This is taken from the Labour party email sent immediately after Gordon sat down. Puke making isn’t it?

Charles Clarke reckons the Labour party treasurer Jack Dromey is useless; “you have to wonder how well he was doing his work”. The National Executive Committee chairman, Sir Jeremy Beecham, said “I don’t know how closely Charles has been involved in all this. He’s not been on the National Executive for a number of years.” Trans. “Sod off and keep your nose out of it.”

Now the whispered briefings begin, and as with everything nowadays in the Labour party it has to be seen through the prism of the Blair/Brown struggle. The Guardian’s Diary has a planted story from the Blairites putting the blame on the Labour party’s former General Secretary, Matt Carter and Jane Hogarth, Head of Labour’s Corporate Relations and Fundraising. Complete bollocks which tries to spin the blame as far away from Number 10 as possible. Downing Street’s David Levy and Tony Blair are ultimately responsible. Ruth Turner and John McTernan have supporting roles. The police will no doubt want to talk, with good reason, to Number 10 chief of staff Jonathan Powell as well.

It gets better, donors deprived of any real prospect of gongs are now planning to call in their loans. Labour will be some £6m short of cash without the ability to tap into any obvious vein of venality going forward. The union brothers are not going to bail Blair out, nor Brown as he needs to stand tough on public sector pay so as not to scare the voters. So selling the old HQ is a real prospect unless Lord Sainsbury wants to step in again.

UPDATE : Just noticed a dreadful piece by the Guardian’s political editor – it gives a new meaning to the term “whitewash”. The covert funding programme is because of what that pantomime villain the Daily Mail might say about those nice respectable and generous multi-millionaires. Sir Michael White anyone?

“Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime” is what the voters were promised by the man who would be “whiter than white”. How hollow Blair’s words all sound a decade later.

As Anoneumouse pointed out in the comments on this blog, besides the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 we also have the Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act 1889 and the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906, which are supplemented by the Prevention of Corruption Act 1916

However, Offences under the 1889 & 1906 Act require the consent of the Attorney General. Guido forsees a snag here. Lord Peter Goldsmith, the Attorney General, was made a Life Peer by Blair in 1999.

Rupert Murdoch gave a speech in London last week where he banged his drum for the interweb and told his minions to get with the interweb. Blogs and interactivity are it, adapt or die he told ‘em. The Indy media section called Guido to comment on this development, “Well it’s a very long time since I last had dinner with Rupert…”

So when Hugo Rifkind, excitedly emailed yesterday (he has long since forgiven Guido for certain, perhaps harsh comments, about his father) to say “I have a blog“. “Calm down dear” was all Guido could muster, “it’s only a blog”. It is content richer than the diary, with comments and stuff. Much better than his dead tree version. It even has a blogroll. It is here that we see the novice blogger showing through. Apart from the obvious oversight of a link to Guido, it has a link to Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report - except it doesn’t. It links to www.drudgereport.co.uk, a UK based cyber squatter. Best correct both those mistakes simultaneously.

Anyway, go to Hugo’s blog and make a comment. Show him some love, go on, do it for Rupert.

Ruth Turner is Blair’s official Downing Street Adviser on Government Relations. There are allegations that she was deeply involved in the covert funding programme. Obviously that is crucially important if this rotten business is exposed to be an influence peddling operation.

Capita has contracts, largely with government controlled entities, worth £3 billion. Capita dominates government outsourcing with 34% of the market in administration and processing for government departments and local councils. In 2004, 52% of Capita’s revenue came from public sector outsourcing, £1.3 billion in revenue due largely to an explosion in demand for its services in line with New Labour’s controversial outsourcing policy.

Government relations is clearly of critical importance to Capita. So a £1m secret loan from the CEO to the governing party at the request of the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy is of public interest.

Guido has a lot of questions for Ruth Turner, the most important being, did she at any time have any dealings with Capita, its lobbyists or the CEO, Rod Aldridge?

One party seems keen to pursue the issue of Loans for Lordships – the Scottish Nationalists. Obviously they must be clean, canny Connery is too tight to loan ‘em cash.

In any event young Angus MacNeil MP wrote to Commissioner Ian Blair last week, and Scotland Yard has now confirmed to him that it will investigate the matter further. 1933 was the last time someone was convicted of selling peerages. The law is the law Mr Levy.

Guido suspects that his high calibre readership knows more about Loans for Lordships than is already in the public domain. Let me remind you how easy it is to anonymously pass on information – no need for secrets to be torturously extracted. Guido’s blog relies on you for information.

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