Labour general Secretary resigns as funding scandal goes nuclear

Its true that today Gordon Brown promised more nuclear. I am not quite sure this is what he had in mind.

Peter Watt, the somewhat youthful general secretary of the Labour party resigned today after having admitted that he knew that the secret donations came from Mr David Abrahams. His defence was that he was not aware of the law, and after the scandal broke sought legal advice.

Nice try Peter, however ignorance of the law is no defence.

What is scary though, is that someone could be placed in such a position without the knowledge or training to do the job. It would be a bit like putting a university history lecturer in charge of safety at a nuclear plant. Bound to lead to disaster.

It goes deeper though. This "arrangement" of which Peter Watt was aware appears to have been going on since before he took over. Did the previous general secretary know?

It gets worse (I kid you not) in that there was a "secret" donation to Harriet Harmans campaign. Did she know?

And worse still, David Abrahams company Durham Green Developments Ltd have been granted planning permission after "negotiation" with the highways agency (Then run by "wee" Douglas Alexander) for a £60 million pound development.

When this story first broke, I though that this could get embarrassing, but that it was the work of a rogue donor. It now appears to be getting worse by the day. What is more, the press are still furiously digging. One of the conduits for the laundered donations is a solicitor apparently who ought soon (if that is the case) to be an ex solicitor. We have the property deals, though wee Dougie has denied that he had anything to do with it, but most importantly of all, we have the fact that this appears to have been a long standing arrangement to subvert the law.

You just could not make this up!

Guido has this, the Telegraph has this, the Times has this, and the Daily Mail has this.