A tale of two gentlemen

By David Beeson

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, according to Lord Acton. Words that resonate down the ages, because their truth is constantly confirmed by the behaviour of politicians.

They are worth bringing to mind especially in this week. Two significant events provide an example and a counter-example of Acton’s view, while also underlining what is one of the key differences between Conservatives and Labour.

On the Labour side, we saw the sad loss of Michael Foot, one of the great honourable men of twentieth century politics. Many disagreed with him, almost as many within the party as outside, but everyone accepted that he was always a man of strict honesty, even when it cost him: strikingly, as employment minister, when he had to explain to his own constituents that many would suffer as a result of job losses in the steel industry locally, though it was controlled by a nationalised body ultimately controlled by the government of which he was a member.

He was straight, he was principled.

On the Conservative side, the affairs of Lord Ashcroft have at last begun to see the light of day. There’s much more to come, but even what we have so far is pretty dramatic. In his own memoirs, he says that his practice might seem to some to be a little “sharp”. When he was granted a peerage in 2000, he pledged, in his own words, to “take up permanent residence in the UK again”. Most people would have thought this meant that he would be fully resident here and paying full tax. It now emerges that he was able to negotiate a, shall we say, rather less constraining interpretation of this pledge which allowed him to remain non-domiciled for tax purposes. That has had the effect of saving him tax estimated at about £127 million.

Yes, Your Lordship, if push came to shove, I probably would describe that as sharp.

Ashcroft has in recent years given £4-£5 million, depending on whose estimates you use, to the Conservatives.

I’ve always have mixed feelings about the idea of subsidising party politics out of tax revenue. It might make for a more level playing field; then again, I can see the argument that parties should draw their funds from their supporters. But in any case, if we did go for public subsidy it would have to be offered to parties across the board and it would have to be done in a cost-effective way: every pound it cost the Treasury, and therefore all of us, would have to go into the subsidy.

The Ashcroft arrangement benefits only one party. And for every pound he costs the Treasury, only a few pence goes into politics – the rest just stays in his own pocket.

Now it emerges that Lord Ashcroft has also ensured that the polling he carried out in 2005, apparently not at the request of the Tories, but with the results all fed back to them, was charged to a company of his in Belize with the result that no VAT was charged.

We’re talking about a few tens of thousands of pounds, for a man who saved millions through his non-dom status.

So, this week, we have seen a contrast between Foot, the incorruptible, and Ashcroft the Sharp. To say nothing of Cameron the Evasive, seeing as he’ll do anything rather than answer the suggestion that there has perhaps been unethical behaviour here.

But back to Lord Acton.

Foot experienced little power, but seems to have had an exceptional gift for avoiding its corrupting effect. Unfortunately, and I hate to have to admit this but it’s the simple truth, not everyone in the Labour Party has proved as resistant. At a personal level, many MPs have been found to have behaved unethically over expenses. At the institutional level, we have seen the scandal over the Bernie Ecclestone donation, and numerous other incidents that were at best unfortunate, at worst downright bent.

Most reprehensible of all was the decision to invade Iraq, on grounds of dubious legality, with consequences that have been for the most part catastrophic. That decision was taken by a Prime Minister who gives an outstanding demonstration of Acton’s principle of the corrupting effect of power: by 2002 and the run-up to war, he had had five years in power that and had come to believe himself infallible, taking us to war against the views of the vast majority of the country, views that have since been fully vindicated by events.

At least, however, he’s gone and some time or other we’ll get an admission of error. And it wouldn’t have been any better had the Tories been in office: if anything, they were even keener on war than the government.

So the Ecclestone million was given back. The expenses-tainted MPs have been dealt with as vigorously by Labour as by the Tories. There is a sense that while the government has made serious mistakes, it has at least tried to correct them.

But what is happening in the Conservative Party? Its refusal to respond in any way to the criticisms over the Ashcroft affair suggests that it feels perfectly at ease about enjoying the benefit of his support without even questioning the ethics of his means for providing it. Labour doesn’t always have the courage and the principles to live up to the model that Foot set. But at least it has the aspiration to do so.