If you are looking for sleaze, forget Lord Hamlyn. Forget, also, Lord Sainsbury and the no doubt soon-to-be Lord (Christopher) Ondaatje. Their £2m apiece gifts to the Labour Party may not look good; but, under our present system, it is wholly inevitable that political parties are going to be dependent on some big donors, whether they be unions or billionaires. And Labour's big donors are much more decent people than the men who backed the Tories in the old days. Remember Asil Nadir?
No, if you are looking for unsavoury deals, for a real example of string-pulling, I'm afraid there is a much worse example. I refer you to a throwaway line in a column in last week's Sunday Business newspaper. The political editor, Andrew Porter, reported that Tony Blair has given an assurance to "a very key figure in the media whose opposition to the single currency is well known" that he won't use his honeymoon period after the (assumed) election victory to force through a referendum on the single currency. Well, who, I wonder, can this "very key figure" be? It isn't hard to guess. And I have undertaken some researches of my own. Yes, it is indeed Rupert Murdoch, a man whose business hostility to the EU - a body big enough to regulate his empire - is matched by ideological dislike of what he sees as the Brussels anti-enterprise "socialist" experiment.
The Prime Minister's promise is extraordinary, if he indeed used such phrases and didn't simply fool Murdoch - extraordinary because his whole policy of referendum timing, and therefore Britain's position on this hugely important issue, is publicly stated to hang, entirely and straightforwardly, on the Chancellor's five economic tests. We may all know, in our hearts, that politics always intervenes, that the five tests will never have a strict yes or no answer. But at least the public position was that Blair would decide, along with the Chancellor. Now we hear it is a matter being bartered about with a media baron.
I say barter. That assumes Murdoch has given something back. It is generally accepted that, in the general election media struggle between the parties, winning over the Sun and (to a lesser extent) the Times is the prize. And what do we find if we look at the Sun's editorial as the election campaign kicks off with a round of interviews and regional tours? It lavishes praise on Tony Blair. He and Gordon Brown, says the Sun, "rightly point out that they have improved our lot". Although the Sun still wants a "real radical agenda" for the second term, it helpfully makes clear that it doesn't see the Tories providing that. No, new Labour is given credit for delivering on the economy, in what, senior staff confirm, is the clearest possible sign that the party will again win the paper's endorsement at the general election.
Blair's coup emerged blinking into the daylight on the day that the PM was telling David Frost that the most important lesson he had learnt during his four years in government is that "you can't please all the people all of the time". Hooray to that, cheered Labour's old guard, thinking it was a sign that Blair was abandoning his courting of middle Britain and coming back home. The Guardian took it as clear evidence of an end to "the big tent philosophy".
But hang on a minute. Just who is really being thrown out of the tent? The fox-hunters, perhaps, the Daily Mail and the hard core of anti-Europeans who will always loathe new Labour. But I believe Blair is as determined as ever to keep Murdoch inside his flapping canvas. In private, Blair staunchly denies that he has been toadying up to the right-wing press, and appears puzzled that the left gets so upset about his regular meetings with Murdoch executives. He claims that it is only natural to talk to a wide variety of people to try to get his message across. Fine. But nothing in life comes for nothing, which he knows very well. Who you barter with, and how you barter, is also part of your record.
Does it matter? Maybe Blair has simply used his powerful position to half-fool Murdoch into promising to do what this arch-believer in backing winners would have done anyway? Blair undoubtedly has an idea in his mind as to when he would like to call a referendum on the euro: it may well be a different date from that envisaged by Brown, and different again from that desired by Peter Mandelson. But politics is ever uncertain. Who knows - it might just be that, by the autumn, the prospects for winning a referendum will look good. John Monks, the general secretary of the TUC, is not alone in believing that the five tests could well be met after the election. Blair has made it clear enough that he wants to take Britain into the euro if he can persuade the people. Would he really delay, even if the economic conditions looked propitious, because of a deal with Rupert Murdoch?
Downing Street, naturally, denies all knowledge of Blair's promise to Murdoch. Yet I have it on good authority from several sources on the other side that it is true. This means one of two things: Blair is prepared to make policy commitments not to the man with the fattest wallet, but to the man with the biggest newspaper circulation; or, Blair has said one thing to Murdoch while quietly thinking that he will do another, if the politics seem right, in due course.
Either way, it feels like a throwback to old mistakes. Blair has been visibly growing as a Labour leader since the September crisis. On the euro, too, he must go with his own instincts and make it clear, ahead of the election, that he intends to do so. Murdoch may be an extremely powerful newspaper proprietor. But, at the end of the day, the British electorate is even more powerful. Let the row over party funding be a warning: people hate the idea that their politicians can be bought.
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