The alphabet of donations in a day: from Abrahams to Zac
Having reached the end of the snow puns and photos, the Sunday media are full of Peter Watt’s story of his dismissal after the David Abrahams’ donations. But whilst most sources have chosen to follow up on Watt’s highly negative view of Gordon Brown, the Sunday Times has gone for a story about ‘hidden’ donations to the Conservative Party from, amongst others, our favourite non-dom, Zac Goldsmith.
David Abrahams barely gets a mention today of course. All that the political chatterers have wanted to discuss all week has been the low opinion in which Gordon Brown is held by many of his colleagues and so that’s how the story is written. But it supplied a very good day on which to bury the bad news of hidden donations to the Conservative Party, paid through an intermediary.
It’s true that the Conservative donors were not hiding the fact that they were party supporters – they were all publicly known as such. But to say that it doesn’t matter, as Goldsmith has tried to do in a statement to ConservativeHome, is rather disingenuous. The full amounts of donations cannot be calculated if sums are hidden. The influence that a small number of people can hold over the polices of a party is disguised. And we should not forget that such disguised payments are against the law. It may be an ‘administrative error’ on behalf of the Tories, but that did not stop UKIP being asked to repay what is a huge sum for that party after a similarly ‘administrative’ error.
Related posts:
- Does the Manchester Labour Party believe Gordon Brown is fit to be in Parliament?
- With friends like this …
- When the Guardian’s story literally doesn’t add up
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