Labour Finances: I'm Tory Plan B

The indicators are all there – times are getting tough. Businesses will be failing, people will be made bankrupt. For all those who borrowed too much and spread themselves too thin when the times were good, well, they’re going to suffer now. When the loans are called back in.

And in difficult times we sometimes think that our politicians don’t understand how we feel, or what is happening to us. But whatever you might think of them, you can’t accuse the Labour party of not understanding what it is to be broke and needing to pay off loans pretty damn sharpish:

“The party has five weeks to find £7.45m to pay off loans to banks and wealthy donors recruited by Lord Levy, Tony Blair's former chief fundraiser, or become insolvent. A further £6.2m will have to be repaid by Christmas - making £13.65m in all. The sum amounts to two-thirds of the party's annual income from donations.”

Smashing stuff, I think you’ll agree. The Labour party are partly responsible for the economic downturn – I’m glad they’re suffering as well.

And it just gets better:

“Senior officials in the Labour party, including Gordon Brown, could become personally liable for millions of pounds in debt unless new donors can be found within weeks, the Guardian has learned.”

Magic, pure and simple. It makes me smiles to think of the Labour party as bankrupt. It makes me laugh out loud to think of Gordon Brown et al having to put their hands into their pockets to fork out millions to pay off donations that have already proven to be a massive embarrassment and headache for the party.

But here’s the odd thing. Whilst Gordon Brown is a special kind of shite, this isn’t actually his fault. In fact, if anything, he’s helped the party save money by not holding costly things like General Elections. The blame for this lies squarely with his predecessor. These were donations scored by Levy for Blair. And Blair managed to fuck off at just the right time – before his party and his country went down the economic shitter.

Back in the day when Blair was actually popular, Tony Blair MP was *wittily* transformed into I’m Tory Plan B. Of course, that’s nonsense – was then, and is now. But today, reading about just how financially shafted the Labour party is right now, it is difficult not to smile and wonder whether there is just a tiny amount of truth in that Tory Plan B malarkey. After all, a decade of Blair in power created a millstone around the Labour party’s neck called the Iraq War, crippling financial debts and an environment within the party where electing Brown as leader unopposed was actually a good idea.

Far from being a great asset for the Labour party, that shallow confidence trickster Blair may yet prove himself to be a vital part in the crippling of the Labour party.

Here’s hopin’.