A Levy On The Lords

As the 'loans for peerages' scandal gets more melodramatic and the Metropolitan Police show their theatrical side again - thankfully without shooting anyone this time - a question keeps running through my head. Why does anyone actually want a title? None of my circle, which includes not just raving lefties but a few raving righties too, believe they have any prestige attached whatsoever. Several centuries of mockery have seen to that, notably PG Wodehouse and all his 'Lord Wotwotleighs.' A knighthood might, just conceivably, be desired. It would put you in the same company as Alex Ferguson and Bobby Robson, after all. But a true peerage involves sacraficing your name, one of the most crucial parts of your identity, and instead calling yourself after a piece of scrubland in Northamptonshire.

There's still a small amount of political power attached, I know. This can easily be removed by doing what should have been done a decade ago i.e. properly reform the House of Lords and make it an elected upper chamber. Even if this ever happens, though, a small group of people will still be clamouring, and paying, for titles. The rich businessmen who have the Humvee, the private jet and the mansion by the Thames and want to get one status symbol ahead of their peers. A claque who have almost entirely separated themselves from the rest of the country.

Lord Levy - an unfortunate name in the circumstances - the Labour Party and the Conservatives may have broken the rules and even the law. But have they actually done anything damaging? In the 'cash for questions' affair of the 1990's, Tories recieved personal bribes to manipulate Parliament. Here it's political parties getting money to fight elections - quite important to democracy, incidentally - in exchange for glass beads. They're fleecing some very dim men who can certainly afford to be fleeced. It's probably the only way to persuade these men to keep their money in the country and invested in something remotely useful, so how wrong is it?

The honours system has always been a phenomenal scam. It was only ever intended to formalise bribery and patronage. Lord Levy's crime isn't to pervert this system, as some have said, but to operate it in perhaps its most perfect form.