Caught Red-Handed

The government has been caught red-handed accepting illegal donations totalling more than £650,000 from someone using a number of false names. The donor, David Abrahams, is a property developer with a controversial history. Most damaging to the government is the revelation that one of his development projects was refused government permission, and then miraculously granted permission some time later after one of these anonymous donations was made.

Additionally however it would appear that Abrahams once stood as a Labour MP, but was deselected when it was discovered that he hired a woman and her son to pose as his family to make him more electable (allegedly). It also seems he routinely uses a false name "David Martin" in some circles, and there is even a dispute about when he was born. He claims to be 54 years old, but some documentation puts him at 64 years old. It has also been alleged that he has some links to controversial Palestinian groups, and he appears to have been thrown out of the "Labour Friends of Israel" group.

Abrahams' exit from this Labour Friends of Israel group appears to have involved one Jon Mendelsohn, also a member of the group and currently working as the PM's chief fundraiser. Mendelsohn and Abrahams apparently don't like each other, and Abrahms has dropped Mendelsohn right in it this week by announcing that he (Medelsohn) was aware of the donations being made in false names.

The PM has been called incompetent. But I don't think that this is down to the PM, at least not just the PM, this is down to the Labour party. And it has nothing to do with incompetence come to that; this is about corruption. The Labour party has been accepting donations from someone deliberately hiding his identity. This breaks a rule the Labour party put in place only a few years ago. For this to happen, a large number of people within the Labour party must be corrupt.

Currently four people within the Labour party have admitted knowing that the illegal donations were being made. Peter Watt (who has resigned over the matter and was the Labour General Secretary), Baroness Jay (who ran Hilary Benn's deputy leadership campaign and advised him to turn down a dodgy donation), Hilary Benn himself obviously, and Jon Mendelsohn (Brown's chief fundraiser). Mendelsohn is claiming he knew because Watt told him. I don't think we know how Baroness Jay knew or why she told Hilary Benn, or why neither of them told anyone else.

You know what annoys me most about this whole scandal, it's the fact that no one seems to be concerned about the fact that 25 million data records went walkabout last week and still haven't been recovered. All the column inches are filled with party funding scandals. I'm not saying that the funding scandals are not important, I just wish it had all come slightly staggered with the other crises so that the public could get a real feel for the depth of crap into which we, the general public, appear to have been dropped by this administration.