According to the News of the World, Downing Street’s Director of Political Operations, John McTernan, has grassed on Ruth Turner, Lord Levy, Tony Blair and his chief of staff Jonathan Powell. The Screws’ story is a tale of deleted emails, and secret meetings about enobling donors. Blair will be re-interviewed under caution, they claim, having failed to give the police answers to many questions.

If the Screws’ story is correct, the game is up for the Blairites.

In this week’s Speccie Fraser Nelson has a breathless piece on the Tory fundraising bonanza which includes, as an aside, the news that

“the once-formidable Blair-Levy double-act has been closed by the Metropolitan Police’s investigation, soon to be handed to the Crown Prosecution Service. It will not, I understand, end in charges for Tony Blair or any of his senior lieutenants.”

Fancy a bet Fraser? Loser buys lunch and a decent bottle of wine. Suspect the toast will be to the boys in blue…

A co-conspirator has re-sent an email Guido ignored in September. With Guido’s seasoned nose for a story it was, errm, disbelieved. Doh!

The Blair Foundation is going to be TB’s main post-No. 10 vehicle for self-publicity 21st century. Think Clinton Foundation/Clinton Global Initiative. First main focus is planned to be the Middle East – mainly Israel/Palestine, but watch this space for quick focus switch to Syria, even Iran. Funding is targeted to be coming from big donors/businesses in the US. And the connection to Cash4Honours?

Well, when TB needs lots of money for a big project, who does he turn to? Of course, Lord Cashpoint. Levy was asked to be chief fundraiser some months ago. The plan was for him to go fundraising in the US, later this year, say about the same time that Blair finally decides to pick up his congressional medal, with the accompanying press coverage, goodwill etc etc.

Last I heard plans have not changed. Lets just hope Levy gets out of the country before they make him do the perp walk.

Quite spookily Finkelstein was damn close in this article.

Jerusalem’s medical community is experienced with dealing mental cases who arrive from all over the world proclaiming themselves to be the Second Coming or the New Messiah. Blair may prove to a difficult case, if he actually believes he can be some kind of latter day Jimmy Carter bringing peace to the Middle East he is going to present quite a challenge for Jerusalem’s psychiatrists. “Y’know, I brought peace and freedom to Iraq, I want to do the same for Israel…”

Rumour going round that a showbiz figure is prepared to testify that Sleazy Levy offered him a “K” for a donation.

The Guardian’s David Hencke has a story which seems speculative, is unattributed and improbable (he really should get a blog). He claims that disgruntled Labour supporting lawyers and activists are contemplating a judicial review of the loans that could have them ruled ultra vires. The debts would then become due from Blair, Levy and Carter.

Guido thinks such a ruse to bankrupt Blair et al unlikely to succeed, the money was spent by the Labour party, Blair was party leader and Carter general secretary. Would be fun to see them wriggling in court.

Guido has however heard Tory-inclined lawyers contemplating over their brandies the prospect of bringing a private prosecution in the event that the CPS fails to take action. Guido is good for a grand towards costs and suspects many, many others would willingly do the same.

Matt Carter, the former general secretary of the Labour party, was responsible for organising the delivery of Labour’s successful 2005 general election campaign and is currently the managing director of the London office of Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates.

Presumably it was Matt Carter who authorised the £500,000+ payment for the slogan “Forward, not back” to the same Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates in the run-up to the election. Shortly after the election he joined Penn’s polling organisation in the UK. Typical feather-bedding by a politician at other people’s expense – nothing special.

It was Carter of course who wrote to rich wannabee peers telling them that any loans would not have to be declared. It was Carter who drew up the “commercial loan agreements” which Labour is now unable to re-pay. Obviously his letters, emails and agreement documents are of particular interest to Yates of the Yard and the investigators from Operation Ribble.

He is at the heart of the “cash for peerages” and is expected by many in Westminster to be the fall guy for Blair and Levy’s scam. So it is tragic that he has had four laptop computers stolen from his office in London.

The theft from the Bloomsbury offices of Penn, Schoen & Berland, the Washington DC-headquartered consultancy where Matt Carter is managing director, was reported to police in Holborn on October 9. It is not known what data was kept on the stolen computers.

He was one of only three people said to know the full details of secret loans worth GBP14 million made to the party. The others were Tony Blair and Lord Levy, Labour’s most high-profile fundraiser.

Officers at London’s Holborn police station revealed details of the theft from Carter’s office… The four computers went missing over the weekend prior to October 9… Carter’s office is only one of a number of subsidiary firms owned by the international WPP agency which share an address at 24-28 Bloomsbury Way. Only Carter’s office reported a theft. No other firm at the address reported anything missing, according to the police file..

Carter has made no formal admission that he has been questioned by Yates’s team, but sources close to the investigation maintain he has been questioned on “more than one occasion” on what he knew of the GBP14m raised by Labour from private backers before the last general election.

