FOLLOW THE money. At the end, the final straw. The press established, as it inevitably would, that British defence secretary Dr Liam Fox was being “assisted” by a friend whose foreign travel – 19 trips to shared destinations – was paid for by conservative defence industry/policy lobby groups and millionaire backers of the Tory party. He simply had to go.
By the end of last week Fox alone believed he could ride out the storm over best man Adam Werrity's peculiar role as unofficial "adviser". The relationship clearly breached the ministerial code that required them to "ensure that no conflict arises or could reasonably be perceived to arisebetween their public duties and their private interests financial or otherwise". Fox admitted in resigning that he "mistakenly allowed the distinction between my personal interest and my government activities to become blurred".
“Blurred” is something of a euphemism, a form of speech familiar to Fox. He had told the Commons earlier that Werrity “was not dependent on any transactional behaviour to maintain his income”. Mystified listeners would work out in retrospect that this meant Werrity was not on a commission for arranging specific meetings for his backers. He was on a salary and expenses. Not a defence that, when deconstructed, could ever fly.
And Fox’s resignation does not by any means put the scandal to bed. The precise nature of some of the meetings, notably one in Dubai with a defence supplier in the absence of officials, has yet to be clarified (hopefully by cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell’s inquiry). And with much of Werrity’s lobbying to do with politically reinforcing Fox’s Atlanticist, pro-Israeli agenda, the government will wish to do more to ensure that a privatised diplomacy cannot usurp its functions. The police are considering whether Werrity’s actions constitute fraud.
Fox’s own role is still at issue also. Was he simply the innocent dupe of an old friend? Hardly. Evidence from venture capitalist Jon Moulton that Fox had approached him directly, and successfully, to fund Pargav, Werrity’s employer, would suggest Fox knew exactly what his friend was up to and was party to it.
For prime minister David Cameron the resignation was welcome. It avoided the necessity of a first sacking, not good for image or morale, and it undermines the small Thatcherite rump in cabinet. But the affair will also reawaken uncomfortably public perceptions of politics tainted by personal and business agendas that did so much to bring down Labour. That will not be welcome.