The London Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh is reporting that Spelman will be cleared of wrongdoing over her taxpayer funded nanny.

If, as sources claim, the Lyon inquiry reports that there is no evidence of deliberate wrongdoing or a breach of Commons rules, Cameron will not sack her from the Shadow Cabinet.

This will infuriate many parents who have to pay for childcare out of post-tax income, to pay a nanny costs middle-class parents some £40,000 a year in pre-tax income. No private sector employer will pay for a nanny. We are expected to believe that Spelman’s nanny was actually her constituency secretary* paid for by the taxpayer and that in return for her childcare duties her only compensation was room and board. Who really believes that the money was not payment for her childcare duties? Unbelievable, it simply does not wash.

If anyone knows of a nanny willing to work for only room and board can you please let Mrs Fawkes know, because we have never heard of such a deal. This is a complete and utter piss-take out of the taxpayer. Here is the acid test – if it really was completely above board and as she claims – why stop the arrangement?

Before anyone complains that she is a woman and she was new in a tough job, bear in mind that her and her husband are more than wealthy enough to afford a nanny. She is a smart, tough cookie, not some weak innocent. She has been caught abusing the system, at the very least she should pay back the money she fiddled.

*Spelman’s family home at the time was in Kent, some 140 miles from her West Midlands constituency. The nanny, Tina Haynes, told Michael Crick last year that she also took occasional phone messages and posted documents. For this she was paid tens of thousands of pounds.

Patrick Hennessy tells us that there is an interesting dinner planned for tonight, and that in a new found spirit of peaceful cooperation, bread will be broken by two old enemies. Before the great tribal truce and the summoning of the Dark Lord from over the water by the One-Eyed Son of the Manse, Peter Mandelson and Ed Balls were the most vicious champions of their respective masters; Blair and Brown. Briefing and pouring bile about the enemy camp into the ears of anyone who would listen.

It was at the height of the Blair destabilising cash for honours investigation that Guido was sent a document outlining the use of 11 Downing Street by the Smith Institute and the role of that “charity” in furthering Gordon’s ambitions. The note was passed to Guido by an über-Blairite close to No. 10. This was hardly surprising since No. 10 suspected (rightly) the Brownies were stoking the flames of cash for honours, this was essentially a sleaze counter-attack. The note outlined how Gordon got private polling and personal consultants flown in from the States. How they were paid for by cash-for-access meetings in No. 11 involving Brown and his aides under the auspices of the Smith Institute. Balls himself was paid an £89,000 bung by the Smith Institute and is now under scrutiny with the Tories looking to link this payment and others to the unlawful furtherance of Brown’s political ambitions.

The Mail on Sunday this morning is following up on this story. Guido will have more revelations next week…

So you can raise some £100,000 without declaring it to the Electoral Commission in support of an elected politician using a shady “think tank” / slush fund and get away with it, so long as you muddy the waters enough. The Progressive Policies Forum was a slush fund. It had done nothing, had undertaken no known political activity, had no employees, no policies and there was no forum or indeed any meeting ever. When it quacks like a slush fund, acts like a slush fund and washes money like a slush fund, it is a slush fund.

Was it really not possible for the CPS to prove who was responsible for dealing with donations? Some donations we know were sent to the offices of Morgan Allen Moore, Steve Morgan was running the campaign. Steve Morgan, told Radio Wales on January 8, 2008 that he had been brought in to the campaign to “bring order to chaos”.

Bear in mind, if Hain had “bought the election” having spent double the expenditure of the other candidates, he would now be deputy leader of the party of government, and beholden to secret donors unknown to us. That is not a minor technicality.

The Sunday Times is reporting that the Electoral Commission is to investigate whether, in breach of electoral law, Ed Balls continued working for Gordon Brown while on the payroll of the Smith Institute charity before becoming an MP.

Regular readers will know that this allgation was a central part of Guido’s campaign against the Sith. Essentially the Smith Institute was a slush fund for Gordon’s ambitions. The Tories are now convinced that Ed Balls continued working for Gordon Brown when he was on the charity’s payroll. They have been trying for six months to ascertain whether or not he continued to have access to the Treasury with a security pass. Guido has other evidence that Ed Balls continued to act as Gordon Brown’s political adviser during th 2004 / 5 period when he was being paid by the charity. Not only Balls but also Tony Pilch, a former SpAd close to Balls, and Bob Shrum during the same over-lapping period were working for the Smith Institute.

According to the Sunday Times “the Tories are submitting a complaint to the Electoral Commission and John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards. They want Brown to be challenged over whether Balls had a pass.”

