The Party's Over: Operation Car Wash
The results threw up another majority for Labour, albeit a reduced one of 25. But the party had worked with that kind of majority before and party strategists were confident that a kind of institutional memory would help to see them through. Yvette Cooper could personally take some credit for leading the party to a third successive election victory, putting her in the exalted company of Clement Attlee and Barbara Castle. Certainly, for a government midway through its ninth year in power and with a largely stagnant economy it was a notable achievement, even if much of the party’s present success could be laid at the feet of a divided opposition.
But, like the swan looking graceful above the surface while its feet paddle furiously underneath, the real results were far more ambiguous for both Labour and the British political system as a whole. In the first place, a Parliament where opposition took the form of five political parties each with over 30 seats indicated, especially in the mixed-FPTP environment of the UK, a widespread and diffuse opposition to Labour. Indeed, it was notable that 8 of Labour’s lost seats were list seats, even as they party successfully got its vote out enough to keep hold of constituency ones. It was clear that a radical reconfiguring of British politics was going on: the Libertarians and Conservatives were locked in a deathmatch to see who could survive as the party of social libertarianism, small government and intellectual radicalism but it was clear that whoever did survive would have more of a constituency than had previously been thought possible; the Liberals were also becoming a more European-style centre-right party, with many of the party’s liberal-left MPs and supporters moving to the swelling ranks of the Progressives; the Progressives, for their part, were developing a distinct culture close to that of Labour but without Labour’s streak of workerist trades unionism that was attractive to many Labour members and supporters who were growing uneasy about the increasing brutality of the party’s machine politics and electoral strategy; finally, the combined Celtic parties seemed to have successfully used their pooled data and funds to make a decisive breakthrough, with all of Cornwall now its territory and notable breakthroughs in northern Wales, western Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, meaning that constitutional questions looked to be set to play an important role in British politics for the first time in over a century.
Meanwhile, the investigation into Jalil was bearing some fruit. In June 2023, he entered into a plea bargain with the Metropolitan Police and the CPS, widening the scope of the probe to investigate corruption in a number of British and Commonwealth construction and energy firms. Codenamed Operation Car Wash, the police targeted nine major firms as well as, most importantly, the politicians involved in them. Doubtless the investigation was helped by the telegenic and charismatic chief investigator Keith Palmer and his supporters in the media, the most notable of whom was the Anglo-American Heather Brooke. In February 2024,Car Wash ‘bagged’ its first notable figure, arresting the Labour MP Richard Burgon for accepting a bribe from a Leeds-based energy firm during his tenure as an Undersecretary in the Ministry of Supply between 2018 and 2019.
Never considered an especially promising talent within the party, Burgon’s tenure in ministerial office had been undistinguished before being sent back to the backbenches after only thirteen months. It was in this context that the Labour leadership seems to have felt comfortable in dropping him unceremoniously. The day after his arrest, Cooper told a press conference that Burgon had been “a bad apple” and that she welcomed “the work of the police in cleaning him out of the party.” However, as relatively unimpressive a politician as Burgon had been, he was a loyal one who had submissively taken the Labour whip and he was dismayed by his treatment. In response to what he saw as the party’s betrayal, he began to cooperate with the police’s enquiries.
Beginning in April, the police began to make further arrests of industry figures and politicians on charges of corruption. The most notable were two prominent Labour select committee chairs, Caroline Flint and Chris Leslie, and the Scottish Secretary Nicola Sturgeon, all of whom were arrested in dawn raids witnessed by journalists who had been notified beforehand. The targeting of Labour figures attracted attention and criticism by Labour-friendly figures in civil society, pointing out that Liberal figures had been arrested on far larger charges pursuant to the Leveson Inquiry without attracting a similar level of public interest and hinting darkly at an anti-Labour conspiracy behind Car Wash. Certainly, it was true that Edward Davey (Commonwealth Secretary under Ahern, Supply Minister under Clegg and a prominent figure in both Varadkar’s and Allen’s Shadow Cabinets) was arrested in relation to a series of kickbacks received from construction companies in return for privately lobbying for that company to receive preferential planning decisions, probably a more serious crime than the relatively minor bribes and directorships received by Leslie, Flint and Sturgeon.
But, in reality, most of the focus on Labour was just pragmatism on the part of the police: given the fiasco of the Leveson Inquiry and Bertie Ahern’s resignation, a certain amount of corruption within the Liberals was priced in by the public; and, if the police really was a hotbed of anti-Labour conspiracism, then it was odd that they had waited until the 2020s to act on this. The fact was that Labour had got very tightly embedded within the British business and financial community and that this had resulted in some cases of open corruption. The real question was what the party’s reaction to these events should be.
On 4 March 2024, before the main rush of arrests, Car Wash had raided the home of the former SWF chairman Anthony Blair, who had previously served as a Labour minister in Beckett’s first term. Blair was subsequently detained for questioning before being released under caution. Questions were raised at the time about Blair’s potential involvement in illegal bribes and collaboration between the SWF, the Bank of England and the political and economic objectives of Labour and Labour-connected figures. Nevertheless, Blair’s role in Car Wash was of comparatively little interest until he was discovered dead at his home on 2 September 2024. Discovered alongside his body was a suicide note, asserting that his corruption crimes were committed for the party’s benefit and at its direction.
These were, by this stage, standard enough defences for those caught up in Car Wash to deploy. But what was more dramatic was what was found underneath the note. Before his suicide Blair had collated together files and recordings of calls and emails regarding what, it became apparent, was an attempt by senior Labour figures to find ways to exculpate Blair from the investigation’s sights, including a truly bizarre plan to get him a professorship at the University of Chile where he would, in theory, be immune from prosecution. Most damagingly, one of the recordings revealled that Cooper’s chief of staff, George Eaton, was on at least one of the calls. On the 13 September, the coroner returned a verdict of suicide and ordered the publication of the note and recordings. Eaton resigned before lunchtime and surrendered himself for questioning by police.
In response, Cooper cracked the whip and the majority of the Labour parliamentary party closed ranks around her in the face of relentless assaults from the five opposition parties and the press. However, on 2 December details of Eaton’s interviews with police began leaking out, which suggested that Cooper had given an at least implicit okay to the attempts to protect Blair. Her position now untenable, Cooper resigned with immediate effect three days later. Somewhat surprisingly, not least to him, the otherwise-unremarkable Lord President, Douglas Alexander, was catapulted to the leadership of both his party and his country.