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There's nothing like headlines about sleaze to inspire an appetite for political reform.
Today the government has suddenly discovered the appetite to amend electoral law to outlaw secret loans - despite the fact it was the prime minister himself who appears to have personally sanctioned such loans a year or so ago.
Also today, the Tory leader will proclaim his opposition to secret loans - despite the fact that his party's been using them for many years. David Cameron will also argue for a new legal framework which will dramatically change the way politics has been financed in this country. The key to it is a limit on donations - the debate inside the party has been on whether to set that at £30,000 or £50,000 - with match funding and tax relief being deployed to encourage smaller gifts.
This is the mix which the Electoral Commission examined in an enquiry into party funding in 2004 but which they didn't push because the necessary political consensus didn't exist (translation - no sleaze headlines at that time to focus party leader minds). Smaller parties - not just the Liberal Democrats but the nationalist parties too - have argued for reform on these lines - their problem, of course, has more often than not been that they've not had enough money to be accused of sleaze.
Lo! Thus, a consensus emerges to save us from sleaze. Well, hold on a second. There are real problems with reform on these lines which - to abandon the cynicism for a moment - is why both major parties opposed it in the past.
Problem 1: Limits on donations can be got round
Rich people simply give £50k to friends and relatives to give to their favoured party on their behalf. New organisations will be set up - "The Friends of David Cameron", for example or "Committee of Labour backers" which could receive millions and then spend them on political advertising to "complement" that of the parties. Clearly, the law can be drawn up to try to prevent and police this but any study of the growth of so-called "soft money" in the United States shows the way that laws can be circumvented.
Problem 2: Limits on donations may destroy the traditional structure of the Labour Party
Large union donations would be banned on this model - and if they weren't other parties could complain that there was no level playing field. Peter Hain is already publicly expressing the concern felt by many union leaders. Some Tories are already rubbing their hands with glee.
Problem 3: You'll pay for it
The Electoral Commission estimated a £46 million shortfall if fundraising limits were introduced although that did not allow for the fact that much more could be raised through small donations if that was the only way for parties to get the money they needed.
The moral of the story? Laws may help bring transparency and, therefore, act as an antidote to sleaze but, in the end, it is the actions of political leaders which matter most.
PS. Like the rules on party funding, this blog is going to be undergoing some maintenance today. This means you won't be able to add any comments for the time being. But normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
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By writing a large cheque to the Labour Party can you - in effect - buy yourself a seat in the House Of Lords?
It would be corrupt. It would be illegal and Tony Blair denies it emphatically. But that's not stopped the question being asked by many in the party. They want to know why their party accepted multi-million pound loans from men who were - weeks later - nominated for peerages.
Under election laws introduced by this government, donations have to be made public but loans can be kept secret - not just from the public and standards watchdogs but from the party's own elected treasurer too - who shouted about it from the rooftops yesterday.
The row he caused has led to him getting an apology from the prime minister, a promise that all future loans will be declared and a pledge - long resisted - to try to build a consensus on the state funding of political parties and reform of the Lords.
That may produce real political change - the Tories are more open to these ideas than ever before - or it may prove to be a convenient distraction from the as yet unanswered questions about loans given and peerages offered.
Tony Blair can boast of making many changes to clean up British politics, but he as good as admitted today that it's taken sleaze alegations to convince him to try to finish the job.
Yesterday I sent an e-mail to Sir David Garrard's office - he's one of the million pound crowd who Tony Blair wanted to give a peerage to, against the advice of the great and the good on the Lords Appointment Committee.
The e-mail read : "I am being told by others that Sir David's position will be resolved quickly - the clear hint is that Sir David will withdraw his name. My instinct is that party spindoctors may just be tempted to announce this tomorrow when all political attention will be on the big vote on education in the Commons."
Sure enough, that is precisely what has just happened.
The answer to that Westminster riddle lies deep in the soul of the Labour party. Tonight Tony Blair should be celebrating a thumping Commons majority for his school reforms. And yet when the result's read out it will almost certainly be the Tories who will be cheering and Labour MPs who will look like they've bitten on a caseload of lemons.
