The scandal(s) surrounding Tony Blair appear to be going from bad to worse. Over on his blog, David takes a look at the part of the story. He’s rightly critical of what may have gone on surrounding the sale of honors, but makes the point that (ultimately) selling meaningless honors is a good sight less damaging than “selling” legislation. True enough, but it’s worth remembering that some of the honors allegedly sold may have included seats in Britain’s House of Lords, something that is part of the country’s legislature, and thus very far from meaningless. It’s also important to see these allegations within their wider context, and that’s what Saturday’s Daily Telegraph (a paper, of course, that’s very hostile to Blair’s government) is now talking about Blair’s legacy being “a corrupted country”:

We have become like any other nation. No more can we tell ourselves that British corruption scandals are qualitatively different from those of hot countries, or that the peccadilloes that shake our polity would barely make the newspapers in Italy. In 1994, in his first major speech as Labour leader, Tony Blair promised that, under his leadership, Britain would never again be out of step with Europe. Now, in a grisly kind of way, his ambition has been fulfilled. With so many sleaze stories in our news pages, it is easy to become confused. A prominent Labour donor has been profiting from the recommendations of his own task-force. Gordon Brown’s supporters accuse Mr Blair of seeking to drag their man into the mire with him. Meanwhile, the Government has ordered an abrupt halt to the inquiry into allegations of hidden arms commissions, just as others begin to suspect corruption. The sheer blizzard of allegations can leave us snow-blind. Perhaps, we tell ourselves, this is what all governments do. Perhaps Labour is no different from its predecessors. After all, wasn’t John Major brought down after a series of sexual and financial scandals? Yes, he was. But what is happening now is of a different order. The central accusation against this ministry – that it has sold favours, possibly even places in the legislature, to secret donors – is one that has not been seriously levelled at a British government since the introduction of the universal franchise…Tony Blair’s belief in the superiority of his motives leads him to reason that, when the New Labour project is at stake, the ends justify the means. We saw this within weeks of his accession when he sought to explain the Ecclestone affair – the first of many cash-for-favours scandals – on the basis that he was a pretty straight kinda guy. That, essentially, remains his attitude: he regards complaints about probity as petty next to what he is doing for Britain. A decade later, parliament is cheapened, and the police have been called into Downing Street. That, more than the transformation of his party, more than Scottish devolution, more even than Iraq, will be his legacy.