The whiff that won't go away
There are times when you hear something and the hairs on the back of your neck go up. Some words in politics have that effect. The word in question today is "sleaze".
Overused, unspecific, designed to damage rather than illuminate, "sleaze" is still a word that is mightily hard to shake off once it attaches itself to you. Over the past few days I've heard the high-minded editor of the sobre Financial Times use it; I've seen the former editor of the Guardian write it and seen the Daily Mail shout it from the rooftops.
What, you may protest, surely Labour has done "nothing wrong" (to use the party press office's favourite phrase)?
Well, no - provided, that is, you...
- believe Tessa Jowell's protestations of ignorance of her husband's financial transactions;
- accept that taking million pound loans from very rich people was not a ruse to get around party funding rules;
- think there's nothing questionable about every person who gave the party a million getting a peerage or a knighthood;
then they have, indeed, done nothing wrong.
What's more they can boast that they created the laws on party funding and the Electoral Commission that are now being used to embarrass them.
No matter.
"Sleaze" doesn't depend on facts or track record. It's a smell, a feeling, a cloud that can form around a political party. Once it's there your enemies will use anything they can to increase the size of the cloud - John Reid's mortgage, Cherie Blair's speaking fees and anything to do with Tessa Jowell.
If the warning lights are not flashing red in Downing Street they should be.
I'm 
