Although the first reports of an illegal proxy donation came out on Sunday, the shit only really hit the fan early this week, by which time I was in Germany on a couple of days R&R (cheap beer, good meat-based food, smoking in pubs and an efficient mass transit system, thanks for asking). And so it was only seeing the papers at the airport on the way back that I grasped the full scale of the scandal.
I was not in the least surprised. And, addressing myself for a moment to any Labour supporters reading this, you will surely be forced to admit this inconvenient truth: neither were you.
The quite pathetic attempts of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman to try to turn this into an issue "for all parties" to be ashamed of - or, even better, to blame this on the Tories - have been almost comical to behold. If you hadn't walked away from the talks on party funding, they bleat at the opposition benches, we'd have agreed state funding of political parties and we wouldn't be in this situation.
Pause for a minute to appreciate the sheer brazenness of this sentiment. It's the last-ditch retort of the teenager caught pilfering a fiver from his mother's purse; it's your fault, he whinges, for not giving me enough pocket money.
You made me do it. All week, the people caught with their fingers in the till have studiously been substituting labels like "Labour" and "I" with the carefully chosen "all political parties" and "we", in an attempt to hoodwink us into thinking that they're only victims of a rotten system, rather than the criminals. The language of moral agency is nowhere to be seen. By an almost imperceptible sleight of verbal hand, money-laundering becomes everyone's fault, not just the people who are actually doing it.
This unique "don't blame us, everyone's at it" defence does at least contain a kernel of truth; all the main political parties have often benefited from shady funding arrangements, and all agree that me, you and John Q. should dip further into our wallets to pay for their activities, differing only on the small print. If we don't agree to fork out to keep them in the style to which they've become accustomed, they tell us with straight faces, then no wonder they will lie and steal to pay for their private polling and their databases of marginal voters and their doltish, lowest common denominator billboards. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? No, I fucking well am not.
The Byzantine intricacies of who knew what when, and who is now backstabbing whom, are fascinating, but covered better elsewhere. What is clear is that the official story is unravelling fast - a lot more people knew than they let on, and more seem to be joining the rolls every few hours. As the filthy, foul-smelling sewage laps around his ankles, the PM is obviously using dear old Harriet Harman as a sandbag to soak up the encroaching, shit-filled waters, and with some success. Gordon's people smelt a rat and tore up the £5000 cheque they'd received in the name of Abraham's secretary but, hilariously, still passed the donor's name on to Team Harman, who had overspent on her campaign and is still trying pay off all the bills - and she now
stands accused of dumping Gordon in the brown stuff by pointing this out.
Indeed, Harriet's miraculous transformation from doughty feminist champion into wittering, clueless housewife has been a particular highlight of the last couple of days, and carries strong echoes of Tessa Jowell's similarly humiliating efforts at playing dumb last year. I don't understand such things, la Harman simpered plaintively last night. Jack pays all the bills, and changes all the lightbulbs. I'm just a simple lass. Fundraising? I honestly wouldn't know where to begin.
Like the sainted Tessa's suggestion that she didn't understand what she was doing when she signed a mortgage document for £400,000 which her husband then
paid off four weeks later (clue: it's fifteen letters and rhymes with "honey laundering"), it's entirely risible and totally unbelievable. I wonder what all those Guardianistas
who thought it was so important for Labour to have a woman in the deputy's job are thinking as they watch Harman channeling Nanette Newman in a desperate attempt to wriggle off the hook. I hope they're cringing. I think it's hilarious.
Splenetic right-wing commentators occasionally like to compare this nation to a banana republic, but the comparison is inapposite. In a true banana republic, the mob would have stormed the Palace of Westminster long ago, and Harman, Brown and the rest would be dangling from the lampposts on St Stephen's Green. The only real similarity is that, there as here, the contempt of our elected leaders for those they purport to represent is palpable. They drip disdain for the ungrateful voter. It oozes from every pore. Watching them on screen, you can almost reach out and touch it, it's so obvious.
The Downing Street website
deletes all mention of the scandal from its transcripts of Tuesday's Prime Ministerial press conference - a particularly cute Orwellian touch. Jack Straw
wanders on to the Today programme this morning to defend his comrades, and whines that it was Labour who had cleaned up the rules on party funding. "We have changed the culture quite considerably". You certainly have, you fucking crooks. "For a long time this was an unknown unknown. The moment it became a known known, we got on to it."
Fuck off.Right-wing bloggers, too, are criticised for our corrosive cynicism, and the way that we imply that all politicians are either incompetent or crooked. But, really, when this bunch of hypocritical, simian-browed fucktrumpets is unleashing wave after wave of ham-fisted ineptitude and breathtaking dishonesty on us, one after the other, almost as fast as we can type, what else are we to think?
Not all politicians are either incompetent or crooked. But the current administration is both. Fuck them all.
Scotland's airports have been fitted out with new posters welcoming people to the country.
What is this obsession with veiled Muslim women? If photographers can't find one, they ask one to cover up. I actually saw this picture being taken, and the photographer asked her to pose like this.
Why do so many Labour donors seem embarrassed about giving to the Labour Party? David Abrahams did it through his employees. Wendy Alexander's leadership campaign, where she had to beat nobody, raised £17,000 through attracting several donors of £995, just under the £1000 mark where they would have to be declared.
