Labour spent £1.2 million on the election that never was
James Forsyth 9:51am
Unsurprisingly, expenses stories dominate the Sunday papers. But an interview with Peter Watt, the Labour Secretary General during the Blair-Brown handover who had to resign over the Abrahams affair, caught my eye. Watt's main point is that he was left hanging in the wind by Brown but his comment about the election that never was strikes me as important:
Brown’s bottling of that election and his inability to concede and move on from that proved that Brown couldn’t change, that he couldn’t grow into being Prime Minister.“No matter what anyone says, the election had been called and was then cancelled. We had been working on it for weeks. We spent £1.2m in immediate preparations”
Watt also reinforcs the frequent criticisms of how Brown does politics: “Publicly, Gordon talks about values and his moral compass, but actually the way he conducts himself behind the scenes is anything but that - it’s brutal”.
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SickAsAParrot
May 10th, 2009 10:09am Report this commentGood to see he's as hopeless with Labour's money as he is with ours.
Perhaps they can recoup some of it via their expenses.
David
May 10th, 2009 10:27am Report this commentDidn't we kind of know this back in 2007:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/oct/22/labour.immigrationpolicy
J Wright
May 10th, 2009 10:47am Report this commentSick as a Parrot - Labours Money??? Sorry Labour have no momey only 20 million in debts. ,,Am I the only person worried sick that dishonest politicians with enormous debts control two british banks.Who do we have with integrity who would know and tell us if any fiddling was going on in that sphere.??
Silent Hunter
May 10th, 2009 10:54am Report this commentDoes anyone know how the No10 petition requesting Brown to resign is going?
I should think after recent revelations it would have shot into the stratosphere - is there any chance that we could get it into the 7 figure territory and would this precipitate an early General Election?
john miller
May 10th, 2009 11:05am Report this commentCome on! It's only 50p a member for Unite. Loads more where that came from, eh, Charlie?
Nicholas
May 10th, 2009 11:23am Report this commentAnd was this £1.2m Labour's money or taxpayers money? I thought that at the time they were broke?
Plantman
May 10th, 2009 11:41am Report this commentSilent Hunter - 55854 as at 11.39am today
Liz Brown
May 10th, 2009 11:46am Report this commentand now we are being told that "the complexity of the rules" lay behind Gordo's cleaning expenses. No matter the complexity of his tax credit scehmes, the massively increased volumes of Tolly's Tax handbook has led to the regular man in the street being find for incorrectly filling in his forms - Gordo has a "Towering Intellect" and was a "brilliant Chancellor" we are told - God save me from idiots in that case
Denis Cooper
May 10th, 2009 11:57am Report this commentIt's not clear whether the £1.2 million was Labour Party money, or public money.
It works out as £1860 per constituency, and I suppose it's possible that much public money could be wasted on initial preparations - the time of returning officers and secretarial staff, drafting paperwork, advance bookings of polling stations, halls for the counts, mustering all the people who would be involved, etc.
This was all because the incumbent Prime Minister has the right to call a general election at a time of his choosing, up to the five year limit, while of course we plebs have absolutely no right to call a general election at a time of our choosing.
Silent Hunter - the petition
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/
has now got to 55,854, but it's approaching a plateau.
That's not because there are no more people who would willingly sign it, but because people can only sign a petition if they know about it.
I guess that if Tory activists went out into High Streets with a hard copy petition, then they could very quickly collect far more than 86 signatures per constituency.
Nicholas
May 10th, 2009 12:20pm Report this commentSilent Hunter - it is now at 55,877. Seems to be rising at the rate of about 1,000 per day.
The mysteries of the Internet cascade - seems a little slow compared to Obamarama but I think the Brits are naturally suspicious of giving the national socialists their addresses and emails.
Wonder if there will be any acceleration this week?
mitch
May 10th, 2009 1:05pm Report this commentSo like in so many areas of browns financial policy they are paying interest on money they got nothing for.
the man is an idiot.
Ian C
May 10th, 2009 2:43pm Report this commentIt seems to me that this revlation together with the 'unholy alliance of Labour Left and Blairites' (s Times) means that it is now looking v likely that Brown will have a credible challenger post-June 4th.
October election anyone?
Jupiter
May 10th, 2009 5:26pm Report this commentI would like to sign the petition to remove the Prime Mentalist but like a lot of people I don't want them knowing my email address.
Denis Cooper
May 10th, 2009 6:06pm Report this comment"October election anyone?"
The Irish government probably wouldn't like that: because UK news (and UK media) circulates widely in the Republic, there would inevitably be spill-over from the UK general election campaign into the Irish referendum campaign running at the same time, which could influence the outcome.
And even if it still went the right way, from the EU's point of view, the Irish government would have to rush to prepare the Irish instrument of ratification and deposit it in Rome, and there'd still be Klaus to be bullied into signing it off and getting the Czech ratification in, and maybe the same with the Polish President, and all that would have to be completed before Cameron walked into No 10 Downing Street and ordered the immediate revocation of the British instrument of ratification ...
No, Labour (not necessarily with Brown as Prime Minister, and if necessary with help from the Liberal Democrats) must at all costs block Cameron from office until the treaty has come into force, and that really means that our general election can't be before spring 2010.
It's their duty to do that, their duty to the EU.
Emily P
May 14th, 2009 10:08am Report this commentIan C, yes, or perhaps even earlier than that. For Labour, why would they want to give the Ashcroft machine another 6, 8 or 11 months of pounding the marginals into dead-cert Tory gains. And now apparently Tories have turned their attention even to the not-so marginals. Every week that goes by is worse for Labour. Why give the enemy an even greater advantage?
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