Brown will 'assist' donors probe

[Steve Gardner]

Source: BBC

The prime minister has vowed to give his backing to the "fullest possible investigation" into Labour funding.

In a letter to the Met Police, Gordon Brown said he was "ready to assist" the police probe and had asked Labour MPs, staff and peers to "co-operate fully".

They are investigating gifts to Labour of more than £650,000 which businessman David Abrahams made using proxy donors.

Number 10 has played down reports of a rift between the PM and Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman over the affair.

'Running commentary'

Mr Brown has insisted that he knew nothing about the funding arrangement with Mr Abrahams.

How David Abrahams made donations to the Labour Party

The prime minister has said all the money paid out by Mr Abrahams will be returned.

In his letter to Met temporary commander Nigel Mawer, Mr Brown said that the manner in which the donations had been made was "unacceptable" and that he would urge Labour Party staff and representatives to be "pro-active" in assisting the police.

He had asked Labour staff, MPs and peers to "co-operate fully in providing relevant information", he added.

Mr Abrahams has said he did not know he was breaking any rules when he made the donations by proxy, claiming that he kept them secret to avoid publicity.

In a statement, Mr Abrahams said he always had discussed the manner of my donations with party officials and "it was never suggested to me that I was doing anything wrong".

"I'm not going to discuss particular meetings with particular individuals save to confirm (Labour's chief fundraiser) Jon Mendelsohn discussed this particular method of donating money with me in April," he said

"I received thank you letters from the Labour Party following donations I had made."

Possible donor

But Mr Mendelsohn denied that he met Abrahams to discuss making donations to the party via intermediaries.

His lawyer said this was "absolutely untrue", adding that the two men did meet at a Jewish event and discussed what he called a "specific charity project to enable Muslims to visit Israel".

Labour's general secretary Peter Watt has already resigned, saying he knew about Mr Abrahams's funding arrangement, but did not think they had broken the rules.

Mr Mendelsohn has said Mr Watt told him about the situation last month but had been unhappy about it and had contacted Mr Abrahams with the intention of putting his donations on a proper footing.

Earlier, Downing Street played down a reported rift between Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman over the affair, following revelations about the way Ms Harman's successful campaign for Labour's deputy leadership was funded.

Her team accepted £5,000 from a donor linked to businessman David Abrahams.

Ms Harman earlier appeared to implicate Mr Brown in the affair by revealing his former leadership campaign manager, Chris Leslie, had suggested one of Mr Abrahams's intermediaries, Janet Kidd, as a possible donor.

Asked earlier if she had "dropped Gordon Brown in it," she replied: "No, absolutely not."

Raise money

In a separate development, the Electoral Commission has asked Ms Harman to explain how she paid for her campaign after BBC Newsnight revealed substantial loans were taken out.

Any such loan should be reported to the Electoral Commission within 30 days. Only one loan, an overdraft facility for £10,000 taken out in October last year has so far been reported.

A statement made on behalf Ms Harman said that she subsequently took out a £40,000 extension to her and her husband's mortgage with the Halifax to fund the campaign.

"The Harriet Harman campaign was under the impression that she did not need to register her mortgage with either the Electoral Commission or the Register of Members' Interests," the statement said.

[Steve Gardner]

According to The Telegraph...

Gordon Brown has announced his determination to press ahead with a review of party political funding, admitting there is an urgent need for reform in the light of illegal donations made to his party.

All of which sounds proper and prudent until you realise that it was virtually impossible for Brown not to have known about the Labour Party's habit of accepting illegal donations before the shit hit the fan.

As The Telegraph report in another piece...

But Mr Brown is also in the frame; linked to the scandal by his fundraiser-in-chief Jon Mendelsohn, a member of his inner circle who, by his own admission, knew about Mr Abrahams's unusual habit of writing cheques for the party - worth more than £650,000 over five years - using other people's bank accounts.

Are we seriously to believe that everyone around him was either benefitting from David Abrahams' donations or else was aware of them, but Brown was blissfully unaware? Apparently so. A 'minister close to Brown', told The Telegraph that, "t's terrible... None of it is Gordon's fault, but life's not fair. Gordon is stoical: he's got his head down."

And Brown himself is playing the innocent to a tee.

What has happened, where political donations have not been lawfully declared, is completely unacceptable, cannot be justified in any way, and this behaviour should never happen again in future.

