Harriet Harman must be finished

Guido sums it up so well:

• Hilary Benn turned down £5000 for his deputy leadership campaign after Margaret Jay told him the cash from Janet Kidd was on behalf of David Abrahams. He insisted the cash should come from Mr Abrahams himself.
• Gordon Brown also turned down £5000 for his campaign, so presumably his campaign team knew it was dodgy.
• Peter Watt admits he knew about the money laundering scheme on behalf of Abrahams.

Despite her husband being the Labour Party’s treasurer everyone seems to have known except for Harriet, she says she took the cash in good faith, that she thought it was a bona fide donation, that she did not know. In which case she will now of course repay the £5,000…

When the disgraced Blunkett was caught fiddling his expenses for his mistress he paid back the money – as if that made it alright. Whenever politicians are caught breaking the law they seem to think they can buy their way out of trouble with the same money they have cheated. That is not enough.

Harman is now chairman of the Labour Party, her deputy leadership election was governed by electoral law. She received illegal funding for her campaign. It is that simple. If she had any honour she would resign this afternoon.

On the rough outside chance that she wasn’t aware in the slightest, surely that’s a sign of her (or her husband’s) incompetence given that her husband (the is the Party Treasurer? We’ve already seen with the resignation of Peter Watts (the General Secretary of the Labour Party) that those at the very top of the Labour hierarchy knew that Abrahams was funneling his money through others, and that they knew who those others were.

One might even wonder whether if Peter Watts, the General Secretary knew, whether the Chairman of the Party knew as well. The Chairman of the Labour Party, in case I need to remind you, is:

She’s probably not laughing this afternoon…

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