WHEN the UK's New Labour set up the Electoral Commission to ensure absolute moral correctness and freedom from sleaze it can hardly have understood the rocky road it was leading itself down.
Peter Hain went last week. Hain - can't remember already? He was the Cabinet Minister who, like Amy Winehouse, said: "No, I Won't Go".
Few in New Labour's middle-upper, middle, or lower orders will rue his departure. It is said more than the odd glass was raised in the House of Commons bars to celebrate his fall from grace. Northern Ireland politicians, not noted for close up and cosy chats with Labour counterparts, were happy to regale any who would listen with tales of Hain's time as an unpopular N.I. Secretary of State. Not too loudly, you understand, since New Labour personnel have a tendency like Mandelson or serial groper David Blunkett to rise Phoenix-like from the seeming ashes of a political career.
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Incompetence
What may not have struck many is this week could be the breaking point for Gordon Brown. I have warned here, over and over, the Northern Rock debauch was a whole lot worse than was being drip fed to us and a couple of days ago even MPs admitted it. Incompetence on level unprecedented for over a Century is being revealed. Government financial watchdogs knew things were not right and the Bank's Chief Executive has now said he was neither competent nor qualified to run it and still the Northern Rock Directors and staff are being voted bonus payments. Arrest warrants would appear to be more appropriate.
A £55bn bale out may not kill off Brown but a £950 payment to a non-mainstream politician could do the job an under-performing Tory Opposition Leader David Cameron can not.
Health Minister Alan Johnson enters the list this morning as a late runner in the sleaze allegations and the Electoral Commission is looking at a donation made to him during his bid for the UK Party's Deputy Leadership. At this stage it looks as though everything was checked and double checked and properly declared by the Johnson camp and the donation itself was the problem. Here again ignorance may no excuse in the eyes of the law.
Iain Macwhirter is as an astute a political commentator as you are ever likely to read. In today's Sunday Herald he says:
"The Electoral Commission now bears an onerous responsibility. It has become the guardian of political probity, and holds in its hands the very future of the government. If it decides this week that other Labour figures should, like Hain, have their cases referred to the boys in blue, then the damage to Gordon Brown's administration will be incalculable. If his Scottish leader, his UK deputy leader, a slew of senior office-bearers and others we don't even know about are forced to resign, then it would be curtains.
Wendy Alexander...Brazening it out to the bitter end
"Mind you, Alexander's team are now saying that even if the Electoral Commission finds against her, she will not resign. They accept the law was breached when she accepted a £950 donation from tax-exile businessman Paul Green, but insist she knew nothing of it, even though she had sent a letter of thanks to his Jersey address. Her campaign team claimed the donation had not come from Mr Green but from a UK-based company, Combined Property Services. This was untrue.
"But it was, we are assured, a muddle not a fiddle. Why should she be faced with resignation for a mistake she didn't make over a few quid? Well, the problem here is the law is tightly drawn, and the actual sum involved doesn't come into it. As the "regulated donee", Alexander is responsible for everything that happens in her name. And, despite her defiance, even a mild censure from the Electoral Commission might be enough to end her career.
"What the commission will have to do this week - if it exonerates Alexander - is explain why, when the law has been broken by the admission of the parties involved, the case should NOT be referred to the relevant authorities. In short, why the police and prosecuting authorities shouldn't at least take a look at it. After all, the Electoral Commission is not judge and jury, but a regulator. It is supposed to refer any cases where there is a prima facie breach of the law over to the agencies equipped to assess them.
"The danger here is that if the commission doesn't make a convincing case for leniency it will undermine its own credibility as well as Alexander's. The public will lose trust in the commission and whatever trust they still have left in politicians."
Missed
So, it really could be make or break week for Brown as he prepares for yet another Blair-Brown Joint Venture about to bare it's teeth and sink them in his ample backside. It is a double disaster since New Labour also set the devolution train away from the station. No devolved Scottish Parliament - no need to solicit a £950 illegal donation.
Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman...black week ahead?
Because as neat as Macwhirter's summary is; there is one point missed and I mentioned it yesterday. The Electoral Commission is not in a position to decide to what degree the law has been broken. Alexander's team has admitted there was a breach of electoral rules and she has taken on the the stance of a schoolchild yelling that "a big girl with pigtails did and ran away". The brutal fact is under the Scottish Law, the Police are duty-bound to investigate and decisions on the degree of illegality do not rest with Commission or Scots Polis. Their Lordships, at worst, or their Worships, at best, have the final say in the matter. There is no easy way forward or out for Alexander. Even if she survives this, her credibility is shot to pieces and it's a racing certainty she will never serve as a Scottish First Minister. The goose, or in this case wide-mouthed frog, may be cooked and a Premier and Deputy Premier along with her
See Iain Macwhirter: Legislate in haste
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