accusations of political corruption.

The second stroke of luck is that the pressure of the unexpected police attention is forcing open cracks.

We don't yet know if Mr. MacNeil will have a third stroke of luck and see the affair he began lead back to 10 Downing Street. However, we do know that Mr. Blair has been fantastically unwise. Instead of keeping party funding at a safe distance by leaving it with the party machine, he has made it the responsibility of his personal envoys.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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