Poll-Brown & Labour – at 19 years low. And Donor by Proxy

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27th November, 2007

IS THIS THE END FOR BROWN?

Update, 1:00pm: PAYBACK TIME?

It seems that the pressure has increased on the government. Gordon Brown says that Labour will pay back the monies to the donor, David Abrahams. Up to £300,000 has come into the Labour party from this source, directly or indirectly, since GB became leader, and yet no-one seems to have known. Nick Robinson, BBC journalist, insists that “no-one believes that”.

A fourth donor (under David Abrahams) has turned up according to the Electoral Commission website (see BBC report), and under a previous General Secretary of the Labour party.

Harriet Harmon, the Deputy Leader, is now in the spotlight. Perhaps her resignation will take the glare away from Brown. Who knows? Brown was certainly ambivalent in his support of her today at his press conference. It seems she received £5,000 on the 4th July 2007, towards her deputy leadership campaign, under the name of Janet Kidd, and accepted it.

See a full list of the present members of Labour’s NEC. Notable is that Harriet Harmon’s name, as Deputy Leader, is second only to Brown’s. Her husband, Jack Dromey, the party treasurer, is in third place. Interesting, if not a little lax, if neither of these two knew anything about the Donor by Proxy.

But Hilary Benn has a cleaner nose on the issue. He had received a cheque, but under Abraham’s own name, which he accepted, after an initial cheque under someone else’s name, which Benn rejected. You’d think if he suspected this kind of proxy support was going on, he might have flagged his colleagues to be wary. Then again, he too was fighting for the deputy leadership. And perhaps, just perhaps, this kind of thing has long gone on inside the party.

The present prime minister says that he was first told about these donations on Saturday evening. They were, he says, “not lawfully declared so … will be returned”. Brown’s own campaign was offered a donation too by Mr Abrahams, “which was NOT taken up”. Why ever not? Was it a proxy donation?

This sorry tale (and let me repeat that I am not particularly perturbed by the machinations behind financing parties as long as they don’t pocket the cash personally) – might have a way to go yet.

In the meantime, what day is it?

Oh, right, Tuesday. Another day, another crisis.

This site, “Spiked”which I have visited before, and I understand is no great follower of Mr Blair, has one or two harsh words for Mr Brown. In GB’s, defence, though, you have to wonder if these people are British – and I always thought they were! Surely we Brits ALL know that Brown, the son of the Manse, made a big thing about his religious background when he first came to power? You remember, the stuff about his father the reverend? I thought at the time that it didn’t exactly add to the airbrushing of Blair, who was clearly, if quietly, equally religious. It was a hostage to fortune on Brown’s part. And now hearing how he used to regularly ask Blair when he was agoing to “eff off”, we have to ask what exactly his religious upbringing taught him?

Whatever it taught Blair, he, as often before has been proved right. He played the G*d card close to his chest.

A Week’s A Long Time In Politics

Labour General Secretary, Peter Watt, resigns over Donor

I’ve never found all this party funding business a reason to get hot under the collar. But it’s going to raise Brown’s temperature somewhat, have no doubt, as it adds to the general mix of incompetence, untrustworthiness or plain sleaze. I see it as only the first of these, really. There are many more things to get upset about than how political parties raise and manage their cash, especially since we the voters, don’t think we should fund them. You broke it, you own it.

We don’t own politics in this country, so we shouldn’t moan, when they break it.

But this – well, this is a different story!

TORIES AHEAD BY 13%

The Independent’s take on the latest opinion poll news. Interesting that the party which seems to have benefited most – up 2% – is the leaderless Liberal Democrats, though they still have some way to go before they climb to the heady heights of 20% of the vote. The Conservatives have only risen 1% since the last poll. The Labour drop to the Lib Dems and a 14% rise to “Others” is the main story! “None of the above” gets growing support, it seems!

Can we believe this Opinion Poll?

Excerpt from UK Polling Report November, 27th 2007

A new ComRes poll for Tuesday’s Independent has headline voting intention figures, with changes from last month, of CON 40% (-1), LAB 27% (-6), LDEM 18%(+2) and Others 14%.

The 13 point Conservative lead is the largest recorded for almost twenty years; in the unlikely event that such a whopping swing occured in a uniform fashion at a general election it would produce a Tory majority of 58. It is worth remembering however that ComRes do tend to have the most favourable weighting for the Conservatives (and for ‘others’) so we should expect them to report larger leads than companies like YouGov and ICM.

The changes in the topline figures match the general trends we’ve seen elsewhere. Labour are down sharply, the Liberal Democrats are up, benefiting either from the publicity of their leadership election or through Labour’s misfortune, the Conservative vote is down very slightly – the same as we saw with BPIX, rather than the sharp drop we saw with ICM. My instinct is that the ICM poll may be a rogue, that the actual picture is that the Conservatives are steady-ish, Labour are down significantly but the Lib Dems (and others) are the beneficaries of their troubles – that is just my own personal judgement through. We’ve still got YouGov to come this week, Populus early next week and an Ipsos MORI poll at some unspecified point, so we shouldn’t have a lack of polls to make judgements on.

So, it is hard to believe, clearly. It might actually be worse had the proxy donor information been out there.

And with the proviso that Blair might have been just as tarnished by Brown under their present difficulties, the BPIX poll for the Mail on Sunday has the Conservatives on 40%, down 1, and Labour on 35%, down 2.

