Archer, Ashcroft, Coulson – now Lynton Crosby. Notice a pattern?

In each case the Conservative leadership was keen, even desperate, to enlist their help. In each case wiser heads urged caution. And in each case the story came back to bite the party badly.

The Archer case was one where I was personally involved.

Back in 1998 and 1999 the then Conservative leader William Hague was looking for a dynamic, big-name figure to became the party’s standard-bearer in the first election for London mayor.

I had previously written an investigative biography of Archer and knew masses about his past. For the Conservatives to pick Archer was bound to end in tears, I felt, since there were so many scandals yet to come out.

So I wrote to Hague and warned him that I could think of at least six stories about Archer which would be hugely damaging. I got no reply. Instead, somebody in Hague’s office actually leaked the letter to Archer himself.

And Hague, instead of doing the sensible thing and hauling Archer in and demanding he come clean about the whole of his past life, merrily went ahead and endorsed Archer as the Conservative candidate.

He even expressed the view, in an interview with Channel 4 News, that Archer was a candidate of “probity and integrity”.

Weeks later, when the News of the World exposed Archer’s perjury during his 1986 libel trial he was forced to step down as candidate.

Eighteen months later the novelist was jailed for four years. The lesson: if someone is obviously, dodgy don’t touch them. If you insist, at least give them a good grilling first.

Grossly negligent

Hague later admitted Archer was the biggest mistake of his leadership, but there was a similar one – Michael Ashcroft.

So desperate was the Conservative party to receive Ashcroft’s millions in donations and loans, that Hague happily nominated him for a peerage, yet he and his colleagues were grossly negligent in failing to ask the obvious questions about Ashcroft’s tax status.

It was another decade, long after Ashcroft had entered the Lords, that the truth was revealed, and it came out that he hadn’t been paying British income tax on his non-UK earnings in all that time. The lessons mounted and became ever more glaring.

Labour riding high

In the summer of 2007 the Conservatives were again in desperate mood. Gordon Brown had just become prime minister, and though it’s hard to recall now, Labour was riding high.

People even spoke of Brown being a Mandela figure who “transcended” party politics. It was rubbish, of course, but in 2007 the Conservatives were despair about ever winning an election again.

So George Osborne came up with a wheeze: the Tories’ answer to Alastair Campbell, the former editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson.

Why was Coulson a former editor? Because the royal correspondent on his paper, Clive Goodman, along with a man called Glenn Mulcaire, were jailed for hacking people’s phones, including members of the royal family.

Coulson denied any knowledge of what had happened, and so keen was Cameron to employ his services – a man with the common touch – that the Tory didn’t ask any tough questions. Another accident waiting to happen.

Mr Coulson is now awaiting two very separate trials, charged with phone-hacking in England, and perjury in Scotland.

Similar features

Nobody suggests Lynton Crosby has ever committed any crime. I’m sure he hasn’t, but there are similar features in his case, too.

Last year, the Conservatives were again fretting about their poll figures, and ever more anxious about the drift of support to Ukip.

Tory MPs again despaired of winning the next election. Boris Johnson urged the Tory high command to “break the piggy bank” to hire Lynton Crosby.

Here was a man, it was said, who like Andy Coulson before him, had the magic touch – the knack of understanding how ordinary voters feel.

So they did hire Crosby. But again it’s clear Cameron failed to ask the right questions, or any questions.

Conflicts of interest?

Above all, as the contract was drawn up with Crosby’s firm (not just Crosby himself) to work for the party, he didn’t ask Crosby who his other clients were.

He didn’t explore all the possible conflicts of interest. And it’s quite clear from this week’s rapidly composed “principles of engagement”, that nobody thought of drawing up such rules at the time Crosby and his firm were recruited.

And until the Crosby client list is published, or the unlikely event that Crosby’s firm ditches all its other clients, the story will keep running.

In all four cases the potential for trouble was obvious. In all four cases the Tory leader – Hague or Cameron – failed to conduct proper due diligence, and failed to ask the obvious tough questions. Hire them at all costs was the approach.

In all four cases those who expressed reservations were merely dismissed as troublemakers who didn’t have the party’s best interests at heart. And so in each case the accident happened.

Dubious characters

It’s a phenomenon not confined to the Conservatives, of course. Nick Clegg failed to ask the right questions when stories first emerged about sexual harrassment by his party’s great election wizard Chris Rennard.

Before him, Charles Kennedy failed to do proper checks when fraudster Michael Brown offered the impoverished Lib Dems £2.5m just before the 2005 election.

Harold Wilson consorted with all sorts of plainly dodgy characters, and Neil Kinnock was happy for support from the obvious crook Robert Maxwell.

And I can think of several others in current politics who are highly dubious characters likely to come unstuck. Two are pretty important members of the Cameron team.

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