It should have been a good day for an obsessive Liverpool fan like John Yates. But the detective leading Britain's most sensitive police inquiry had little time for savoring his team's 2-0 victory over Chelsea yesterday.
Yates was the man who authorized the arrest of Ruth Turner, head of government relations at No. 10 Downing Street, on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. The move has set the government and the London Metropolitan Police -- known locally as the Met -- at war. What began with four police officers banging on the door of Turner's flat in central London at dawn now threatens to end in a constitutional standoff, raising fundamental questions about the relationship between politicians and the law.
Amid wild talk of a new Watergate, the big guns rolled out to defend Turner within hours of her release. Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, criticized the nature of the arrest, the ex-home secretary (interior minister) David Blunkett said he was "bewildered" by it, while the Labour peer Lord Puttnam said detectives were turning the inquiry "into a version of Big Brother," a drama played out in public.
Retired chief constable Chris Fox, who remains close to Scotland Yard, responded by accusing politicians of browbeating the police. And by last night, the row had come full circle with counter-charges that if the Met's deputy assistant commissioner is under pressure, it is from within his force as the investigation into the sale of political honors enters its ninth month without results. For this is turning into a very high stakes game of poker. If anyone within Downing Street is nominated to face charges, Labour members of parliament are now threatening to force Blair from office.
Yet, if nobody is charged then Yates will be accused of trampling an elected prime minister's name through the mud for nothing. It could be even worse. If Labour loses the next election, his inquiry may have altered the course of British democracy.
Turner's arrest follows the arrival on prosecutors' desks last week of a fresh dossier from police, said to be the most compelling evidence yet received. Turner, who helped draw up a list of potential peers and liaised with them, is understood to have been questioned over what police believe to be missing correspondence and about dealings with the biotech tycoon Sir Christopher Evans.
Her arrest may be the fourth -- following Des Smith, the headmaster caught by an undercover journalist discussing peerages for academy donors, Evans, and Levy -- but it is the first to trigger real panic among Blairites. When the woman described by one aide as "if anything, a touch naive" is arrested, who is next?
And crucially, hers was the first arrest on suspicion of perverting the course of justice -- a charge covering misleading or lying to police, or withholding information. Downing Street is reasonably confident the police cannot make charges of selling honors stick. But ministers fear obstructing the investigation is easier to prove, for offences that could fall well short of shredding files. Comparing notes with other witnesses on police interviews could, for instance, count. Suddenly, Downing Street no longer knows where the police are headed.
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