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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 6, 2007 / 18 Shevat, 5767

Britain's American revolution

By Niall Ferguson


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | For a time, it seemed as if the finale of Tony Blair's premiership would be a reprise of Anthony Eden's, with an Iraq Fiasco taking the place of a Suez Crisis. Now it appears more likely that the British prime minister will be following in the footsteps of David Lloyd George, who left 10 Downing Street in 1922 under the murky cloud of suspected corruption.


Of the 11 people initially nominated by the Labor Party to become life peers in 2005, four subsequently withdrew their names amid allegations that they were being rewarded for having given the party large loans. Last week, apparently in connection with these strange events, police arrested the prime minister's friend and tennis partner, Michael Levy, on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.


To Americans, who are charmed by Blair's Colgate ring-of-confidence smile, there's something surreal about the news that he has been questioned (for the second time) by the police. Like all great political tragedies, the fault lies not in Blair's stars but in himself.


Thus far, it is true, the evidence in the public domain is purely circumstantial. We know that since 2001, more than half of all donors giving more than 50,000 pounds — about $100,000 — to the Labor Party have received an honor of some kind (including knighthoods and medals). We know that the four individuals who withdrew their nominations for peerages last year had made substantial loans to the Labor Party. And we know that they were advised by Levy to give loans rather than outright gifts. I don't claim to be a lawyer, but it sounds a lot like the kind of thing the Honors (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925 was designed to stop.


Blair might have been spared all this if only he could have made up his mind about two issues. The first was the future composition and mode of election of the upper house of Parliament. The second was the future financing of political parties.


Plainly, there is no point in having two legislative chambers if both are to be elected on the same democratic basis. Having committed themselves to reforming the House of Lords by phasing out the hereditary peerage, Blair and his colleagues had a number of options. They could have imitated the U.S. Senate, in which the interests of smaller and more rural parts of the country are overrepresented at the expense of the larger and more urban parts. But a party so unpopular in the countryside was hardly likely to do that. Instead, they clung to the irresistibly useful old system of giving peerages to their pals.


At the same time, they failed to grasp the nettle of party political finances. The problem here is the same as in all modern democracies. The costs of election campaigns keep rising as voters expect ever-more sophisticated marketing and advertising. However, traditional sources of party revenue, such as membership dues, keep falling as voters turn away from political activism. Labor could have followed the Continental example by financing parties out of taxation through state handouts and imposing stricter caps on private donations and election expenditures. But a party so desperate to win power could not resist the temptation to beat the Conservatives at their old game of tapping millionaires.


Now we see the result: a House of Lords stuffed with cronies, and a government stewing in sleaze.


Yet I find myself a little depressed by the solutions that are being cobbled together. I am not sure it was wise of the Conservatives to so quickly embrace the notion of state funding for parties. And I shall be dismayed if they agree too readily to the government's latest proposals to reform the House of Lords by making half the members elected, 30% nominated by the parties and the rest appointed by a commission to ensure (it's hard not to groan) ethnic, gender and regional balance.


A more authentically conservative solution would take quite different forms. For the parties, there should be a completely free market in political donations, but on the basis of full disclosure, so that it's transparently clear who has given what to whom. As for the House of Lords, why not elect all the members but give equal representation to each of the traditional counties of Britain?


Yes, I know: that would make British politics more like U.S. politics and less like, say, Dutch politics. But frankly, I'd rather see Blair end his days with dignity as the ranking senator for County Durham than doing time for turning Labor's lenders into Lords.

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Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University. He is the author of "Empire" (Basic Books, 2003) and "Colossus" (Penguin, 2004). Comment by clicking here.


01/30/07: Independence isn't always beautiful
01/09/07: The new world order looks terribly familiar
12/16/06: The new world order looks terribly familiar
12/13/06: Baker-Hamilton's fine print: Stay in Iraq
12/05/06: The surrealism of Iraq
11/29/06: Some civil wars never end
11/20/06: Will GOP get last laugh?
10/25/06: America's brittle empire
10/17/06: Failing to stop North Korea from going nuclear may have been the last straw for the onetime guardian of world order
10/03/06: Why Churchill opposed torture
09/27/06: Insanity on a Global Scale
09/19/06: The GOP will hang on
09/13/06: Long Live Royal Bloodlines!
09/05/06: Red-state Republicans and blue-faced liberals are starting to agree: Green is the way
08/29/06: What if the London Bombers Succeeded?
08/15/06: Testing the Limits of the U.N.: Who seriously expects Kofi Annan to stop Al Qaeda terror attacks?
08/08/06: The coming tsunami of trash
07/18/06: Forget the '60s and ‘Make Love, Not War.’ Today's world is facing a Summer of Rage
07/11/06: When will China pull the plug on North Korea?
06/20/06: Hedge funds vs. central bankers: Will inflation, deflation or recession win in the coming months?
06/13/06: Britain's economy is just like America's — minus the entrepreneurs and growth
06/06/06: The X-Men have taken over Washington
05/30/06: Quit protesting, profs!
05/23/06: World markets' wild ride: Economic volatility is back with a vengeance
05/16/06: The Cold Wars are coming
05/09/06: Many commentators are missing dangerous political shift
05/02/06: Put some sugar in your tank
04/25/06: Hu and the dog that didn't bark
04/18/06: Should Americans be less optimistic?
04/11/06: Globalization's second death?
04/04/06: So many ‘special’ friends
03/28/06: Let's get it right about what has gone wrong
03/21/06: Congress is trying to give the world a globotomy
03/14/06: Lame ducks can still bite back
03/07/06: A 19th Century critique of a 21st Century president
02/28/06: The crash of civilizations
02/21/06: Not the president, but close
02/14/06: Want historic trouble? Look south
02/07/06: Greenspan advising Britain? It's housing bubbles, deficits and potential meltdowns all over again
01/31/06: Missing the Cold War
01/24/06: It's a sick, Thick World
01/17/06: Tomorrow's world war today
01/03/06: Scotland, it's over, but keep the accents
12/20/05: History, democracy and Iraq
12/20/05: History, democracy and Iraq
11/22/05: Ghost of Napoleon haunts Tony Blair
11/22/05: Can it happen in Britain too?
11/15/05: Red plus blue equals purple
11/10/05: The fires of disintegration
11/01/05: Triumph of an über-wonk

© 2006, Los Angeles Times Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate

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