Guido understands that the Electoral Commission is already making inquiries, including in the United States, following a complaint made last July (after the Charity Commission report condemned the Smith Institute for partisan activity) by the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics. That letter of complaint (here) focused on the activities of U.S. pollster Bob Shrum. Shrum was paid by the Smith Institute to advise Gordon Brown, these slush payments are a serious breach of electoral law.

Peter Hain has organised a conference today in his Neath constituency on “Winning Economically, Winning Politically”. Labour politicians and German SPD politicians will be discussing strategy and tactics in a session titled “What was done, what went wrong and how to win back voter support”. The event is financially supported by the SPD’s Friedrich Ebert Stiftung think tank. The Welsh Bevan Foundation, an educational charity, was co-sponsoring it.

On Tuesday following complaints made by Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price, the Bevan Foundation pulled out because it feared its charitable status could be compromised.

Price wrote to the Bevan Foundation’s director Victoria Winckler:

“You will no doubt be aware that the Charity Commission began a formal inquiry into the Smith Institute last year occasioned by not dissimilar circumstances, after the Democratic political consultant Robert Shrum was shown to have given electoral advice to Labour Party members based on US experience.

Commenting on the publication of its report into the institute’s political activity, Andrew Hind, the chief executive of the Charity Commission, said: ‘Trustees of charitable think tanks have a responsibility to ensure the political neutrality of the work they do. When a charity operates close to the political environment, it must safeguard its independence and ensure that any involvement it has with political parties is balanced.’

Clearly the event was political, Price was entirely right to cite the Smith Institute precedent. The Bevan Foundation secretary Mick Antoniw now says:

“Our reputation is everything and because of the concerns raised and the advice the trustees have received, the foundation will be withdrawing from the event….”

Price is not letting the matter rest: “I will be writing to the Electoral Commission as to whether the funding of what in the afternoon is effectively a Labour election strategy seminar amounts to an impermissible donation. I will also be asking the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner to investigate whether the involvement of Peter Hain’s political researcher in organising the conference in any way constitutes a misuse of parliamentary resources.”

Hain is a creature of habit, once again another think tank’s funds are being used to further his political ambitions. Just as with the Progressive Policies Forum there appears to be a case to answer for breaches of electoral law – a foreign foundation funding electoral strategy advice is illegal. You would have thought given he is currently under police investigation for funding irregularities Hain would be more cautious, he already has one criminal conviction, he is asking for another…

Full story in the Western Mail.

This afternoon a source told Guido that the Tory NW Regional HQ was trying to find out which association Den Dover was formally a member. Guido wondered what was going on…

The Tory MEP is being expelled from the party after the EU Parliament’s fraud investigators told him to repay £500,000 in expenses paid to his family for office work. The former chief whip says he will repay all the money and has denied breaking any parliamentary rules.

Morgan Allen Moore MAM, the lobbying firm which managed Peter Hain’s leadership campaign, has been suspended from the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) for “non-compliance” for inter alia non-payment of fees and failure to register clients.Steve Morgan has not had a good year – already under investigation by the police for funding irregularities concerning the Hain for Labour campaign, MAM sued a former employee for libel because James Davenport alleged that MAM had, in breach of the APPC rules, provided campaign services to Peter Hain. The Mail on Sunday alleged that Peter Hain had endorsed MAM clients in what looked like a return of favours.

The MAM case against Davenport collapsed when evidence presented to the Court revealed that cheques were solicited to be sent to MAM’s offices in Cardiff and that MAM employees were dealing with the Hain4Labour campaign finances.

MAM is now reduced to running skeleton staff, with clients shying away and politicians refusing to talk to them, and their influence inevitably waning. Phil Woolas was said to be livid when he discovered that Deborah Morgan (Steve’s wife), for whom his office had arranged a Commons pass, was boasting on her lobby firm’s website that SD Environmental Solutions could influence decisions and had access at ministerial level. Woolas was at the time the Environment Minister.

Steve Morgan claimed to a credulous local paper that he was the “international spokesman” for the Obama campaign. Where was Obama’s international spokesman on the night of Obama’s victory? He was in a Yates’ wine bar in London watching it on TV. Tragic.

Vaz spotted Gordon outside the Midland Hotel Saturday night. He strolled over smiling and said to Brown “Hello Gordon, how are you?” Gordon switched off his smile and walked off without saying word.

This is the man who saved Gordon’s bacon over detention without charge. How rude and ungrateful. Vaz is after all such a paragon of integrity that he has asked the sleaze watchdog to investigate himself.