By an order of magnitude
Not so much a conflict of interest as a World War II of interest.
Posted on November 4th, 2006 at 8:44am under New Labour, Sleaze, UK politics
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For anyone with a background in the labour movement, the real point of “cash-for-peerages” isn’t the peerages: it’s the fact that vast sums of money were being received by the Labour Party without the knowledge of the Treasurer. That’s astonishing – or rather, it isn’t, but it ought to be. Youcan’t run a social club on that basis, let alone the political party that is currently in government. That’s the real scandal.
None of this comes over in the media, of course, because practically without exception the people who write or produce or present reports on Westminster politics have neither knowledge nor interest in the Labour movement. This also partly explains why they’re not terribly upset about the conflict of interest. They themselves exist in a world of influence and contacts: their careers happen like that and the political world which excites them operates like that.