Just like Tony Blair before him in the “cash for honours” scandal, Gordon Brown now has to defend himself, his deputy and his chief fundraiser.
He points out that it was Labour that banned overseas donations to British political parties and introduced a register for all gifts over £5,000.
True, but it’s equally true that new Labour then went out of its way to undermine the legislation.
Mr Blair’s personally appointed fundraiser Lord Levy was allowed to advise would-be Labour Party donors to dodge the register requirement by offering their cash as loans.
And, while the stench of that scandal still pollutes the Westminster air, in comes the odour from the revelation that hundreds of thousands of pounds provided to the party by property speculator David Abrahams have been credited in the books to four other people, at least two of whom are hostile to the Labour Party.
For a start, this is illegal, since it undermines the very openness that Labour’s legislation was intended to provide.
It also raises a number of questions over how and by whom the actual payments were made.
If Mr Abrahams gave money to his proxies and asked them to send their own cheques to the party, why did they, as Conservative Party supporters or non-political people, agree to do so?
On the other hand, if he sent his own cheques to the party and said that they were to be logged in these other names, why was this not checked with the individuals?
And if such donations were falsely recorded in the Labour Party’s financial records, even though this was clearly illegal to anyone with more than five minutes experience in politics, who knew about it?
General secretary Peter Watt, who resigned this week, has put his hand up, taking full responsibility and claiming, incredibly, that he knew nothing about the legal situation.
According to Mr Brown’s personally appointed fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn, Mr Watt told him about Mr Abrahams’s arrangement and assured him that it was entirely legal.
If Mr Mendelsohn believed such an assertion without checking for himself or raising it with the party leader, party treasurer, a legal adviser or, indeed, according to himself, anyone at all, he ought not to be allowed out on his own.
It is already becoming clear that some senior Labour figures knew Mr Abrahams and his scheme and were not impressed.
It will be to Labour’s detriment – and its shame – if the questions of who knew what and when have to be teased out over several months.
The blame for this latest funding scandal lies with new Labour’s obsession with keeping the trade unions at arm’s length and sucking up to the rich as its financiers.
The voluntary donations of millions of working people, passed on by their trade unions, are a much more wholesome means of financing a party of labour than this shameful self-prostitution to big business and wealthy individuals.
Just like Tony Blair before him in the “cash for honours” scandal, Gordon Brown now has to defend himself, his deputy and his chief fundraiser.
He points out that it was Labour that banned overseas donations to British political parties and introduced a register for all gifts over £5,000.
True, but it’s equally true that new Labour then went out of its way to undermine the legislation.
Mr Blair’s personally appointed fundraiser Lord Levy was allowed to advise would-be Labour Party donors to dodge the register requirement by offering their cash as loans.
And, while the stench of that scandal still pollutes the Westminster air, in comes the odour from the revelation that hundreds of thousands of pounds provided to the party by property speculator David Abrahams have been credited in the books to four other people, at least two of whom are hostile to the Labour Party.
For a start, this is illegal, since it undermines the very openness that Labour’s legislation was intended to provide.
It also raises a number of questions over how and by whom the actual payments were made.
If Mr Abrahams gave money to his proxies and asked them to send their own cheques to the party, why did they, as Conservative Party supporters or non-political people, agree to do so?
On the other hand, if he sent his own cheques to the party and said that they were to be logged in these other names, why was this not checked with the individuals?
And if such donations were falsely recorded in the Labour Party’s financial records, even though this was clearly illegal to anyone with more than five minutes experience in politics, who knew about it?
General secretary Peter Watt, who resigned this week, has put his hand up, taking full responsibility and claiming, incredibly, that he knew nothing about the legal situation.
According to Mr Brown’s personally appointed fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn, Mr Watt told him about Mr Abrahams’s arrangement and assured him that it was entirely legal.
If Mr Mendelsohn believed such an assertion without checking for himself or raising it with the party leader, party treasurer, a legal adviser or, indeed, according to himself, anyone at all, he ought not to be allowed out on his own.
It is already becoming clear that some senior Labour figures knew Mr Abrahams and his scheme and were not impressed.
It will be to Labour’s detriment – and its shame – if the questions of who knew what and when have to be teased out over several months.
The blame for this latest funding scandal lies with new Labour’s obsession with keeping the trade unions at arm’s length and sucking up to the rich as its financiers.
The voluntary donations of millions of working people, passed on by their trade unions, are a much more wholesome means of financing a party of labour than this shameful self-prostitution to big business and wealthy individuals.