Monday, January 15, 2007

Cash for Peerages, have they no shame?

Well it seems not.

Seasoned observers of the political scene will have noticed that Labour is a bot strapped for cash, particularly as many donors in the loans for peerages accusations are demanding that their loans are repaid on time. (See much Guido passim)

To the rescue comes Lakshmi Mittal, whom followers of the original cash for favours scandals will remember as the Indian steel magnate with world wide business interests who got Tony Blair to write a letter to the Romanian PM on his behalf.

Completely coincidentally the said Lakshmi Mittal had donated £125,000 to the Labour party a little bit before. (Most lawyers write letters for their clients for much much less)

Well apparently according to yesterdays Sunday Times, Lakshmi Mittal has just donated £2 million to Labour to help out. How nice. According to this article Lord Sleazy Levy and Tony Blair personally negotiated the deal. After all a Romanian steel business has to be worth more than £125,000.

I suspect Guido will be looking for other angles on this tomorrow.

Update 17:39 16/01/2007:

Well Guido has not covered it, but the BBC has this here by way of confirmation.

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