A plot to deceive the Labour party ?

As I was driving to school this morning i heard an excellent bit of analysis by Nick Robinson on Radio 4's Today programme. What made it so good was its simplicity. ( Jack Straw was on afterwards and did his best to muddy the waters - you know the usual stuff - talking for a long time. Denying allegations that have never been made, changing the subject etc etc - but the damage had been done. )

So what did Nick say ? In short that - cash for peerages and the constellation of funding scandals that are flying in close formation and Guido is now calling Donorgate ( not sure about that one myself ) - all the scandals are about concelling the origin of donations that would otherwise be legal.

Man in a Shed wondered from whom are these donations being kept secret from ? Not the floating voter or middle England - one of the effective ploys used by New Labour has been the "Business supports us now" line they have tried to project. Wealthy people donating to the Labour party is actually good electorally for them ! If they had declared these doantions, and not tried to hide their origin and in some cases pretend they are loans their popularity was not at risk !

So who needs to be deceived ?

The answer must be that the aim has been to deceive the Labour party itself.

This is all about pulling the wool over the eyes of their gullible membership.

In time I think they may come to realise it and start to use the few levers of power they have left ( if they have any at all ) to demand reform.

This is the second phase to these scandals - potentially the reassertion of the Labour party grass roots. However Man in a Shed is not convinced they have it in them. Unlike the Conservative party which will pull any leader up fast who goes beyond what is acceptable I think the Labour party has become too supine. Perhaps its the inherent intellectual dishonesty of supporting socialism when it has been proven to fail is part of this.


Update: Jack Straw's disinformation tactics pay off - look at this headline from the ever helpful BBC !Straw gets his moral outrage going defending something that isn't yet the point. It allows him to define the question and then answer it. Meaning that some thing very similar may be true, but he can do all the strong denial stuff knowing that he won't have to go back on it.