The Spectator’s Notes | 1 December 2007

It is undeniably enjoyable to see Gordon Brown squirming about the £600,000 his party will have to pay back to David Abrahams, the man of many aliases. If Peter Watt, the resigning general secretary of the Labour party, really, as he claims, saw something devious about the practice of taking money under other names only when the letter of the law was pointed out to him, that shows how our culture has replaced conscience with compliance. And what is the point, by the way, of the treasurer of the party, Jack Dromey, who, despite his title, seems to be too grand to know anything about money, including the £5,000 which Mr Abrahams paid to his wife? But the Tories are not standing on firm ground. They must abandon their support for the state funding of political parties. When a man tries to buy himself power or baubles through donating to parties, it is, in a sense, honest: he is paying with his own money.