A Rake's Progress?

There is talk of splitting the position of Justice Secretary, and of giving the Lord Chancellor part of it to Michael Howard. In the run-up to the 2005 Election, The Observer alone made anything of the fact that, as Home Secretary, Howard had arranged Royal Pardons for his violent, drug-dealing cousins in Swansea. The whole of the mainstream media knew about it, but we were treated, on things like Today, to columnists from the right-wing papers denouncing “muckraking” over “Mr Howard’s family”. No one was so uncouth as to drop so much as a hint to the voting, license-paying public as to what that “muck” might be.

The revelation, also in The Observer (23rd November 2008), that Howard did much the same thing for rather similar low-life in Liverpool has also been kept forever out of the consciousness of the public at large. No one must ever realise that Howard’s reputation bears absolutely no resemblance to his record, not least because any such realisation would expose the true character of the coup against Iain Duncan Smith. And then there was the identity of Howard’s Special Adviser at the time, and the ultimate beneficiary of the anti-IDS putsch. In case you had not guessed, his name was, and is, David Cameron.