Money, Money, Money…

This week’s hot issue has been Labour’s problems with donations received through third parties, which has dominated the headlines quite substantially. The problem is that David Abrahams has donated more than £600,000 to the party under other people’s names. This is illegal, and Gordon Brown has acknowledged, and announced that the money will be returned. This has already cost Peter Watt, the Labour general secretary, his job, and may cost Jon Mendelsohn, Brown’s chief fundraiser and general election director, his job as well.

But the problems go deeper. Harriet Harman, the deputy leader, party chairman, and Leader of the House of Commons, accepted £5,000 from Abrahams through one of his third-party donors, although she claims that she and her campaign team “acted at all times within both the letter and the spirit of the law.”

What has now happened is that the Electoral Commission has called in the police. This is yet another scandal for Labour at the moment, allowed the “sleaze” tag to be attached to them, and for Brown’s leadership to be viciously attacked by David Cameron and compared to Mr Bean by Vince Cable at PMQs.

And it continues even this morning with Harriet Harman effectively telling Gordon Brown “if I’m going down, I’m taking you with me”. Since this story seems to be continuing apace, at this rate it may even be next weeks Hot Issue as well!

What’s been said?

There has been a hell of a lot of comment in the blogosphere on this topic over the last week. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to keep or create a list of these posts… So if you want to read them – and there are some great ones out there – I suggest you go searching! If you have written any good posts on the issue, feel free to mention them in the comments!

Analysis

This has been yet another bad week for Labour and Gordon Brown. This is yet another nail in the coffin of Gordon Brown’s leadership, and allows the difficult-to-shift labels of “sleaze” and “scandal” to be attached to the entire party. Especially following on so soon after cash-for-honours, it certainly doesn’t help the general view of political parties and donations to them.

In a way, you can’t help but feel sorry for Gordon Brown over this issue. After all, its certainly not all his fault, and since his leadership campaign turned down a donation from one of Abrahams intermediaries, he can’t be attacked for personally having taken crooked donations [unlike his deputy]. However as he is the leader, it is in the end his responsibility to deal with.

Since the police have been called in, it looks very bad for Labour. This, especially right on the heels of their other problems and that the polls are consistently really quite bad for them, really doesn’t make Brown’s Labour government look very good at all.

The ThunderDragon