Other questions in the poll are embarrassing for Labour, but probably don’t tell us much. Voting intention with Blair still in charge is CON 37%, LAB 37%… but this is probably just as unrealistic as the hypothetical polls from before Brown was leader, if Blair was still PM he’d probably have been tarnished by Northern Rock and the loss on benefit data which would have damaged him. The poll also suggested people think Brown is less competent than John Major and Alistair Darling a worse Chancellor than Norman Lamont.

So, five short months after Tony Blair was wrongly ousted from his job, guess what? The Labour Party under GB/PM has slumped to its lowest poll rating for almost two decades!

NINETEEN Years. Not One Year, not Ten, but almost TWENTY! Since Margaret Thatcher was in power- in 1988! Remember her? Even in John Major’s time as Prime Minister, Labour never did as badly as this. The Tories at 40% are 13 points ahead of Labour, on 27%. And when asked if it would be any different if Blair were leader, the parties are even. So that means Brown is lagging behind even the deposed former leader. And if Blair were still there, the Tories would be making no progress.

Unbelievable?

Well, no. Not to some of us.

The very idea that Brown could have picked up the reins from Blair and guided the horses to calmer waters was never on.

Brown was the architect of the economic policies which are now coming apart before our eyes. As has been clear to see in the recent televised ‘Blair Years’ and in recent books by Seldon and Campbell, Gordon Brown held unprecedented sway over our previous Prime Minister. In fact, it would seem, he stood looming over Blair, the ominous, ever-present threat. Too big for his brogues by far.

Whether he should have been allowed to do so for so long; whether Blair was weak to allow him to remain as chancellor or even remain in government; whether Blair could have or should have sacked Brown long ago – these are all debatable. What is clear is that whether through loyalty, or Blair’s famous dislike of sacking or scenes, or for respect for his economic acumen, or for some other reason, Blair allowed Brown to retain an unique position where he was never moved or removed.

More’s the pity.

And the whole takeover from Blair in June was tainted from the beginning as it became clear that Brown’s expectation that the job was HIS to take had many opponents, even within his own party.

This latest ComRes poll in the Independent, was taken BEFORE today’s news about the donor who donated through proxies. With that news, things can only get worse!

Now, personally, I don’t see this donation business as a hanging offence, in the same way as I never thought the police inquiry over “cash for honours” should have been allowed to rumble on adding to the distrust of politicians generally and Blair in particular.

No-one was putting money in their own back pocket. It was all due to the need for parties to raise cash. And tonight Jack Straw said that we only know about this at ALL, because Labour, under Tony Blair, changed the rules to make them more transparent. And another defence I heard on Newsnight tonight was that since there was no hint of reward for this donation it wasn’t such a big sin as the “cover-up” that was said to have surrounded the cash-for-honours fiasco.

Certainly you’d have thought the Labour’s party NEC (National Executive Committee) would have been VERY careful to screen all donations after watching Blair being dragged through the ferals. I imagine Brown was screaming blue murder today, given that he is said to have known nothing about it.

LABOUR ABOUT TO IMPLODE?

This shifting of the focus sideways like this hints at desperation, blame or even implosion within Labour’s ranks. It is unlikely to go unanswered by those who are beginning to worry that this “new” Labour government is accident-prone or incompetent and threatening the very survival of the government. The government, which under Tony Blair, could have had two or even three more years to run!

So, why not answer it here, to start with?

In the end, there was no case to answer as far as the cash-for-honours inquiry was concerned. The innocent are still innocent. There was no “cover-up” so let’s not hint that there was.

But will the police consider that election law has been broken and decide to pursue some in the Labour party as over the last year and a half? Will GB/PM be the second Prime Minister EVER to be questioned by the police in a criminal matter?

I doubt it – and I do not hope for it. It was wrong before, and it would be wrong now.

And Brown is safe while there is no big hitter in the Labour party threatening his position. That is clearly the case.

But there are other matters which are conspiring against Brown’s government.

1 THE NORTHERN ROCK SAGA

Thought it had been saved by Virgin’s respected Richard Branson? So did I … but not quite, it seems.

2 The LOST DATA – THE 2 or 8 MISSING CDs

The Data Protection Minister, Michael Wills says that he learned about the missing CHILD BENEFIT data when the rest of did – on Alistair Darling’s Commons announcement!

WHAT!?

3 THE ARMED FORCES’ COMPLAINTS AGAINST BROWN

Five top military chiefs criticised Brown personally, as well as the government for their “lack of support” to the troops. Nothing new in this kind of cry, but the personal nature of the attack, saying that Brown never attended meetings or showed interest in the forces, highlights why the forces’ chiefs blame the holder of the public purse – Brown, then as chancellor and now as PM – for their financial predicament.

4 THE CGT (CAPITAL GAINS TAX) furore

Alistair Darling is reportedly about to backstep on his proposed changes to CGT, following a rush to early retirement by businesses concerned to avoid increased payments.

Oh for the days of Blair, the CBI must be feeling today, when business felt that the PM could be trusted to keep exchequer changes in check.

It all looks rather careless in the light of Brown’s much acclaimed new broom sweeping all before, or behind him, in June.

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Tags: blair, brown, conservatives, donation, donor, labour, northern rock, opinion polls, resignation, resigns