Some will even claim that this victory will spell the beginning of the end of the Blair era. How so? Because it will almost certainly be the votes of David Cameron's Tories that will deliver it. This will not be the Labour bill delivered with Labour votes which Tony Blair strove for.
Isn't this, you might ask, an artificial hurdle? Certainly. Isn't it a tad baffling to those outside the Westminster village? Surely. But it is a hurdle that the prime minister set himself and one which - if he fails to clear it - will produce despair in his party. Party politics is, you see, as much a matter for the heart - of tribal loyalty and of knowing who and what you are against - as it is a matter for the head. The act of voting in the Commons by walking into a lobby reinforces that. Unsure how to vote? Then follow your friends. But tonight loyal Labour MPs will be forced to walk with their enemies into the government lobby - enemies who will taunt them for it.
Now, on its own, Tony Blair might simply be able to brush this aside. There have, after all, been other rebellions - some almost certainly larger than this one. But this is far from his only problem.
The complex finances of the Jowell household and of those deemed suitable for a peerage have connected two previously unconnected words - Labour and sleaze. The contents of the Downing Street intray are hardly likely to cheer up those who are disgruntled - new nuclear power stations, a replacement for Trident, NHS reforms that may in the short run lead to bed, ward or even hospital closures. Oh, and then there's May's local elections in which most in the party expect to get a bloody nose. It's a list long enough and gloomy enough to have some - even in the Cabinet - wondering whether Tony Blair should go sooner rather than later.
Team Blair though are ready with their response. This is not our 1990, they say. Blair is NOT Thatcher. His reforms are NOT the poll tax. He, unlike she, is NOT an electoral liability. Gordon Brown is NOT Michael Heseltine. He will NOT force his leader from power - restless though he is and angry at the legacy he might inherit as he seems to be. So, Tony Blair does not see today's vote as a test for him but as yet another test he's set for his party. Are they serious, he asks himself, about carrying on as New Labour? Will they back what he calls "Clause 4 in practice"? Will they turn today's victory for HIS ideas into a political defeat? They, of course, might yet turn on him and insist that it's he and not them who is really the cause of their problems.
P.S.
Tony Blair may actually be defeated in a second vote tonight on the timetable for the parliamentary scrutiny of this legislation. The Tories are promising to form an alliance with Labour rebels to deliver what would be a largely symbolic defeat - though it would create a headache for party managers. I've no doubt that the prime minister will try to turn that defeat into a political victory by taunting David Cameron at Question Time for hypocrisy - claiming that he wants a bill while voting against its swift progress.
Funny business, politics. Lewis Carroll could have had great fun with it.
Well well well. The big political question ahead of tomorrow's big vote is whether it will be a Labour Bill passed with Labour votes. Why do I say that? Well because John Prescott's said it; so too - by implication - has Ruth Kelly and so has the prime minister.
Or at least I thought he had - at his last Downing Street news conference. Thus, I asked a colleague to dig out the transcript from the Number 10 website. To my surprise, the line I was looking for wasn't there.
One reporter asked the prime minister about Guantanamo Bay and also this question: "Do you think it is sustainable for you to remain in office when a piece of flagship legislation is passed with the help of an opposition party?"
The official transcript of Mr Blair's reply reads: "I think I have said what I have said on Guantanamo. And on the first part, you know if you look at the school system at the moment..." before he goes on to talk about the school reforms.
What Tony Blair actually said - we've checked the tape - was:
"Look as you say I am hopeful we will get the vast majority of Labour MPs behind us, in fact I am absolutely sure we will get the vast majority. The question is whether we manage to get enough to get it through with Labour votes alone. But in a sense the issue is doing the right thing for the country, it's what the country expects and of course I want to do it with Labour MPs in full support. Look I think this is a very, very critical issue for the Labour Party for its instincts, for what it's about, for what it is trying to do."
I'm sure it was just a typing error and that Number 10 will be happy to put it straight.
Update (19:33 GMT)
The transcript typers at Number 10 have replied. Apparently they always exclude references to party politics on what is, after all, a government website. Shame they don't make that clear on the transcript or website.
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.
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