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.

Is the Labour party about to implode ?

Man in a Shed was sitting back watching Newsnight when to his utter amazement Mr David Abrahams appeared on Newsnight, or rather phoned in. Perhaps it was a last minute thing, it was certainly dramatic. ( Guido has the transcript that is probably also available on the Newsnight web site ).

He started to add those small details, the sort that kept the alleged HMRC junior official locked up in a hotel somewhere to avoid passing onto the press. These are the sort of details that journalists ( and bloggers) will check. they are the chinks in the defensive line Labour has tried to erect. Labours spin doctors must have been choking on their l;ate night cornflakes as they saw that !

It suggest Mr Abrahams wants to talk. Perhaps he wants to make sure he's not arrested and prosecuted. This action of talking to Newsnight by phone was extraordinary for someone in his situation. It looked to me to be a signal - a signal to the watching Labour party machine. I think we can guess what it was....

At the same time Gordon Brown has signalled that he's quite happy to sacrifice people to defend his position (Harriet Harman should be feeling the chilly wind on her neck by now ). but once they are sacrificed for the greater Gordon their interests no longer line up with his, as Mr Abrahams may not do so. This is the real danger to Labour as the line breaks and its every comrade for himself. More of those details that the press office try to suppress will come to light - more lines of enquiry for journalists - with more devastating facts to be discovered at their end. ( An analogy with stirring septic tanks comes to mind.)

Things are coming very close to unravelling here for Gordon. Gordon's chief of funding is looking vulnerable. Other may calculate that their seats can be saved if the replace the leadership and have 2 years before the next general election to get things back on track.

PS Does anyone know of a link between Peter Mandelson and Mr Abrahams ? They seem like the sorts of people who might know each other. Perhaps not.

I wonder what Labour home is making of this ?

update: Labour home won't load - times out. I wonder if its overloaded or has been taken of line to avoid further damaging facts getting into the open ? No response to ping ( though this could be a firewall issue ).

Pinging www.labourhome.org [216.249.101.52] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 216.249.101.52:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

Update: Here we go - let the back stabbing commence ! ( Frankly Gordon Brown gets the award for first person to push some one else in harms way with his No10 press briefing where he failed to show enthusiastic support for Harriet Harman.