What Blair says does not represents defamation of other party leaders. It has been common practice since as long as I remember that party leaders can nominate supporters for peerages; that is how we get front bench spokespeople into the upper chamber to question non-elected Ministers.

What Mr. Blair is saying is that it is quite normal to ennoble major supporters, that major supporters are often the most financially-generous, and that that is not the same as selling peerages.

An analogy would be that it is quite normal for Mr. Blair to buy presents for his wife, and it is quite normal for her to be more well-disposed to him afterwards, but that is not the same as buying her favours.

In this, both Blair and Lamb are correct. It may be normal, but until seats in the Lords are allocated by a method other than nomination by party leaders it will have the smell of corruption about it - perhaps with good reason.

I have updated this in the light of the comments above (essentially adding the reference to the July interview that I couldn't find earlier on).

Tom

I sent you an e-mail a couple of days ago, did you get it?

Peter

http://pigeon-post.blogspot.com/