Brown black and blue after debacle of donations

A policeman guards No 10 Downing Street yesterday. British prime minister Gordon Brown will like his predecessor Tony Blair be questioned by police.
Photograph: Cate Gillon/Getty Images

BRITAIN: As scandal follows cock-up, Labour is beginning to look as hapless as the Major and Callaghan administrations, writes Frank Millar , London Editor

"So can it get any worse?" asked the Daily Mail. Since it was only Wednesday, presumably the answer was self-evident to the headline-writer.

On Tuesday British prime minister Gordon Brown had moved smartly to distance himself from Labour's secret, and unlawful, donations scandal. He had only learned last Saturday of the practice, developed over four years, that saw developer David Abrahams donate more than £650,000 (€910,000) while using proxies to conceal his identity.

This breach of Labour-enacted laws on transparency and accountability was "totally unacceptable", declared Brown, while volunteering that his leadership campaign had declined an offer of £25,000 on the basis that they would not accept donations from sources unknown to them. The money given to the party had not been "lawfully declared" and would therefore be returned.

The resignation of Labour general secretary Peter Watt, allegedly the only person who knew of this arrangement, had been "a necessary first step" to clean up Labour's act. A retired judge and former bishop would consider the results of an internal investigation and recommend procedures to ensure such a thing never happened again. As for deputy leader Harriet Harman, she had explained that her campaign had accepted £5,000 from a Mrs Kidd "in good faith", unaware that Kidd was one of Abraham's proxies. Brown of course had "confidence" in his deputy, even if it had taken many attempts to satisfy journalists of the fact.

Twenty-four hours later Brown clashed bitterly with Conservative leader David Cameron, who pressed for a police inquiry and questioned why the prime minister had not already reported the offence.

By then the net had already widened, and drawn Brown closer to the affair. Minutes before Commons question time, Brown's recently appointed fundraiser, Jon Mendelsohn, confirmed he had learned of the arrangement with Abrahams.

Despite being assured by Watt that it was lawful and consistent with the party's reporting obligations, Mendelsohn said he planned a meeting with Abrahams at which he intended to bring it to an end.

Unfortunately, for a month or more Mendelsohn had not brought his discovery to the attention of the prime minister, Labour's national executive or the police. Abrahams confirmed later he only received Mendelsohn's letter proposing they meet after last week's initial newspaper inquiries about the secret donations and, moreover, that he had interpreted it as an intention to seek his further financial support.

Even some Tory MPs thought Cameron over-excitable in suggesting the affair raised questions about Brown's own integrity. However, the press were not so reticent about Harman. Perhaps spurred by the fact of her marriage to party treasurer Jack Dromey, she came under sustained pressure to explain how the contact with Kidd had been initiated in the first place.

Perhaps not least to exonerate her husband, whom several newspapers suggested should quit if only because he appears "serially in the dark" about the party's affairs, Harman dropped a bombshell on Brown on Thursday night.

She revealed that it had been Brown's own campaign co-ordinator who recommended she seek a donation from the woman who turned out to be one of Abrahams' proxies.

Responding to headlines declaring "Labour at war" as "Harman implicates Brown", the deputy yesterday denied "dropping Gordon in it".

He meanwhile had more pressing concerns than whether or not to drop her. He had resisted Cameron on Wednesday, suggesting it was for the Electoral Commission to decide whether to call in the police. On Thursday the commission duly did so, sparking nightmare suggestions that Brown might now become only the second serving prime minister in history to be questioned as part of a criminal inquiry. To complete his Black Friday, a YouGov poll gave the Conservatives an 11-point lead - the party's highest since Margaret Thatcher ruled in Number 10. Even more disturbing for Brown was the public's apparent dismissal of the idea that he might just have had an unlucky run. Collapsing confidence, a belief that his "lightweight" government "couldn't run a whelk stall", and parallels with the Callaghan and Major administrations led Prof Anthony King to detect the hint "that a majority of voters might have fallen out of love permanently with the Brown government".

It has been difficult to keep track of the "worst . . . bleakest . . . blackest" weeks since Brown "bottled" the decision to call a snap election that the polls, press and his trusted inner circle told him could only result in a landslide win for Labour and the destruction of Cameron's Conservative leadership.

As it would be impossible to exaggerate the damage that delay and all that has flowed from it - thousands of illegal immigrants in the security industry, the run on the Northern Rock bank, the lost data of 25 million people - has done to Brown and Labour's reputation for competence.

It would of course be foolish to write him off yet. Brown remains a formidable and ruthless politician.

The polls are remarkably volatile. Cameron's Tories are not yet registering the sustained leads necessary to confirm them as a government-in-waiting. Nor is Brown in the position of John Major, with a fast-declining majority insufficient to see him through the life of a parliament.

Yet if he has time - until 2010 - that might only be because events, coupled with real fears now about the economy, threaten to box him in and reduce his options. The prime minister unquestionably missed a moment back in Bournemouth.

Alone in 10 Downing Street, in the position he craved for so long, he must certainly be wondering if, how and when it will come again.

© 2007 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times