Taking Aim

If Tony Blair is linked in any meaningful way to the Loans for Peerages scandal, or to accepting loans on the Labour Party’s behalf without the knowledge of the party’s Treasurer he should resign. 

After pointing out that he knew nothing of the loans until after they had been accepted, here’s what Labour Party Treasurer Jack Dromey had to say about Number 10′s involvement:

“No 10 must have known about the loans. I’m the treasurer of the Labour party and to be absolutely frank I don’t believe the Labour party has been sufficiently respected by No 10. What I want to do is assert the democratic integrity of the Labour party.

The thing with loans is that, by definition, they have to be paid back.  And therefore, the question we should ask of Tony Blair is - did anyone ever check with the Treasurer whether the Labour Party had the ability to pay them back?  Because if not, then Number 10 has accepted, outside of the Labour Party’s rules, a massive liability (to the order of several million pounds) without ever checking what the long term impact on the party’s finances would be.

Most probably, as has been indicated, the loans will never have to be paid back.  They were probably given with the expectation that they would be written off after several years.  Which is good for Labour’s finances, but not so good for its integrity.  Because if Number 10 knew that it would likely never have to pay the loans back, the it was really accepting a gift, which should have been declared.  

Is that illegal?  Probably. 

And don’t even get me started on the dubious morality – no, dubious legality – of offering peerages to the men who gave the loans in the first place. 

So, to conclude – if Tony Blair is actually implicated in this, at worst he will have:

• Broken Labour Party financial regulations
• Broken electoral commission regulations by accepting gifts and declaring them as loans
• Broken the law by accepting a bribe in return for a peerage

Have I missed anything?

Update: Here’s some good news – a Labour government minister who understands the concept of conflict of interest.

Harriet Harman, is married to Labour Party Treasurer Jack Dromey and has decided to do the honourable thing and  given up her role of overseeing reform in the House of Lords.

A More Important Update: Tony Blair has spoken and boldly claims that, although he has broken no rules:

“The buck stops with me.”

So, Tony, if the buck truly stops with you… will you give us a detailed explanation of what happened?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 6:03 am and is filed under UK. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.