Tony Blair is likely to stand down early if charges are brought
in the cash-for-honors affair against any of his key aides,
including Ruth Turner, arrested on Friday on suspicion of
perverting the course of justice.
Ministers said they were certain Blair would not seek to stay
until his planned departure date of June or July if any of his
immediate entourage were charged.
One senior Labor minister said: "He knows he would need to do
the right thing for the party."?
The cash-for-honors inquiry was launched in March last year
after complaints from two MPs that wealthy individuals who lent
millions of pounds to Labor were later nominated for peerages, and
was later extended to cover the Conservatives.
Senior ministers said Blair remained convinced of Turner's
innocence and remain doubtful that the police have as reported at
the weekend hacked into No 10 computers to show that she and other
Downing Street aides have not been cooperating with the inquiry
team.
But while any decision to lay charges would not necessarily lead
to convictions, it would represent a dramatic raising of the
stakes, and undermine Downing Street's suggestions that the
investigation is based on a bogus interpretation of the law. The
minister added that if anyone were charged it might become
impossible to govern. "The focus would drift away from what he is
trying to do."
The Guardian has previously reported that the police had
commissioned advice from computer experts in an effort to find
deleted e-mails or computer records.
In an attempt to ease the tension between No 10 and the police
over the manner of Turner's arrest, the lord chancellor, Lord
Falconer, said it would be best if the government remained
silent.
But officials were still arguing, privately and publicly, that
the Met had acted in an unnecessary way by arriving at Turner's
front door at 6.30 am with four officers determined to search her
home.
Turner's friends said she and her lawyers have cooperated fully
with the inquiry. If no charges are brought at the end of this
year-long investigation, some senior Labor figures intend to voice
their views on the police behavior in the strongest terms.
The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, said at the weekend she was
"slightly bewildered" by the Met's behavior and the former Home
Secretary David Blunkett again questioned the police's tactics on
Sunday, saying Turner had been treated in the manner of a drug
dealer.
(China Daily January 23, 2007)
