£180,000.00 or so doesn’t seem to buy you much of a political campaign these days. Peter Hain’s attempt at being deputy leader of the Labour party certainly ended in a lot of cheques being signed rather than in ballot papers being crossed in his favour. All that rather desperate spend only reinforced the impression that he was regarded as an outsider within the Labour movement as a whole-despite his status as a cabinet minister and MP of sixteen years standing.
It’s all too easy though for a political campaign to run into such difficulties-because here the financial is an aspect of the personal. The moment a candidate puts his name forward is also the time when a large number of political friends and well-wishers decide they want to be a part of the action as well. And their wide-eyed eagerness can cause far more problems than the challenges thrown by the opposing camps.
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