Labour on Trial! Murkier and Yet Murkier Still
Comment at end
28th November, 2007
JUST A BIT OF FUN - HONEST, M’LUD!
Today’s Quote: I am not gamesome: I do lack some part of that quick spirit that is in Antony. (Julius Caesar, 1.2.2
Characters in the
play- erm - trialGordon Brown,PM
David Abrahams, Rich Benefactor, long-time Labour Supporter
Hilary Benn,MP
Harriet Harman,MP - Deputy leader, Party Chair, under Brown, formerly sacked by Blair
Jack Dromey - Party Treasurer under Brown & Blair, married to Ms Harman
Baroness Margaret Jay - Friend of Tony Blair
Tony Blair - Former PM
ALL IN THE BROWN STUFF NOW!
Now, let me be a bore and preface this by saying that I really don’t know who knew what about whom, when, how or even why! Just like everyone else, really. Only most people, as they did in the honours fiasco, have opinions, and they’ll be bleating and repeating them at work, in the pubs on the buses and trains. They think they know it all.
And after tomorrow when they read their favourite rag, they will be the authority on everything, able to furnish you with the lot!
And I, personally do NOT really think it’s a hanging offence to try to work a bit of a flanker on funding your political party, particularly when the electorate doesn’t think they owe you one for the privilege of the vote. But, chickens are coming home to roost for the present PM, who set himself on a (supposedly) higher plane than others. He now may have some way to fall!
So, just for fun, why don’t we have a little trial right here, right now? By blogsite, as it were. Got your knitting out? Sharpen the needles. Ready for a good hanging? Here goes.
(An aside to any legal personages with nothing better to do than read this rubbish: It’s all in jest, dear friends, in jest.)
I’ll omit the summary justice bit. There’s enough blood on Labour’s carpet as it is.
PREFACE:
IS THAT A TEAR IN YOUR EYE, TONY?
People love a scandal. And since we don’t get much in the way of sex from this government, sleazy goings-on about cash seem to be the thing.
And that’s the shocker!
You’d really think they’d have learned something from seeing the former Prime Minister and his reputation dragged through the
gutters… er,press… er, gutter press. You’d expect them to be ultra careful.I suppose Tony Blair doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Well, no, he probably does know.
On Newsnight David Abrahams (The Donor Who Never Was, Founder of Donation-by-Proxy) spoke to Jeremy Paxman and left us even more confused.
He said he had been a supporter of Hilary Benn, which he repeated. Despite prompting he would say nothing as regards Harriet Harman. He said he had supported Benn with a cheque which he handed to him personally (this will have been the cheque Benn referred to in replacement of the first cheque by proxy, which Benn refused). And Mr Abrahams says he didn’t know that what he had done was illegal.
On the charge of doing something illegal, knowing or not -
Verdict on Mr Abrahams: Guilty, though possibly Unproven, therefore probably Innocent. (OK, so this is the Scottish system.)
Sentence - Dunno really. Seems a good enough chap!
SO, WHY DID HILARY BENN REFUSE THE FIRST CHEQUE?
It seems he refused the cheque by proxy because he was informed by Baroness Margaret Jay, former Leader of the Lords, and friend of Tony Blair, that it had come via David Abrahams. What? How did she know that it was from Abrahams, if the cheque were in the name of the proxy?
AND WHY, IF & WHEN HE, BENN, KNEW THIS, DID HE NOT INFORM OTHERS IN LABOUR’S HIERARCHY?
Oh, I see, because he reasonably did NOT expect other deputy leadership candidates to be offered backing too. Obviously. And he did not want to get the conspiratorial sectors of Labour at it again, by mentioning that HE had been offered this support. Fair enough.
So, having put Benn in the dock, it looks like he has no case to answer. Case dismissed.
Verdict on Mr Benn: Innocent
On the much more serious charge of not changing his name to something more masculine when he grew up - GUILTY, as charged.
Sentence: Be compelled to listen to the parliamentary audio taped diary of his father’s thousand years as an MP, ad nauseum. (Mr Tony Benn - former Sir Anthony Wedgwood-Benn, though he doesn’t like to be reminded of this) Nightly listening, of course, until popping clogs time.
And Baroness Margaret Jay? She seems to have come across Mr Abrahams before, and knew to be careful. But as far as the charge of knowing something she should have shared with others -
Verdict on Lady Jay: Innocent
On the much more serious charge of being a friend of Tony Blair -
GUILTY, as charged.
