What exactly have the Lobbygate Three done wrong? 

This question should not get in the way of human reaction to their entrapped boasting, their excitement at the prospect of greasing wheels for lots of money. A minute must be granted for us to rock in spasms and waves of bile, the epic gusts of hate and nausea that such simpering, swaggering, preening occasions. That is natural and nothing wrong with it. Give it its moment. Then let us investigate. 

Three official crimes are fairly quickly evident. 

1) ‘Cynicism’ has long been everywhere, and is everywhere a blight - ‘corrosive’, indeed, so delicate of skin is the fragile beauty of the British body politic. On which the government must be a soothing sunblock. So: 

• One of the great crimes of the troika is to be exactly as untrustworthy as the British public expects them to be. 

Curse this entirely accurate widespread sentiment.

2) We know from the reaction of their colleagues that ‘stupidity’ is one of the charges that is sticking, as compared to the admiration afforded Julie Kirkbride who realised that she was being set up. So. 

• One crime was not to have been more intelligent about knowing when and where to be venal. 

3) With their demeanour, their reference to themselves as taxis, they have been, we learn repeatedly, ‘spivvy’,’toe-curling’, ‘all rather grubby’. So.

• The Lobbygate Three have breached good taste. 

One expects a degree of chicness in these matters. Whatever happened to the restrained twinkling charm of ‘I’m going to write a number on a piece of paper…’? Instead, these three have degraded influence-peddling into a kind of rather tawdry kitsch. It is simply infra dig. 

What is perhaps more interesting is investigating the ways in which they cannot be seen as guilty. 

First, we shall ignore the relatively petty and specific turf-war between the two personality-driven wings of New Labour. Let us assume that the culprits’ ‘Blairism’ - that fatuous and inflated designator of small difference - is not the locus of their crime. 

Money-grubbing? Well, as evidenced by the old term ‘cash for questions’, the vision is of money poured into a politician, lobbying as funnel. The three, of course, claim they have broken no rules; whether true or not such an insistence, more even than patriotism, is the last refuge of scoundrels. But the whip has been withdrawn even though this claim may be, if jesuitically, true: so if it is not necessarily a rule-breach that is to be condemned, is it the mere taking of money? 

Clearly not - the same Lord Mandelson who has been swift to condemn has explained that Labour is ‘intensely relaxed about the filthy rich’ (as if filthy-richness is a discrete and hermetic quality, like ‘blueness’ or ‘of 4lbs weight’, rather than part of a relation, as if filthy-richness and the social power that means is entirely unrelated to un-richness, filthy un-richness, poverty). So, that the three desired to become personally rich, and were intensely relaxed about saying so, cannot be their crime. 

The model of lobbying-as-funnel is obviously partial. That money is shovelled into a squealing piglike snout owned by one who has claimed to represent the people is clearly true, and the eagerness and slobbering tongue with which that putative voice of the otherwise voiceless licks leads to that human reaction previously discussed, and to understandable denunciations. But that licking is only half of the process. After having sucked down the money, it is the role of the ‘lobbyist’ to metabolise it and defecate in the corridors of power, to exude a greasy, oily matter that makes those corridors easier for corporations to bloated-maggotly squeeze down, and that governments must - and often enthusiastically do - eat. 

A trawl illustrates how ostentatiously disgusted but immensely entertained many are at coprophagia, and if such prancing, vomiting hilarity is the result of watching only two girls with one cup, imagine how much more entertaining a whole building full of MPs eating corporate shit must be: surely this demands a youtube channel of Houses of Parliament Reaction Videos. But the depositing of such fecal matter on behalf of businesses constitutes, of course, no crime. Toxic to humans it may be, but that is only one minor consideration. On such issues, there need be no concerns about the squeamishness of the government that now punishes the Lobbygaters. 

One example suffices: it is now established and agreed by all parties, including BAE, that BAE, long-accused of bribery, behaved illegally as part of its a strategy to sell tools with which to kill people. In recent years, though, the then-Prime Minister heroically insisted that the Serious Fraud Office drop its investigations, that there were ‘higher considerations’ than the rule of law,* that ‘offense caused to the Saudi Royal Family’ would come at too heavy a price. 

In this case, corporation-greasing exudations rilled up and helped blocked the potential red faces a state-backed corruption investigation might occasion. (Ooh, so embarrassing! Couldn’t you just die?) No government whips were withdrawn. This was not for an individual, and was proper classy money - £43bn. Nothing grubby there. 

So. What have the Lobbygate Three done wrong? 

They were accurately perceived; insufficiently crafty; and vulgar. 

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*A shibboleth the unusual circumvention of which here does not imply cheerleading for.