Even more on Peter Hain's accounting problems

Further to this article, I now read that "Peter Hain is preparing to admit to the Electoral Commission that he has failed to declare more than £100,000 in donations to his campaign for Labour's deputy leadership.
It is understood that there are almost 20 donations that his team failed to declare, in breach of the rules for party political elections.

The scale of the under-reporting - more than half the total income received by the Hain campaign - will shock many party members and raise questions as to how such a massive apparent oversight occurred.

He has reported to the commission only £82,000 in donations, suggesting he spent nearly £200,000 in total on his campaign, considerably more than his five opponents for the deputy leadership.
The work and pensions secretary will face testing questions over whether the non-disclosure is simply a reflection of the chaos inside his camp or an attempt to conceal the sums raised and where they came from.

His critics will suggest that he was reluctant to give details of some of the donations because he did not want to reveal that his left-leaning campaign was dependent on business support. He will also be asked whether some of the donors thought their identities would be kept private...

Nearly half the donations appear to relate to the period after the closure of the campaign and half to the period after Steve Morgan, a lobbyist, was brought in by Hain to run the operation in a switch of tactics in the summer.

Hain and his supporters accept he is legally responsible for reporting donations to his campaign, but other people on his team were charged with sending details of cheques to the commission.

There is no evidence that Hain sought to break the law and he has already admitted "deeply regrettable" administrative failings"


Just imagine if this had been a Conservative candidate in a Conservative leadership election in the 1990s, do you think this would just be a news item or would it be the lead in every BBC bulletin until the minister was forced to resign? The BBC are so biased towards Labour that it just isn't funny any more, they are a threat to democracy in the UK, something that I will discuss soon.