Five Labour donation puzzles
- Chris Leslie, former Labour MP and Gordon Brown’s leadership election campaign coordinator, has been named by Harriet Harman’s aides as the person who suggested they contact Janet Kidd for a donation to her campaign. Yet the Gordon Brown campaign also received a cheque from Janet Kidd and rejected it. Why reject money from someone whilst also recommending that person to someone else? Any why recommend Janet Kidd from amongst all the other possible donors?
- Peter Hain’s Labour Deputy Labour Leadership campaign has admitted it failed to declare to the Electoral Commission a £5,000 donation from Jon Mendelsohn.
- BBC’s Newsnight has broadcast a report claiming that Harriet Harman’s Labour Deputy Leadership campaign took out a series of loans that were not declared to the Electoral Commission.
- As blogged previously, Janet Dunn, Janet Kidd and Ray Ruddick all gave £25,000 whilst David Triesman (now in the House of Lords as Baron Triesman of Tottenham) was Labour General Secretary, with £65,000 coming from John McCarthy and £12,000 from Janet Kidd whilst Matt Carter was Labour General Secretary. Yet they both preceded Peter Watt as Labour General Secretary and they have both today denied knowing that any of these donors were acting as fronts for David Abrahams. So how did Peter Watt find out?
- There is still no decent explanation from Labour as to why their committee of six who were meant to vet all donations of £5,000 or more does not appear to have vetted any of David Abrahams donations.
Leave a Reply