Sentence - Hanging, erm … the Brownites out to dry.
But what of Harriet Harman? She is married to Jack Dromey, the Labour Party Treasurer, third named on the NEC list at the Labour party website. And famously, he is the one in Blair’s Labour who first raised the issue on cash for loans/honours/peerages, saying, in a huff, that HE, as the Party Treasurer KNEW nothing about what was going on as far as raising funds for the 2005 general election was concerned.
Fund raising, he indicated, had largely been handled by Lord Levy and a small clique in Number 10. Nothing to do with him!
There have been more than a few who are of the opinion that Dromey and Harman, as friends of Brown knew EXACTLY what they were doing in the spring of 2006 as Blair was all but on his knees begging for a merciful dispatch and speedy end to his misery.
Soon after this, the Scottish & Welsh nationalists proved easy prey to be used; they picked up on the story of “corruption at the top”, and Yates of the Yard was to spend more than a year and more than one million public pounds, chasing tails & tales around the former Prime Minister.
Verdict on Mr Dromey: Guilty as hell!
(Whatever the charge! He’s guilty.)
On the much more serious charge of being a friend of Gordon Brown -
GUILTY, as charged.
Sentence - Hanging
And prior to that to remain married to H. Harman, until death etc …
Verdict on Ms Harman: Guiltier, and yet guiltier still!
And on the much more serious charge of being an even CLOSER friend of Gordon Brown -
GUILTY, as charged.
And, for being married to Dromey, the two-faced, back-stabbing, regicidal maniac, allegedly!
GUILTY
Sentence - No divorce permitted EVER from Dromey! Even after death!
THEN AGAIN - DID BLAIR SET BROWN UP?
Now if I were a conspiracy theorist I’d wonder if it were The Revenge of the Blairites!
| Who is that man over there? I don’t know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! — hang him! | Oscar Wilde | 1856-1900, British Author, Wit |
I might as well suggest it before others do; and they will.
After all, Mr Blair was done in, as it were, by Brown and his gang of merry men. If they could have got way with … well … !
On Newsnight, a search into Mr Abrahams’ building business interests uncovered nothing untoward in the Durham area, where he was based, as far as planning regulations were or are concerned. And, according to Mr Blair’s spokesman, Mr Abrahams was an active member of the region, and would have been invited to Tony Blair’s farewell speech in his Sedgefield constituency, for that reason alone.
Certainly, if there were any plans to screw Gordon afterwards, they would have kept Mr Abrahams well hidden, surely?
So, it’s not Blair wot dunnit!
On the charge of knowing something that he didn’t warn GB about, and so finally getting his own back on the miserable Scot for not telling the then PM what he was going to put into several budgets until the morning of said budgets, oh and for not allowing the monies needed by Mr Blair to go into Health and Education reforms in the hope of stymying said reforms, AND of telling the then PM to “eff off ” so many times, that our brilliant and talented premier didn’t know whether he was coming or effing going, and … AND … for generally being a presumptious, opinionated, over-ambitious pain in the backside …
So - Case Dismissed
Verdict on Mr Blair: Innocent as the Driven Snow; Purer than Pure, no less.
And on the much more serious charge of being an even CLOSER friend of Gordon Brown
INNOCENT
And last but not least - The Labour Party & Gordon Brown
On the first charge of misleading the party/public/the voters/that chap down the road who has always voted Labour/everyone else in the world -
Verdict on The Lot of Them: Guilty of having been or having been taken in by, scoundrels
And on the lesser charge of breaking the law which they introduced -
INNOCENT-ish, probably NOT PROVEN, in other words, GUILTY
Sentence - A Hung Parliament
(2009 /10, if not before)
Enough, dear members of the Jury. I’m off to have a baby by proxy.We thought it was arriving the other night, but as often happens in such cases, where inaccurate messages are sent out - (in the lives of mice and men) - it was a false alarm.
And just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water birthing pool for a bit of a paddle, guess what!?
Here it comes again, that feeling …
Another Julius Caesar quote:
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (1.2.135)(Don’t know why this one seems apt, today!)
Tags: david abrahams, Gordon Brown, harriet harman, hilary benn, illegal, jack dromey, margaret jay, Tony Blair
