Jam today, blood on your suit tomorrow

'I'M afraid,' wrote Lord McAlpine in the Spectator, 'that most Tory money is raised by the selling of jam, more often than not sold for less than it will cost the donor to make the stuff.' So we seem to be looking, given a Tory turnover of pounds 26m in 1992-93, at a Tory jam industry of at least pounds 13m.

That is a colossal amount of soft fruit and sugar. That is an enormous number of jam jars and labels and rubber bands and Cellophane tops and little discs of greaseproof paper. That is a significant industry undercutting the honest - what's the word? - confiturier. Is it regulated in any way? Is it supervised on grounds of public health? Does it submit accounts or pay taxes?

'More often than not,' we are told, the jam is sold at a loss. The 'proceeds' go to the Tory Party. The Tory Party is not unused to making losses of a million pounds every couple of months. And the Tory Party runs the economy. And the economy runs at a deficit of about a billion pounds every three weeks.

So the whole edifice is in the form of an inverted pyramid of debt. Is this wise? Is this 'good housekeeping'? Might it be that a little more attention to domestic economy at the jam-making end of things would pep up the macro jam-making end? But the Tories seem to like things the way they are. Did you know, before they began angrily insisting on the point and issuing writs, that they never solicit for funds? Extraordinary how these misapprehensions can get around.

Yesterday the denials of corruption entered a new phase, with statements that the latest tales of secret funding are 'old stories'. I like the economy of that technique. I am charged with murder. 'Oh, that's an old story]' I am arraigned for blackmail. 'Listen,' I say, 'you're just repeating the same old things they said at the police station.' This is a great Omnibus Defence. It could be summed up in the sentence: An accusation becomes false on being repeated.

If the Omnibus Defence were to fail, however, there remains the Oh-I- forgot Manoeuvre. Michael Condoms forgot that he was an unpaid non-executive director of an advertising agency. And nobody except Mr Condoms can remember having met Asil Nadir, or having discussed money with him. If they once said they did, they now remember that they didn't.

It seems to me that corruption implies and requires some consciousness on the part of the corruptee. For instance, when I was a theatre critic I used to hope and expect that boxes of cigars, crates of champagne, astrakhan coats and so on would just begin to arrive at my home. They did not, but if they had, and I had read the accompanying notes, and then I went ahead and smoked the cigars, knowing full well that they had come from a Producer X, then that would have been corrupt.

But if I never got around to reading the little notes, if I never knew who was sending all the astrakhan coats, if I never inquired what the source of the champagne was, then how - I mean, how - could anyone accuse me of any form of corruption?

As long as one maintained the right degree of unconsciousness, all would be well. Every morning one would be woken by the sound of the maid carting out the champagne bottles and clearing up the cigar stubs, and one would know that one had had a great time the night before, but the details would be a complete blur.

This is what seems to have happened to the Thatcher years. The Tory Party has now woken up, or opened one eye, and seen a most frightful mess; then the eye has closed again. There appears to be a gigantic bill. And there is also a vague memory of great times past, free jets, wonderful cigars, bags of money changing hands. And somebody must have been bankrolling it all. But who it was, or what their motives could have been . . . that part remains obscure.

So these names that keep cropping up - Hong Kong financiers known by their initials, fascinating Romanians - strike most Tories as just as novel as they seem to the uneducated onlooker. The Tory hangover is of Edwardian proportions. They are like people who have to be told: 'You went to the Cafe Royal, don't you remember? And we had champagne, and you insisted on creme de menthe all round, and then somebody said 'Why don't we go to Boodles?' and you said something very funny and then we all had more creme de menthe and - don't you remember?'

And they don't remember. Every day brings something new to remember and, though one might expect a man to remember his own Hong Kong escapades, it is a bit much to expect him to remember everyone else's.

Mr Major looks around him, and he sees (this must be the disconcerting thing) his colleagues suddenly remembering that he is Prime Minister and that they must either rely on him or remove him, and he sees them wondering just how they arrived at this awkward position. And he himself, by astonishing coincidence, is wondering exactly the same thing. Yet he clearly is Prime Minister. All the evidence is there. If he were not Prime Minister, why all the photographers? Why the visiting potentate at his side? Why the smiles? Why is Mr Condoms's blood all over his suit?

This last detail is the most frightening of all. Did I really kill Mr Condoms, asks Mr Major, or was I pushed? What had Mr Condoms done to me? After all, if it hadn't been for his little campaign for Mr Heseltine, I wouldn't now be Prime Minister. So in a way I owe a lot to Mr Condoms. Indeed, thinks Mr Major, I seem to owe a great deal to an awful lot of people - me and my party, that is.