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To be honest I have never really understood what all the fuss was about, almost forever those in power have donated honours to people who have supported their party, them or their political aims, you scratch my backism has been part of our political culture for as long as anyone can remember.

Think back to Marcia Falkender’s Pink list/ Lavender List, scandal in the 1970s this was only one example of something which had been and is still going on.

The real question was aired this evening on Newsnight when Jeremy Paxman asked Sir Jeremy Beauchamp why did Lord Levy - the chief New Labour fundraiser - apparently ask donors to make loans when they offered gifts and were obviously quite happy to be named as donors. Paxman pushed this point and pressed, can you think of any possible reason for translating a donation into a loan, if it were not to keep the donors name and the amount out of the accounts what other reason could there possible be?

Although Sir Jeremy tried to change the subject to one of legality, the main point had been illustrated earlier in the program when Neil Lawson, said there were now two Labour Parties, the party in the country and the other separate one based around Downing Street which had a different ideology a different organisation and now a separate financial base.

So it would appear that Tony’s cronies were not concerned about donations being open to public scrutiny but were intent on keeping the loans secret from the Labour party in order to insulate themselves with their own line of funding separate from normal labour party funding.

Even though some may be up in arms about the peerage question, the real point is that Blair and his cronies have systematically undermined their own party and set up a Labour party within the Labour party which is independent from control. In the much the way they have been acting generally in parliament with constant moves to make themselves unaccountable.

The Labour party in the country seems to be mounting a rearguard action to reclaim some control of the parliamentary party, we can only hope that this will spread to the Conservative parliamentary party who have also been making moves to insulate themselves from their supporters.

The other thing to emerge from this are the constant calls from all sides for state funding of political parties; something to which I am opposed. Why should we be forced to support any political party with our taxes, the argument that state funding will increase political accountability is weird to say the least. If they are going get money in any case the parties will be insulated from their supporters. When only 40% of the voting population voted for any of the parties at the last election it would be a democratic profanity to force people to pay for any party which does not offer enough incentive to enthuse people to walk down the road and vote for.

Other reasons:

Obviously only state recognised political parties would be eligible for public monies.

The recognition process could be used to remove certain political organisations or place certain conditions on political organisations.

It would only be a small step to then only allow officially/ legally recognised parties to stand for election.

This could also have a very damaging affect on the abilities to stand, for one policy local groups.

So any system of public funding would require state control; there would have to be legal registration of political parties, there would have to be a legal framework for funding regulations. This would have the effect of institutionalising parties. In assigning certain functions to the parties, the state then takes responsibility for seeing that they fulfil their responsibilities, thus more areas for state control of political activity.

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