MEDIA STUDIES
Actually, there's less to the latest Guardian revelations than meets the page
STEPHEN GLOVER
The Guardian has been criticised for jumping the gun last week and publishing evidence which Sir Gordon Downey, the Parliamentary Commissioner, has not yet seen fit — or been unable — himself to publish. No critic of the newspaper has pointed out that the five and a half pages which the Guardian devoted last Friday to apparently sensational new sleaze material, complete with sententious front-page edi- torial, contained little that was new.
In January the Guardian brought out a book called Sleaze which contained all the charges it had hitherto made against Tory MPs, plus a few more. The chief culprits were Neil Hamilton, Tim Smith, Michael Brown, Sir Michael Grylls and Sir Andrew Bowden. Very detailed and grave allega- tions were made against all of them, in par- ticular Mr Hamilton. Last Friday the Guardian repeated the same allegations against precisely the same men as if they were sparklingly fresh. Little new evidence of substance was paraded, and no further culprits were 'fingered' by the newspaper.
Take the case of Neil Hamilton. In its book the Guardian maintained that he had not declared a stay which he and his wife enjoyed at the Paris Ritz, and that he had lied to Mr Heseltine. (Mr Hamilton has admitted both charges.) The book also accused Mr Hamilton of taking money from Mohamed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods, in the form of cash or gifts. Noth- ing of significance was added to this charge sheet last Friday, unless we include the rel- atively insignificant revelation that Mr Hamilton enjoyed a second 'freebie' in Paris, much less lavish than the first, which he also omitted to declare.
So far as Mr Smith was concerned, the paper said last week that he had received up to £25,000 in cash from Mr Al Fayed — more than the somewhat smaller sums pre- viously mentioned. Similarly with Sir Michael Grylls, the paper alleged on Friday that he had taken £86,000 in payments from the lobbyist Ian Greer, as though this was a startlingly high figure, much larger than earlier estimates. But on page 78 of the book Sleaze the Guardian wrote that in the 12 months before the 1987 election Sir Michael took £27,000 from Mr Greer; on page 90 it says he took £9,500 in the year up to June 1988; and on page 154 Sir Michael is said to have taken a 'steady annual £10,000' over a long period.
So what's new? In its hysterical five-and- a-half-page coverage the Guardian was, with one exception, dotting the i's and crossing the t's of earlier allegations. The exception was the serious charge that John Major allowed Tim Smith to remain a government minister after he had learnt that he had taken bribes. According to the Guardian, Mr Major was in possession of this knowl- edge for a few weeks before Mr Smith's res- ignation. No evidence is produced to sub- stantiate this charge. The Prime Minister has stated that he required Mr Smith's res- ignation within three days of learning about the MP's indiscretions. There is no reason to doubt his version of events.
Why did the Guardian make such a dis- proportionate noise, recycling old allega- tions (most of which I believe are probably true) while adding another that appears baseless? All newspapers are, of course, prone to talking up their stories. Last Sun- day the Mail on Sunday 'splashed' with the supposedly sensational news that Alison Foster, a former personal assistant to Mr Al Fayed, had handed over envelopes full of cash to Mr Hamilton. In fact these alle- gations were first published in the Guardian on 1 October 1996, when Ms Fos- ter was identified in all but name. It only needed a telephone call from the Mail on Sunday to Michael Cole, Mr Al Fayed's spokesman, to put a face to her.
The Guardian is high on the drug of pre- tending to have more than it has. It has lost all sense of proportion. I can understand that the paper wishes to destroy the Tories, but I wish its senior people were a bit more modest about the evidence they have.
Flattered though I was to be described as 'charmingly innocent' by Paul Johnson in his Spectator column last week, I feel that it may be he who rather missed the point. He chides me for finding the tapes covertly recorded by Mohamed Al Fayed 'entertain- ing' and `amusing'.
'It's about 10 miles, or 20 i f you're an MP on expenses.' The point is this. Of course it was wrong of Mr Al Fayed to video Tiny Rowland and (on one occasion) Carla Powell without their knowledge. But since the tapes exist, and have been the subject of an official enquiry by Sir Gordon Downey, the Parlia- mentary Commissioner, it is surely permis- sible for neutral parties to watch them and form a judgment. If Mr Johnson were not a close friend of Lady Powell (a fact which he forgets to mention) he too might find the sight of her dancing in front of Mr Al Fayed mildly amusing.
As I suggested two weeks ago, the scenes involving Mr Al Fayed and Mr Rowland themselves reached a creditably high level of comedy. It is Mr Al Fayed's purpose to induce Mr Rowland to admit that he paid a bribe to Michael Howard, the Home Secre- tary, but he fails. To see these two elderly rogues trying to outwit each other is an unusual treat. Very rich men are accus- tomed to presenting themselves to the world on their own terms. Here we have two of them in their natural colours, and they seem remarkably tawdry. But it is the brief tape involving Mr Al Fayed and Lady Powell that attains the highest levels of comic art. Why Mr John- son's friend Lady Powell should have been so close to Mr Al Fayed, a man whom he evidently regards as irredeemably bad, I cannot say. Let us make no judgment about that. What is most diverting in this tape more so even than her dancing, her clasp- ing of Mr Al Fayed's hands, or her skittish declaration that she loves him — are her statements about her old friend, Margaret Thatcher.
Lady Powell is the wife of Sir Charles Powell, who was Lady Thatcher's private secretary. In the tape, recorded 18 months ago, she tells Mr Al Fayed that the former prime minister has `ruined our lives' by not putting Sir Charles in the House of Lords. She adds (this I forgot to mention two weeks ago, and I am grateful to Paul Johnson for giving me the opportunity to do so now) that Sir Charles still writes Lady Thatcher's speeches because she is unable to.
Thackeray or Trollope could do no bet- ter. One can see that such scenes might appear rather mortifying to a close friend of Lady Powell's, not to mention to Lady Powell herself, but those of us who are unlucky enough never to have made her acquaintance are bound, I think, to regard them in a different light.
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