- Chris Leslie, former Labour MP
Labour MPand 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? - 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
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3 Comments
1. Is Chris Leslie a Labour MP?
2. Hain – OMG what a loose cannon!
3. Fishing expedition as news.
4. Probably ‘cos Abrahams told him?
5. Margaret (ex Treas) did already reveal on the Daily Politics that the committee didn’t take off.
Is there a story here at all?
And there was me thinking this surely can’t get any worse for Labour.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong…..
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.