Gordon Brown gets something right

Yesterday Gordon Brown told ITV's News at Ten: "Peter Hain has confessed to his mistakes and he has apologised in the most profuse terms for what has gone wrong.
"It was a mistake that was made, it was an incompetence that he has readily admitted to."

At last some sense from Gordon Brown, even if he did go on to plead "This now goes before the Standards Committee in the House of Commons and before the Electoral Commission and I believe that they will understand that this was a failure but there was no corruption involved, no illegal donation made, and I hope that they will be able to accept his apology."


In further Peter Hain news:

The Telegraph reports that...

"One of the undeclared gifts, the £10,000 from the GMB, came as the union was fighting to save 2,500 jobs at 43 Remploy factories.

Ministers had claimed the Government-owned plants - which employ disabled workers - cost too much to run.

The donation was banked on September 4 last year, according to Mr Hain.

On September 25, during a well received speech to the Labour conference, he announced a £555million plan to safeguard Remploy's future.

Mr Hain insisted there would be no compulsory redundancies and pledged to try to win more contracts for the firm.

Two months later, he rubber-stamped plans to close only 17 sites - fewer than half of those earmarked for the axe. A further 11 were to be merged.

The Tories demanded answers from Mr Hain last night.

Mark Harper, the party's disabilities spokesman, said: "Now we know that the GMB made sizeable secret donations there will be concerns that Peter Hain's decisions were influenced by union cash.

"Unless he can deal with this straight away his time will be up. This business appears to get murkier and murkier."

Tory MP David Davies said: "The whole thing looks very shady and very sleazy.

"He has been around long enough to know there is no such thing as a free lunch or a free £10,000.

"You can't be seen to take money one minute and then make a decision which benefits the donor the next." "


Please stay in post Peter you are doing so much damage to this Labour government it is worth it!