My moral compass says that what happened over these donations that had not been lawfully declared is completely unacceptable.

That's why, the minute I knew that this was happening, I have taken action. That is why the resignation of the General Secretary of the Labour Party was a necessary first step.

But the controversy doesn't stop with the illegal donations themselves. There have been suggestions that they were made in exchange for favours. As The Mail on Sunday reports...

It has also come to light that Mr Abrahams was granted planning permission for a business park after giving hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party.

In a revelation set to fuel the mounting sleaze allegations, David Abrahams was initially banned from building a network of offices on farmland.

But just a year later - and after giving £199,000 through intermediaries - his application was approved.

Interesting times.

[Steve Gardner]

Here's another interesting development in the row surrounding the funding of the Labour Party.

Source: The Telegraph

By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor
Last Updated: 7:08am GMT 03/12/2007

Gordon Brown has suffered another blow in the illegal donations row as one of his staunchest allies came under intense pressure to resign with Labour facing a second criminal inquiry into the scandal.

Wendy Alexander, the leader of Scottish Labour, is fighting accusations that she was aware that an offshore benefactor made a donation to her leadership campaign.

Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander may be forced to step down

As Strathclyde Police confirmed that they had received a complaint about the donation, which came from a Jersey-based businessman, Ms Alexander was forced to issue a statement protesting her innocence.

At the same time, Mr Brown was under fire over claims that he had misled the public over his knowledge of a series of donations from David Abrahams, the property developer.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said yesterday that it "beggars belief" that the Prime Minister knew nothing about the illegal funding of his party.

The attack came as Mr Abrahams hinted that Cabinet ministers may have been aware of his illegal arrangement to donate money via conduits.

Opposition parties are growing increasingly confident that senior Labour figures may have to resign over the scandals.

I think more heads are going to roll here. What's more, it's hard to see how Brown can get through this, because he's at fault if he knew and at fault if he didn't.

If he knew - which he surely must have done - then he is guilty of failing to act; if he didn't know, then he's guilty of gross mis-management.

[Steve Gardner]

Well, despite my feelings about the matter back in December, Teflon-Brown (or Coco the Brown, as I have recently labelled him) did indeed survive. In fact, rather like his predecessor, Teflon-Blair, he has developed a habit of dodging bullets - most recently, the debacle over the abolition of the 10p basic rate of tax.

But now Blair's buddy is sticking the boot in. Coming so soon after Cherie Blair and John 'two Jags' Prescott stuck the boot in, one wonders what on earth is really going on with the Labour Party.

I know Cherie and Levy have books to promote, but they must surely realise their revelations are not just hurting Brown but damaging the Party. So what's it all about?

Source: BBC

In politics, as in showbusiness, timing is everything.

As a former pop impresario - he is the man who brought you Alvin Stardust - Lord Levy would know that better than most.

Which is why his decision to tour the television studios, reiterating his belief that it would be "inconceivable" Gordon Brown did not know about the loans made to the Labour Party by wealthy businessman to keep it afloat and allow it to fight the 2005 general election, is so interesting.

Lord Levy's book, giving his version of the cash-for-honours row, is published on Monday, reason enough for him to be out and about promoting it.

But he has already made the point he thinks it stretches credulity for Mr Brown - in charge of Labour's election campaign and a well-known "details" man - to claim he did not know how it was being paid for.

Hanging out to dry

The prime minister was insisting, less than two weeks ago, that he knew nothing about the loans.

He says he did not want to know about who was funding the party because, as the then chancellor, he did not want to be put in a position where any change in tax policy could be interpreted as a sop to donors.

In itself, Lord Levy's intervention probably would not unduly trouble Downing Street... had it not come on a weekend where you really wouldn't want to have been Mr Brown's paperboy.

Cherie Blair and John Prescott publicly washing, spinning and hanging out to dry the dirty linen of the Brown-Blair relationship.

A poll which suggests Labour could lose the safe seat of Crewe and Nantwich.

Another which puts David Cameron ahead of the prime minister on, well, on pretty much everything really.

Oh - and the small matter of the row over the abolition of the 10p tax rate, a row which Frank Field, the Labour MP who has led the charge against his own government on this one, warns is still completely capable of costing Gordon Brown his job.

Timing is everything - for pop stars, politicians - and especially prime ministers.