My thoughts on Derek Conway.

I will confine myself here to the following:-

He did wrong. He got caught. He is being punished. His career is over. His reputation is in tatters. Let us leave the man alone.

Also there has been in certain newspapers an utterly hideous set of exposes regarding Derek Conway’s eldest son. Yes it appears he was in receipt of money as a researcher for his father, that much is in the public interest, but to rake over his lifestyle, his friends and his sexuality is beneath contempt. The journalists responsible should be ashamed of themselves, their reporting of Henry Conway was out of order and certain aspects should be out of bounds. Also there is a whiff of blatant prejudice in the manner of the reporting that is reprehensible. I think we should demand more from our newspapers than this!

Peter Hain

So Peter Hain has finally done what he should have done a while ago and resigned. Actually Gordon Brown should have had some courage and sacked him. The damage done to Labour is huge, and will almost certainly in my opinion contribute to them losing the next election. Obviously there is still plenty of time until the next election and Gordon shows no enthusiasm for having an early election after he got his fingers so spectacularly burnt in October! The Cabinet has been moderately reshuffled and the government will get back to some semblance of order, however with multiple police investigations into their funding arrangements it won’t quite be business as usual! The events of today throw up a number of questions notably about the fate of Wendy Alexander and Harriet Harman. However I think the biggest question has to be if it has been decided that DWP and the Welsh Office have to have two separate ministers in charge, why can Scotland and Defence still be done by the same person? It needs to be answered, my guess is it won’t be a convincing response.

Gordon Brown on Peter Hain

I am probably not alone in finding Gordon Brown’s comments that the fate of Peter Hain is ‘out of his hands’ utterly astonishing. To hide as he is attempting to do behind the regulatory bodies is breathtaking moral cowardice. It strikes me that for someone who flaunts his moral compass to have to be told when it is appropriate to sack someone is bizarre to say the least. The Prime Minister seems to want to stand up and take the credit for success and dissociate himself from any fallout by being able to point at the Electoral Commission and Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and say ‘they made me do it’. This is a craven and cowardly position to adopt, the Prime Minister is increasingly looking like he simply isn’t cut out for leadership. The tragedy for the British electorate is that having toyed with an election last Autumn he is not going to hold one possibly until the last legal date. We are going to be forced to endure variations on the whole Hain farrago for up to another 2 years. It is so dispiriting.

Peter Hain

Mr Hain has finally announced the scale of his undeclared donations. He has admitted that over 100,000 pounds of donations were not properly registered. Considering that he actually only registered 80 odd thousand pounds in donations initially he is admitting that he failed to declare more than he declared. This is utterly breathtaking, when the story broke a couple of months ago it appeared that Hain had failed to declare a few donations here and there, this would have been bad enough but I think most people could have understood the odd lapse and would not have made a huge fuss. This is not the odd donation, this is more than half of his total donations. I would say that Peter Hain has some ‘splainin to do, and I would suggest that he should be doing it having sacrificed the luxury of his ministerial car. Mr Hain should resign and if he hasn’t got the honour to do so then Gordon Brown should have the courage to sack him! Somehow I suspect that Hain will cling on like a leech.

Parallels

A corruption scandal involving shadowy dealings, third parties, and major political figures has claimed the resignation of a senior figure. It has taken quite a long time to extract the resignation. This is Brazil though, sorry for getting your hopes up, full details are here.

In related news, Wendy is still not resigning.

Yet more on Wendy

Wendy Alexander “It would be easy to resign..”

Go ahead then if it is that simple! We are still waiting.

A current word

The word untenable is being used quite a bit of late, but where does it come from. Well it is a word of Latin origin, from tenere the verb ‘to hold’. The verb is usually used in Latin with regard to beliefs or positions and we get the word tenet from the same root, a tenet being an article of faith or a philosophical position which is held. So something that is tenable is something capable of being held, it therefore proceeds logically that something which is untenable is that which is incapable of being held. Wendy Alexander’s position is untenable, and I have been arguing that she should resign. However Ms Alexander is being somewhat contumacious and is yet to put pen to paper and resign. Contumacious is a word that should be used more often, it means stubborn but it certainly sounds more intelligent.

