Gavin’s Gaily Gigest

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Donations to political parties have reared their ugly, corrupted head once again, this time involving the walnut-coated Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain and Piers Fletcher-Dervish impersonator and Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne. Actually, calling political donations “ugly” isn’t quite right. If anything, donations are the diamond-encrusted face-lifted darling of the political world – they’re much like Joan Rivers in that respect.

The cash for peerages affair brought donations to the public’s attention back in 2006, when it was revealed Tony Blair, Lord Levy and their band of merry men accepted donations and loans to the Labour Party. The donees promptly found themselves in the House of Lords, surrounded by ermine, decaying corpses and the faint smell of wee. The police and Crown Prosecution Service oddly found no wrongdoing, the whole world moved on and comrade Blair went to solve the Middle East. That done, he’s now moving on to solve Europe’s problems.

As the bulbous waste of dolphin fat John Prescott also stood down, the Labour Party ran a deputy leadership race, which required the lubricant of choice for politicians: Money. It’s a widely known fact that when rolled up and heated, £50 notes hit the sweet spot in their anal cavity and allow them to continue to represent us with the honesty and integrity we’ve come to expect. Unfortunately for some of the candidates, they received a total of £220,000 from, amongst others, a council-house living builder and a secretary. The press smelt a fish, and lo and behold revealed cheeky businessman David Abrahams as the true source. The Electoral Commission is currently investigating the arrangements.

Of all the donations scandals arising from the deputy leadership race, the latest is probably the most serious – Peter Hain completely and utterly failed to declare over £100,000 in contributions to his campaign. He now finds himself in the unenviable position of being under investigation by both the Electoral Commission and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Police are also believed to be looking into the dangerous levels of fake tan in his blood.

George Osborne’s problems are probably worth mentioning here too. As a matter of public record the Tories received £500,000 with a view to it being used to help run the Shadow Chancellor’s office. This money was declared to the Electoral Commission and it’s unclear whether it should be registered with the Commons authorities. A giant “who cares” to this one – it’s clearly substantially different from Labour’s troubles, and more of an administrative matter than a political scandal.

No party entirely escapes blame from this whole affair, but it is most serious for Labour, who after all built the gallows which they now hang over so precariously. However, the problem for the general public is that the press have become hypersensitive about political donations and are unable to tell Zimbabwe-scale corruption from minor oversights. I get the feeling that if next week it turns out a party misreports a fiver, we’ll all be subjected to industrial hysteria and faux righteousness that has now come to characterise political reporting.

The solution seems obvious: simple, clear rules for party funding. Just don’t go expecting this anytime soon when there’s so much political capital to be made out of accusing opponents of corruption.