According to Pravda's Today Programme Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harperson has no ambition. Or at least all she wants is to be a deputy. On the Today programme she apparently saidlied that
"I don't want to be prime minister and I don't want to be leader of the party."
So here we have a politician who has no ambition or desire to move up to the Top Job. Excuse my derision at the thought that she does not want to move onto being Prime Minister. Perhaps she believes on the 30th Anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's rule that no other woman can do the job.
If you want to see a proper politician becoming Prime Minister then watch BBC Parliament today as Maggie in 1979 becomes Prime Minister. Or have a look here.
No not a song title, just a thought on where all the trouble is coming from in the "Donorgate" scandal that is currently destroying the pitiful remains of the Labour party to many peoples amusement.
All the big problems for the Labour Party are now coming not from the general donations to the party from David Abrahams which are about 650k, but from the donations to the Deputy Leadership campaigns and the attempted donation to the Leadership Campaign fund which total about 10k.
Now I can understand that campaigning for the deputy leadership might cost a couple of bob, but the amounts spent between all the candidates seems to have very significant. Looking at the amount donated to each candidate we see the following rough totals.
Blears 69K, Benn 31K, Cruddas 70K, Hain 77k, Harman 46k, Johnson 53K. These do not include borrowings of Harman (10K at a rate of 14.17%!) and "late" changes such as the 5K to Hain that he forgot to report from Jon Mendelsohn. This brings in a total of 361K.
Now this seems to be an awful lot of money for a fairly simple job, a few leaflets, a web site, and a couple of nice suits, but it seems to have caused some of the candidates a lot of problems and in particular Harriet Harman.
She has struggled to raise money and even had to take out a significant loan at what looks like a penalty rate and received over 30K of the money after the election had been completed, which is perhaps why she seems to have taken the money from David Abrahams via Janet Kidd without doing some simple checks.
And do try and explain to me how Clunker Brown managed to need 196k for his Leadership Campaign fund, there was no need for this money as no-one challenged him.
I assume that all the spare money from these campaigns is added to the general Labour coffers?
P.S. Note that here in Scotland it only costs £950 to cause Leadership woes.
If, as reported on the BBC, the donations have been going on for four years, and Peter Watt has only been General Secretary of the Labour Party for under two years, then who else knew about the donations funnelled from David Abrahams's.
The previous General Secretary of the Labour Party was Matt Carter who, according to the always correct Wikipedia, organised the legal aspects of loans from individuals to the Labour Party that were central to the Cash for Honours political scandal. Did he know anything about the set-up or was he ignorant of the deal?
Update I. BBC reporting a further 200k of donations found through Mr Abraham's solicitor.
Update II. Lib Dem Voice reports that Peter Watt must have known the rules.
Update III. Comments on Guido indicate the matter is now going to the Police.
Update IV. Now it seems Harriet Harman trousered 5K from Mr Abraham via a similar arrangement. Hilary Benn received 5K direct from Mr Abrahams
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