LabourOutlook Sat May 31, 2008 at 03:40:09 PM GMT
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Peter Oborne writes in the
Mail today about the current state of the party's finances
I've summerised the article's main pointed below for Labour Outlook
In terms of the current political situation, the final bullet point is perhaps the most shocking.
Current situation
- Since the sale of its Old Queen Street headquarters in central London for some £6 million two years ago, the party has no substantial assets.
- Labour's debts total more than £20 million
- There is a serious possibility that the party's accountants, Horwath Clark Whitehill, may refuse to formally approve the party's accounts, due to be completed later this month.
Current strategy failing
- Labour's total running costs stand at around £25million a year, half of which is accounted for by a wage bill of more than £10 million and interest payments in excess of £2 million.
- In the first three months of this year the party raised barely £5 million.
- Jon Mendelsohn, appointed as fundraiser nine months ago by Gordon Brown, has had little success
- A senior Labour party figure told Oborne that Sir Ronald Cohen, who had been expected to play the role of private banker to Gordon Brown 'has not been on the premises in the way that we hoped'.
Senior party figures will be liable for the party's debt
- City solicitors Slaughter and May advise David Pitt-Watson, the erstwhile next party General Secretary, that he, along with other senior Labour Party figures, would be obliged to bear personal responsibility for the party's debts in the event of bankruptcy.
- This threat of personal liability was taken so seriously that the GMB trade union discussed at its last executive council meeting whether its two representatives on the Labour NEC should be indemnified against financial loss in the event Labour goes bankrupt.
- Every member of the NEC now faces the prospect of personal bankruptcy if Labour goes to the wall. These include the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman, Employment Minister Pat McFadden and Treasury Minister Angela Eagle.
Where next?
- The party needs to repay, or roll over, some £7million of loans by July as well as a further £6million more by the end of the year.
- Lenders include some caught up in last year's cash for peerages investigation and, as a result, are either angry, disillusioned or both.
- Lenders include Richard Caring who now appears on the list of constituency donors to the Conservative education spokesman, Michael Gove
- One senior party figure told Oborne that 'the financial crisis is very severe indeed, and the worst thing is that there is no obvious way out. Bankruptcy has to be one of the options that is on the table.'
- Brown is being forced to devote hours of his time to saving Labour from bankruptcy
- There are hints that some donors are sending a message that they are happy to bail out Labour so long as the party finds another leader.