Five Labour donation puzzles

  1. Chris Leslie, former Labour MP Labour MP and Gordon Brown’s leadership election campaign coordinator, has been named by Harriet Harman’s aides as the person who suggested they contact Janet Kidd for a donation to her campaign. Yet the Gordon Brown campaign also received a cheque from Janet Kidd and rejected it. Why reject money from someone whilst also recommending that person to someone else? Any why recommend Janet Kidd from amongst all the other possible donors?
  2. Peter Hain’s Labour Deputy Labour Leadership campaign has admitted it failed to declare to the Electoral Commission a £5,000 donation from Jon Mendelsohn.
  3. BBC’s Newsnight has broadcast a report claiming that Harriet Harman’s Labour Deputy Leadership campaign took out a series of loans that were not declared to the Electoral Commission.
  4. As blogged previously, Janet Dunn, Janet Kidd and Ray Ruddick all gave £25,000 whilst David Triesman (now in the House of Lords as Baron Triesman of Tottenham) was Labour General Secretary, with £65,000 coming from John McCarthy and £12,000 from Janet Kidd whilst Matt Carter was Labour General Secretary. Yet they both preceded Peter Watt as Labour General Secretary and they have both today denied knowing that any of these donors were acting as fronts for David Abrahams. So how did Peter Watt find out?
  5. There is still no decent explanation from Labour as to why their committee of six who were meant to vet all donations of £5,000 or more does not appear to have vetted any of David Abrahams donations.

At this rate, Pink Dog will soon be admitting having received a box of Fortnum and Mason bones from David Abrahams.

Read more by or more about .
This entry was posted in News.
Advert

3 Comments

  • Letters From A Tory 30th Nov '07 - 8:23am

    And there was me thinking this surely can’t get any worse for Labour.

    Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong…..

  • Matthew Huntbach 30th Nov '07 - 9:25am

    You know, I really couldn’t give a shit about this.

    Political parties quite obviously need cash to run elections, and it is pathetic that they have to go scrabbling round trying to find it, so that piddly little amounts (in terms of state spending) like a few thousand pounds are considered a major scandal.

    Obviously, the big problem is that political parties are so strapped for cash that a millionaire can buy one up for the price he’d spend on his second home.

    But all the fuss and scandal involved in raising these sums of money really isn’t worth the effort. Can’t we just accept that elections are the state running interviews for the job, so the state pays the costs and says how the interview candidates are to put their case – write it down on two sheets of A4 and we’ll send it out to the interview panel i.e. the electorate?

    If it were put like this, perhaps we could overcome the suspicion people have about state funding of political parties.

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Simon R
    @Mike: Just about every human being alive has suffered some trauma in their lives. But most of us have sufficient sense of responsibility not to respond to that...
  • Robin Bennett
    The FOI disclosure about spending by Creative Scotland broken down by council area reveals just one example of the centralist bias of so many parts of governmen...
  • Mike Peters
    So if you want every voter to have equal influence, do we also have to have a limit on much much time people can ‘donate’ to campaigning activities? I mean,...
  • Tessa Skoczylas
    A very good article and excellent comments. I am very concerned that there seems to be accidental or purposeful misinformation being promoted in the media and b...
  • Mike Peters
    I’m surprised that ACH is calling for ‘swift and thorough punishment’ for those who are violent towards NHS staff. Does he not appreciate that those who a...