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Only the economy matters

Max Hastings

The cash-for-honours scandal is a trifle when set against Iraq. But Britain's leaders can get away with anything if the economy holds up.

THE BOSS of a big private equity business told me last week that he had received an approach from a City grey eminence. "What your firm needs," urged this hopeful hustler, "is a seriously high-profile public figure up front, flying the flag for you. For £4 million, we can get you Tony Blair."

I disbelieve 50 per cent of that story. Though I am sure the reported offer was made, Mr. Blair would not yet dare to authorise such an explicit advance in his name. But the proposal merely anticipated reality. A few months hence he will be up there on the block, with an auctioneer demanding: "What am I offered for this dazzling ex-Prime Minister? Who will start me at £4 million?"

Every kind of business on both sides of the Atlantic will want Mr. Blair. Here is the finest political speaker of his generation, world statesman, and legendary charmer, available to make the keynote speech at your convention, open your shopping mall, add lustre to your board meeting, open doors to national leaders.

What is this, I hear you say, about tarnished reputations? Come off it. Even if half of Mr. Blair's personal entourage wind up in an open prison for selling honours, such an outcome will not diminish by a farthing the former Prime Minister's marketability. He is a star. Just as evidence that Mel Gibson is a racist does not deter audiences from seeing his movies, investment bankers do not care if Mr. Blair has flogged Buckingham Palace to raise money for the Labour party.

And not merely bankers. I question if more than a fraction of the British public are seriously exercised about the cash-for-honours scandal. They take the view, sheepishly shared by the Conservative frontbench, that this is the sort of thing all governments do. They expect no better from their politicians.

The moral, or immoral, of the Blair era is that a British leader can get away with almost anything if the money in voters' pockets keep jingling. If the economy holds up, if people's sense of well-being persists, their willingness to engage with what some of us pompously call "the great issues of the day" is pitifully limited.

It will be supremely ironic if Mr. Blair ends up disgraced by the honours issue. This seems so paltry by comparison with the enormity of Iraq. It is hard to imagine a graver charge than taking the country to war under false pretences. Yet since Mr. Blair's conduct was exposed beyond dispute, on and on he has serenely sailed, unembarrassed by failure piled upon deceit.

To be sure, in the pubs they grumble about Iraq and George W. Bush and the mess we are in. But there has never been the visceral anger that causes governments to fall. There is a dreary sameness about the daily news of bombings and massacres of Iraqis, which deadens sensibilities more stimulated by Big Brother.

Astounding wealth

Mr. Blair's astounding survivability owes much, maybe almost everything, to the equally astounding wealth of Britain today. He is able to ride out every storm and failure by writing huge cheques on the Treasury that continue to be met.

When Dominic Sandbrook and Peter Hennessy, writers of excellent histories of post-war Britain, get round to the first decade of the 21st century, recollections of the nation's prosperity will surely astound readers. The Blair Government has been able to pour torrents of cash into public services without attempting structural reform: to fund every folly without prompting a taxpayers' revolt. If 30 years ago a government made a financial blunder in September, the public found itself paying the bill come the next budget in April — and took its revenge at the ballot box soon after that.

Today, we are told that voters are starting to feel the pain of stealth taxes and rising interest rates. Yet if the economy continues to boom, I doubt that personal taxation will provoke a decisive uprising against Labour. A recent opinion poll showed that, while many people feel dismayed about Britain as a society, most feel amazingly content with their own existences. As long as this remains true, Mr. Brown has a fair chance of remaining Prime Minister past a general election.

When Mr. Blair embarks upon his great global lecture tour, he will be able to tell audiences that there are almost no limits to the follies a Prime Minister can commit. Of course, he will say nothing of the kind. He will deliver homilies about the responsibilities of a statesman in a social democratic society. His record will speak for itself, however. He will leave behind a country that has failed to solve the huge problems of its public services or Europe; he has entangled his country in an American clash with the Muslim world likely to persist beyond our lifetime; his programme of constitutional reform threatens the union of England and Scotland.

In other words, he has failed in almost all his declared objectives of 1997. He has displayed a genius for retaining power, and has presided over a nation obsessed with personal wealth, to the exclusion of almost everything else. It is entirely appropriate that Mr. Blair should depart Downing Street to become indecently rich, because the record suggests that respect for wealth is the only constant in his moral universe.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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