If Wendy, Harriet, Mr Hain, and all the others caught up in this continue to dig in then Labour in all probabilities faces ruination. Oh well, I shall not mourn!

If something is wrong it is wrong

Again there is a story that the only reason Wendy Alexander is clinging on is because she is under a ‘no resignation’ order from the Brown Bunker. The theory is that if Ms Alexander goes then it creates a domino effect and Harman will go and with the latest revelations of amnesia from Peter Hain he would probably be under huge pressure to go too.

If something is wrong it is wrong, if it is a resignation issue then the only thing to do is resign. You shouldn’t look over your shoulder at what damage that might do. So what if resigning causes a domino effect? The other dominoes have reasons to be resigning anyway. Yes it will be damaging for Gordon Brown but clinging on is hardly helpful is it?

At 7:20 AM on Tuesday 4th December Wendy Alexander still hadn’t resigned.

How much worse can things get?

Tonight several members of the Labour hierarchy are up to their necks in it and should probably be considering their position. On the face of it some of them have little to consider and should be writing letters of resignation. The group are as follows, Wendy Alexander, Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey, Peter Hain and John Mendelsohn. It is a nightmare for Gordon Brown which is probably why all of them are sitting around coming up with ever more ludicrous justifications for not doing the necessary thing. The fact of the matter is they are not resigning because Gordon Brown calculates that he would suffer more damage if they did than if they cling on.

Jack Dromey should probably resign more on principle really, the fact is he ought to have known as treasurer about the way Labour was being funded. That he didn’t either shows recklessness on his part or deceit on the part of his colleagues. Leaving aside the fact that the dodgy remortgage that funded his wife’s deputy leadership campaign had his name on it as well.

Wendy Alexander, I have mentioned several times previously the fact of the matter is that she looks sleazy and the dodgy shenanigans North of the border are under criminal investigation. If she had any shred of decency she would go very very quickly.

Peter Hain has admitted that he has failed to register properly several donations to his deputy leadership campaign. He should fall on his sword as soon as he possibly can. That he clings on shows the arrogance that characterises New Labour.

John Mendelsohn appears to be being flatly contradicted by David Abrahams and well it is a toss up who is more believable. Some would argue that they are probably both being economical with the actualite in that famous Alan Clark phrase. Personally if I were Mendelsohn I would resign to prevent myself damaging my political master. He should go.

Harriet Harman also still has unanswered questions, particularly in light of the dodgy mortgage revelations. She accepted a donation from someone who was a proxy, that donation was impermissible under electoral law. I think in actual fact she is probably the safest of the group with her husband as well being fairly safe.

There are so many people now caught up in this scandal, and the fact that it is at the heart of the Labour party machine suggests that Labour is systemically incapable of being honest over the sources of funding. Brown would be severely damaged if any of those mentioned above are forced to quit, in actual fact they should not be being forced most of them should have gone long before now. If more than one go I think it would be severely damaging for a long long time. The problem is that the longer these people cling like limpets to office then more damage will be done to the government. The history of the last years of the Conservative government was a history of ministers failing to resign quickly and being dragged reluctantly from office with the government suffering monumental damage. Gordon Brown is supposed to be aware of history, painfully aware, surely he cannot be blind to the risk of allowing people to cling on.

Number one on my plank-walking list has to be Wendy Alexander, two would be Peter Hain and three would be John Mendelsohn. I suspect that one, more or all of them will eventually be dragged kicking, screaming and sulking from office. The sooner the better.

Update - Just noticed that the former Standards Commissioner is saying Wendy Alexander should consider her position. It won’t make a lot of difference, Labour never really listened to him before they forced him out!

Why won’t she resign?

Doesn’t Wendy Alexander even have the basic level of political sense to realise the damage that she is doing to Labour North and South of the border? I think that she is doing herself and her party huge harm by failing to see the inevitability of the termination of her career at this point. I repeat again that she ought to resign, and quickly!