The questioning of Tony Blair over the cash for honours affair has been a long time coming and much trailed, but it’s no more extraordinary for that.
For so long the sceptics told us that it would never come to this, and it’s true that the prime minister was interviewed as a witness rather than a suspect, but it still deeply humiliating.
It’s certainly a good day to bury bad news. The 24-hour broadcast media can’t seem to make up its mind about how important this is and so it is still is pumping out hours and hours of coverage of the inquiry into the death of Princess Diana and the Suffolk serial killings.
As soon as the news broke I was called by Sky News to do some punditry, but found myself unceremoniously bumped along with Patrick Hennessy of the Sunday Telegraph and Matthew Parris of The Times (the TV news channels like to have us all lined up like eager schoolchildren on these occasions).
But I bumped into Angus MacNeil walking along Millbank. He’s the Scottish Nationalist MP who started all this by reporting the prime minister to the police in March and was my nomination for NS Person of the Year.
Angus was looking very chipper. He made the important point that, although Blair may have been interviewed without a police caution this time, there is no stopping detectives demanding further meetings. After all, the PM did say, right at the beginning of all this, that he knew about the loans and was ultimately responsible.
If his personal fundraiser has been arrested, it seems a little unfair if Blair, whose orders Levy was following, is treated differently. I am told that Levy has been calling journailsts he believes to be sympathetic to tell them that he argued vociferously against the secret loans and always wanted them to be donations. This rather confirms what he said to me at Labour Party conference about some of the loans always being considered as gifts that would not be paid back.
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