Sunday 2 December 2007

Lying in state

Tom Brown, Labour polemicist who masquerades as a journalist from time to time wrote in today's Scotland on Sunday about Labour's corruption. In that article he tries the usual Labour tactic of tarring everyone with the same brush, implying that other parties are as rotten as Labour.

It's simply not so. The problem is Labour's problem - not politics' problem. Labour's contempt for Scotland and for the people they are supposed to represent is incredible and is matched only by the disdain they have for proper procedure and an obvious opinion that they have a divine right to rule and to browbeat the rest of us.

The casual attitude to lying is symptomatic of the systemic corruption of the Labour party. The vitriol and sneering derision that Labour pours at people on the other side of any debate indicate an organisation with tendencies equivalent to sociopathy.

The sociopath will tend to exhibit glibness and superficial charm, while being manipulative and underhand. They will have a grandiose sense of themselves, have a lack of remorse, shame or guilt, and be pathological liars who are callous and irresponsible. Their shallow emotions and poor behavioural controls often lead to uncontrolled verbal outbursts, a contempt for people around them and a criminal versatility. Just like the Labour party - which is sad because there are still a lot of people in that party who believe in what it used to stand for and who would like it to return to those core beliefs.

Lets look at the case - today's revelations that Wendy Alexander knew about the invalidity of the donations to her campaign fund is merely further evidence of the guilt that many of us suspected she bore. Brian Taylor, BBC Scotland political editor, blogs about Wendy today and suggests that she has integrity. I think Brian is being too generous in believing the best of her, I think she has no integrity at all.

It is now clear that Wendy Alexander and her campaign team conspired to evade scrutiny and deceive the Electoral Commission. The donations solicited under the £1,000 threshold for public declaration, the ghost body set up to run her leadership campaign to try (unsuccessfully) to avoid declaring donations to Parliament, the donor shifting in reporting to the Commission, the soliciting and accepting of donations from people who were not allowed to donate, the evasiveness when challenged on it, the sheer full-face lies in answer to questions, the sacrificing of one of their number, the hiding from journalists, and the continued insistence that there was no "intentional wrong" in spite of the overwhelming evidence are indicative of a woman lacking personal integrity and a party lacking collective integrity.

That defence of 'no intentional wrong' - the apparent belief that they can do no wrong - is incredible. Applied to any other crime it would appear as fatuous as it is (except, of course, in the case of burthensack). Put quite simply, Wendy Alexander and her campaign team sought to avoid the law, they have admitted to committing crimes in the pursuit of the leadership of the Labour party, and it would appear that the particular methods they used are not unknown elsewhere in the Labour party.

An interesting aside was the rebuke from Labour party HQ delivered to Charlie Gordon et al regarding Paul Green. The implication was that the donations would never have been accepted had party HQ known about them. This, of course, simply points to the fact that Labour's internal reporting systems are not operative or party HQ would have known about at least one of the donations.

The entire farce smacks of the same kind of contempt that epitomised the Lanarkshire Red Rose dinners - see here, here, here, here, and here for more information on those. Similarly, the impromptu press conference held by Labour last week was party political in nature but was held on Scottish Parliament premises - against the rules - and was convened by Tom McCabe - Labour's representative on the Corporate Body, responsible for the running of Parliament.

It's the casual and easy way they indulge in petty corruption that suggests a far deeper and far more cynical attitude that is at odds with representing the people of Scotland.

Let's get this over with, for Scotland's sake - Wendy Alexander's political career is over and the corpse is lying in state. For the sake of decency, bury the body now and have done with it all.

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