Around 300 thefts will be committed in Manchester today. About 200 people in the city will become victims of violence, 100 of criminal damage or arson, and 30 of sexual offenses. In other words: a pretty normal day – and that’s why more police are needed. And yet this week we learn that no fewer than a dozen officers from Greater Manchester Police have been investigating something that hardly poses a threat to politics or public safety: whether Angela Rayner correctly filled out the election forms several years ago.
This rise in politicized persecution is one of the most depressing trends in British politics. It’s a gotcha game that uses the police as pawns, draining resources that could be put to much better use. Politicians and activists accuse each other of minor legal violations, which they hope to elevate to a dismissal issue. The real goal is to fuel the theatrical atmosphere of an investigation, to portray their opponents as fraudsters. Rayner has now said she will resign as Labor deputy leader if the police say anything to her.
I could trace this back to the cash-for-honors scandal of twenty years ago, which subsumed politics in a way that no one thought possible. Angus MacNeil, a crofter, had been elected SNP member for the Western Isles and was shocked to discover how much newly formed Labor colleagues had donated to the party. Isn’t this illegal, he asked? He found a 1925 law that said this – the Honors (Prevention of Abuses) Act – and called the Metropolitan Police. To everyone’s surprise, they took it seriously.
It was the scale of the subsequent investigation that changed everything. The Met interviewed 136 people over fourteen dramatic months. The homes of the ten aides were raided and Tony Blair – who then seemed politically untouchable – became the first serving prime minister to be interviewed as part of a criminal investigation. Ultimately, no one was charged, but it seemed to show a new trend. When the police are under the political spotlight, they appear to use resources disproportionate to the scale of the crime.
The phone hacking scandal emerged around the same time, but it was small talk at the time. a News of the world reporter was sent to prison and his editor, Andy Coulson, resigned. But to the chagrin of the information commissioner, hacking was roughly placed in the same category as a traffic offence. When Coulson was set to serve as David Cameron’s spin doctor in No 10, he would be a high-value political target if the hacking case could somehow be reignited. But how?
The police had been quite thorough. They had arrested hackers, taken away their tapes and found thousands of targets. It was all very shocking, but not – they were told – illegal. The law stated that unless police could prove in court that hackers had accessed voicemails that were new (i.e. messages that the intended recipient had not yet listened to), there was no violation. In the words of the then Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP): “To prove the offense of interception, the prosecution must prove that the actual message was intercepted before the intended recipient gained access to it.”
That was Lord Keir Starmer. His advice meant that the scandal could not be reopened, which seemed foolish because the law – as he had put it – was clearly flawed. But what was the point of Labor campaigning on it? When did the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) change its advice under political pressure? The British legal system is designed in such a way that it will never collapse, no matter how politically charged the case. But eventually Starmer changed his advice – and in doing so facilitated the largest criminal investigation in history. The Met was stunned.
The following year, Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, was accused by his estranged wife of asking her to accept his speeding tickets. This should have been treated the same as any other suggestion of criminality. But Starmer regarded it as of almost historical importance and turned up to make a televised statement when he decided to prosecute for perverting the course of justice.
So no one accused him of carrying out party political maneuvers. No one could imagine that he saw himself as a Labor Prime Minister. The DPP has had nothing to do with politics since the position was created in 1879: the two worlds have never collided.
Starmer now says his politics have inspired his career all along and that he started out defending unions and activists and “never forgot where he came from” while serving as DPP. Perhaps this will become the norm, and a new generation of prosecutors will have a Labor or Tory bias. And are chosen according to that standard. But for many in the legal community, our courts are trusted because they are above politics. Starmer’s career was a challenge for that model.
He once wrote to a newspaper announcing that his colleagues in the CPS ‘do not shy away from prosecuting politicians’. An important principle. But police and prosecutors shouldn’t enjoy going after politicians either: MPs should be treated like anyone else. If you set a precedent by saying that politicians will have the book thrown at them after even a minor accusation, then you will not have equal justice.
In promising to resign if guilty, Rayner now follows Starmer, who said he would resign as Labor leader if fined for unlawfully consuming a curry during lockdown. He did this to put pressure on Boris Johnson, who was also under investigation, but did not say he would resign. So this takes the game one step further: if a politician is found guilty of a minor offense, he quits. All the more incentive for politicians to keep accusing each other – now that the police are also taking action to decide on careers.
No one is arguing that politicians should be immune from prosecution (as many in France do). Peter Murrell, husband of Nicola Sturgeon and former SNP chief executive, has been charged in connection with embezzling money from the party. The Scots will want to know that the police are following where the evidence leads. Murrell denies any wrongdoing.
But a look at America – where, depending on your politics, there are calls to send Donald Trump or Joe Biden to prison – shows where this can lead.
For generations, British democracy has been run by voters, not lawyers, who decide who rises and falls. That’s something worth trying to save, if we still can.