Femme Fatalé ... Scapegoat .. or sacrificial Lamb ?

It was late 2004 - the spring election loomed. New Labour needed new funds. Naturally it's chief fund raiser, the Karaoke King, and ace backhander (on the tennis court) smiling, petite, Lord Levy, stopped lolling on the scarlet leather ottoman in his Foreign Office. He got to work. With a will.

Markers were called in, funny handshakes made, egos massaged and the vain were flattered. The result was 12 handy sized loans and sizeable loans and £14 Mn banked at the Co-op. (How many were approached and stalled one wonders ?) £14 Mn concealed, not only from prying eyes, but from the Party, it's senior officers but also from the Party Treasurer - although where he thought all the money he was authorising to spend came from , is a puzzle.

It was a conspiracy to deceive. The provision of coronets for cash was a subsidiary and sordid affair - the grubby and familiar stuff of politics which starts with steering Planning committees in Town Halls up and down the land by all Parties. The mechanics of it were a tertiary and (they thought in the rarified atmosphere that rules in No 10, even now) tiresome task of housekeeping - best left to a woman then.

This self evident Truth is slowly dawning .. the Sunday Telegraph, exultant that a handwritten note of the Dear Leaders apparently appears on a document apparently from No 10 says ...

"The note is understood to acknowledge the efforts of Labour's 12 secret lenders who provided £14 million to help the party fight the 2005 election." **

...which is of course exactly what the Conservative Party were doing as well - but were not in the business of bunging baronetcies on the strength of it. Cue silent Opposition.

Let's get this clear - this was a financial conspiracy undertaken to conceal the source of political funding .... now we need to back track and look at the funding of Mr Blair's office when he was in opposition and Leader of the (then) Labour Party.... arm's length Blind Trust's m'lud.

** ..er... No 10 deny the existence of such a script.