I’m not surprised by the way David Cameron lobbied ministers – that’s the way the political world goes round

David Cameron, a public relations executive before he was an MP,  appeared to think he could exploit the media frenzy over the Duke of Edinburgh’s death by breaking his silence on the Greensill affair, hoping his 1,749-word statement would be eclipsed.

It was a bad call. MPs in all parties thought his timing looked tacky. His statement failed to draw a line under the controversy, which led to more news bulletins and front pages this week than Prince Philip’s passing. I’m told Boris Johnson and his allies were irritated that a political truce didn’t hold until after the duke’s funeral, and accused Labour of playing party politics. But that doesn’t wash: Cameron interrupted it first. 

After pounding the Westminster beat for 39 years, I’m not surprised by the way Cameron lobbied ministers to win the now collapsed Greensill Capital access to government schemes to lend to business in the coronavirus pandemic. His repeated texts to Rishi Sunak look very cosy and pushy but that’s the way the political world goes round.

After six years in Downing Street, Cameron had a contacts book to be envied. “It’s not about what you know, it’s who you know,” one candid former cabinet member told me, even though most ex-ministers prefer to believe the opposite. Cameron crossed a line: he stood to benefit financially from his lobbying because of his shares in Greensill. Yet he didn’t break any rules as he did not become an adviser to Greensill until two years after leaving office.

The cooling-off period should last at least five years and there should be a public register of work undertaken by former PMs and ministers. We don’t know what they’re up to unless they remain an MP like Theresa May or go to the House of Lords and have to register their interests, a once traditional route that Cameron, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown declined.

We need a register of all lobbying rather than just consultant lobbyists; Cameron, as an in-house adviser, did not need to disclose his lobbying for Greensill. 

Johnson might hope revelations about close relationships between civil servants and private companies will spread the blame but they happened on his party’s watch. While it’s healthy for civil servants to gain private sector experience, we need tough, transparent rules to avoid conflicts of interests. 

I’ve met lots of lobbyists over the years, and watched them woo ministers and backbenchers at lunches, dinners, parties and receptions. (I was there purely for research purposes, you understand.) The firms have a legitimate role. Most would welcome tighter regulation. The grown-ups among them provide genuine intelligence to their clients, mostly using formal channels in a way Cameron did not. At the other end of the market are a few glorified hangers-on whose bullshit can exploit naivety about politics in the business world. When I meet business people, I tell them to read the newspapers; it’s cheaper.

Cameron will not be the first ex-minister to hit the phones when a company paying them well for little work suddenly needs them to earn their corn. Plenty of former politicians will anxiously wonder whether an embarrassing email or text they sent is about to hit the front pages.

At my latest count, there are seven inquiries into the Greensill affair and its implications. So it will run and run for months. Johnson doubtless hoped his ordering lawyer Nigel Boardman’s review would take the sting out of the story. He did the same with inquiries into allegations Priti Patel bullied officials and into racial disparities after last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. In both cases, Johnson remained in control of the process. He rejected the finding that Patel breached the ministerial code, and a team hand-picked by Downing Street found precisely what it wanted: no evidence of institutional racism.

In contrast, the Greensill scandal spirals dangerously out of Johnson’s control. He might be happy to dump on his old rival “Dave” but select committees will get their teeth into this feast of cronyism at the heart of government. They will take evidence in public, unlike Johnson’s review. Further revelations are inevitable; cosmetic changes will not be enough. New codes for ministers, civil servants and contractors will be needed. 

Labour rediscovered the art of effective opposition this week – a timely boost for Keir Starmer, who was under internal fire for not landing enough blows on the government. For once, the media is on the same page as Labour, keen to revive headlines about “Tory sleaze” which played a big part in Major’s downfall.

Johnson successfully portrayed the Tories as “new” at the 2019 election, even though his party had been in office for almost 10 years. For many voters in the red wall, it wasn’t just about Brexit; they saw him as “not like a Tory”. 

But if Johnson’s government becomes tainted by sleaze, Labour will pin the “same old Tories” label on it, with “one rule for them, and another for everyone else.” After 13 or 14 years of Tory rule,  Labour’s “time for change” message would then test to the limit Johnson’s ability to defy the normal rules of political gravity.