Labour in the mire on party funding

Let us be clear: Labour's current difficulties are not because of a problem with the system of party funding. They are because of a problem in the Labour Party. There are no comparable examples of illegal funding in the other parties and Labour's attempts to smear Lord Achcroft in defence of their own criminality are beneath contempt. What on earth makes these people think that they can simply ignore laws that they find inconvenient? Then we have the line that the numerous instances of criminal acts are all a matter of incompentence rather than design. If that were true then it would hardly be an advertisement for the party of government, but of course it isn't true. These people are amoral, not stupid. In political terms, this is about as bad as it gets. Senior members of the party on both the professional and political side are implicated. There are several police investigations and there will be prosecutions and trials. Wendy Alexander north of the border and Harriet Harman down south are both on borrowed time. Numerous Labour officials may be trading the corridors of power for Wormwood Scrubs. It is difficult to see how Labour comes back from this without a wholesale change, and that means a change at the top. I am sure that thought has already occurred to a few Labour MPs who can otherwise look forward to an abrupt end to their parliamentary careers otherwise. The trouble is that, unlike the Conservatives, Labour has no tradition of this sort of thing. They had better learn quickly.