James Forsyth James Forsyth

Two keys to the puzzle

I’d urge you to read Stephen Pollard on how well known David Abrahams was on the Labour circuit in the 1990s and this post from Boulton and co by Joey Jones, the two posts taken together suggest that this story will run and run, .

Jones spoke to Baroness Jay this morning about why the Benn camp turned down the money and reports back as follows:

The number of questions that need to be answered just keeps increasing. This could end up being as politically harmful as the last fundraising scandal to engulf Labour.

“Essentially she backed Hilary Benn’s version of events. She told me how David Abrahams approached her at a party do, and said he wanted to make a donation to Benn “discreetly”. Thinking he might be wanting to donate to more than one candidate, she alerted Hilary Benn to the proposed arrangement. He, as we know, was not keen on it. I asked her the key question of whether she knew Abrahams was making similar donations to the Labour party – she said she “didn’t know.” It occurs to me that if Abrahams felt able to sidle up to Baroness Jay and openly propose his trademark discreet arrangement, might he not have suggested it to other party bigwigs…? Or was poor old Peter Watt really the only other Labour figure to have been privy to such a suggestion…?”

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