Yates’ team is known to be using the same software and equipment that the FBI uses to recover deleted data from hard-disks. It is not clear if the lap-tops had already been examined by the police in the way that the computers of Sleazy Levy and Des Smith have been. Following on from Levy’s office fire Guido worries for the offices in Downing Street.

Martin Bright has been all over the Loans for Lordships story. In this week’s New Statesman he recounts a recent conversation he had with the Sleaze-Master General himself.

The exchange took place at this year’s Labour Party conference during a reception hosted by the GuardianObserver, where Levy took it upon himself to act as an unofficial “meeter and greeter”.

Levy and I started talking, particularly about a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on the “cash for honours” affair which I had presented and had been broadcast that same night.

Levy was his legendary charming self. Disarmingly, he told me that his wife had watched the programme and found it very fair. I was delighted, but said there was one matter I felt I had to raise with him. What did he make of the general point I made in the programme: that the loans from wealthy party supporters were not intended as loans, but were to be converted into donations?

He gripped my arm like a long-lost friend and said, by way of answer: “Only some of them.” I asked him what he meant and whether he could point to any specific loans. He volunteered the name of Lord Sainsbury, the billionaire former science minister who had lent the party £2m.

The point is that large donations, under this government’s own legislation, had to be declared, but loans did not. So what exactly was Levy saying to me? Did he misunderstand my original question? That is possible, but he had gone on to give me an example. Was he joking? Again possibly, but it’s an odd matter to joke about. Or was he merely expressing his hope that the loans would be converted into donations?

Guido thinks that this is an admission of some guilt. If Sainsbury’s loan wasn’t really a loan and the intention was always to turn into a donation at some point, that is an offence. A false loan which disguises a donation is surely an evasion of the legally required reporting of donations under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000?

UPDATE : According to an impeccable source who has just emailed me, the Yard’s attention has been drawn to the Martin Bright story in this week’s New Statesman.

If Ann Black’s report of Blair’s remarks to the March 2006 NEC meeting is verified (Blair said the donors “preferred the confidentiality” of a loan) Blair is in deep trouble. He made the remarks before the police investigation started. According to Ann Black –

“Tony Blair said that he understood members’ concerns and took full responsibility for everything done in the name of the party. Anyone giving to Labour was trashed in the media and so potential donors preferred the confidentiality of a loan.”

The cynics at the Evening Standard didn’t believe the Blair spin. They contacted donors to find out if they really demanded confidentiality – the donors denied it. So it seems the loans scheme was an initiative of Downing Street to hide the identity of donors in defiance of laws his own government introduced to make party funding more transparent. It wasn’t because the donors preferred not to be trashed in the media, it was because Blair didn’t want people to see the blatant disregard for the law his peddling of peerages* showed. Give a million to Labour, get a peerage. It looked bad, the link was too obvious. Give a “loan” and no declaration had to be made, no one need know about it apart from a few Downing Street insiders. When donors got their peerage no money would have have been seen to change hands, apart from a worthy donation to an Academy School perhaps. Some time later that loan to the Labour party could be quietly written off and converted into a declared donation. Well the donor is a Labour peer now, they would give money to their party, wouldn’t they?

The Standard says Sir David Garrard and Barry Townsley would have been happy to be named. They claim the only reason the arrangement was kept silent was because the letter confirming the loans stated: “You do not need to disclose this.”

It is already known that property developer Sir David, who lent Labour £2.3million, and stockbroker Townsley, who lent the party £1million, were both nominated by Blair for peerages. Chai Patel has said he offered £1.5million as a donation but was told by Sleazy Levy that Labour would prefer the money as a loan. He was later nominated for a peerage. Sir Gulam, who lent Labour £250,000, also offered a donation but was advised to make a loan. “My position is that I was very happy to contribute as a donation but that I was asked to give a loan”.

Combined with the above denials by donors that it was their idea to disguise donations as loans, what Blair told the NEC is an admission of guilt, he would be guilty of an offence in disguising a donation as a loan. Expect Ann Black’s account of the March 2006 NEC meeting to be trashed by Downing Street.

Blair says he accepts full responsibility for the Loans for Lordships scam, if Ann Black is telling the truth he and others in Downing Street are open to being charged under Part 4 of the PPER Act 2000:

Guido is often asked does he really believe that Tony Blair will face charges? If Ann Black’s account is accurate it amounts to an admission of guilt, the treasurer is on the record as saying he was kept in the dark about the loans. How can Blair not have a case to answer?

Co-conspirator Mirthios points out in the comments this parting gem from Lord Sainsbury :

“I have had a peerage for eight or nine years, so there is no question of buying a peerage.”

Is he saying he got his before Lord Levy started stacking ‘em high and selling ‘em cheap?