Loans for Peerages 2005-2007

Loans for Peerages – the modern, democratic method by which our unelected rulers are appointed to the House of Lords – was found dead this week shortly after Tony Blair was questioned for a second time by the Metropolitan Police. Sources indicate that foul play is suspected.

Loans for Peerages was born just before the general election in 2005, the child of Labour’s desperate need to prop up its ailing finances and an antiquated system of appointing anyone with a spare million to the unelected upper chamber of the Palace of Westminster.

It proved to be a popular baby: within days of its birth it was attracting unprecedented media attention as it crawled, literally, from boardroom to boardroom soliciting “loans” at a rate of interest not seen in your High Street building society since your manager got high on genuine Albanian champagne-style fizz at the last Christmas party and opened the vaults saying, “Take whatever you want.” Within only two years, however, it was causing controversy, with Scotland Yard detectives forced to step in after complaints that it had committed offences under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925 when some lenders alleged that they hadn’t received their ermine-collared free gifts.

The death of Loans for Peerages was first, mistakenly, reported last year, following claims that it had been fatally wounded following the arrest of Labour’s chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, and the questioning under caution ofMPs and officials from Labour and other parties. The reports turned out to be false when it was revealed early in 2007 that, far from being dead, Loans for Peerages had merely been swept under the nearest available piece of carpet.

Loans for Peerages' resurrection was to prove brief. Its death knell was sounded by the arrest of Mr Blair's "gatekeeper" Ruth Turner, and the re-arrest of Lord Levy on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, not forgetting a further police interview with Tony Blair himself, who is believed to have explained that he saw nothing of Loans for Peerages at all as he was tying his shoelaces at the time.

Loans for Peerages was buried by the highest bidder at the Church of Deal or No Deal. Following a brief sermon by the Reverend David Lloyd George, the collection trough was passed, a deeply emotional eulogy was read by several very rich men who mourned their chances of ever becoming peers by the back door, and a choir of businessmen sang hymn number 427 "What a Friend We Have in Tony".

Loans for Peerages is survived by a discredited government, a quasi-mediaeval system of patronage and the imminent findings of Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates’s inquiry.