Looks like two Labour peers have been found guilty of taking cash for amendments. The Sunday Times reports that Lord Taylor of Blackburn and Lord Truscott face a one year suspension.

A years suspension from the gravy train?  They just got caught trying to sell legislation, isn’t whoring out parliament a bit more serious than that punishment suggests?  Is there really no criminal sanction available?

We still have yet to hear the outcome of the investigation into Alistair Darling’s old flatmate, Lord Moonie.  Guido would also love to get to the bottom of the financial relationship between Moonie, Gordon Brown and Darling. We know Moonie paid Gordon Brown handsomely for his old Kennington flat which he then sub-let to Alistair Darling. We are clearly not dealing with an obscure outsider here, we are dealing with someone at the corrupt heart of Labour’s Scottish Raj.  Did Darling claiming an allowance from the taxpayers to be paid to his mate Moonie?  Isn’t that a little too cosy a use of public money?

UPDATE I : The proxy battle for the soul of the Labour party being waged by Blairites via the candidacy of Georgia Gould, 22 year old daughter of Philip, one of the architects of New Labour, is hotting up.  Unsealed ballot boxes, dirty tricks, offers of ministerial bribes,  mendacious “uncle Ally” Campbell lobbying on her behalf and finally the sitting Labour MP calling for a police investigation into irregularities.   This is the future of the Labour Party.

UPDATE II : Tommy McAvoy, the whip behind Gordon’s expense plans, has had a million quid in expenses, employs multiple family members at the taxpayer’s expense and owns a pub according to the Mail on Sunday.  Time please…

UPDATE III : The News of the World says that according to Labour’s own internal polling – based on polls and focus groups carried out over the past two weeks – Guido’s two favourite topics; MP’s sleaze and MP’s expense fiddling have destroyed the Labour Party’s electoral hopes:

* Voters think Labour are now sleazier than the Tories.

* Even if Brown fixes the economy, voters still don’t want another Labour government.

One senior Labour insider told the News of the World: “This is an awful toxic mix for us. The research shows we have lost the one advantage we had over the Tories.

“People always thought Labour stood for helping other people, for social justice, while the Tories stood for self interest.

“Now they think we are sleazier than the Tories.”

So defeat will, based on the Labour Party’s own polling research, officially be due to sleaze.  It will be, to coin a phrase, “Guido wot won it”…