The Green Ribbon

Donations row overshadows Alexander devolution call

Labour's Scottish leader Wendy Alexander has found herself embroiled in her own donations row over the last couple of days.

On Wednesday, it emerged that Alexander's leadership campaign team had accepted a donation from Paul Green, a businessman based in the Channel Islands. Her campaign manager Tom McCabe claimed the  donation had been made through a UK registered company.

However, today saw the disclosure of a personal letter from Alexander to Green, at his home address in Jersey, thanking him for his donation. According to Brian Taylor, Alexander was responsible as the 'regulated donee' for checking that the donation complied with the law, which it didn't because Mr Green was based outside the UK.

The row has overshadowed a significant speech from Alexander today, in which she called for a Scottish Constitutional Commission to consider the devolution of more powers to Holyrood:

The Geopolitics of Sleaze

The Daily Telegraph picks up on a particularly intriguing, not to say sensitive, aspect of the Labour donations' scandal:

Mr Abrahams is described by friends as a "secretive" person who spends little money on himself but likes to rub shoulders with the great and the good at political and charity events.

Last year he was pictured shaking hands with the then Israeli ambassador, Zvi Heifetz, who was questioned then cleared over money-laundering allegations. Mr Heifetz was recently appointed as an adviser to Mr Blair in his role as Middle East peace envoy.

Yesterday, a Downing Street source said Labour "had not seen any evidence" to suggest the money was not Mr Abrahams's. He added: "It would be very serious if it were the case. No one is aware of any such arrangement. It will be part of the inquiry." (Telegraph) [Update 12/12 - I should note that nothing has emerged to substantiate the implication of this story, which should probably be put down as a smear.  Nevertheless, the comments below are still relevant.]

The whole episode has shone a spotlight on the key role of the Labour Friends of Israel in funding the party. This is something that came up during the cash for peerages affair, although much of the media was fairly reticent about joining the dots between Lord Levy's role as Labour's chief fundraiser, and his role as Middle East envoy during the Lebanon War. This wider geopolitical context has important parallels with the sleaze that emerged during the Major years.

European Court rules on Glennane gang collusion

The European Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday that the role of security force collusion in the killings of eight people in South Armagh in the 1970s was not properly investigated.

The killings are believed to have been the work of the Glennane Gang, a group of loyalists and security force members also linked to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974.

The following statement on the ruling was issued by Madden and Finucane solicitors:

Beyond Brown's Britain

One of the most striking indications of the sense of crisis currently engulfing  Gordon Brown's government is Jackie Ashley's suggestion that Brown could step down before the next election.

There is still plenty of time for Brown to turn things round, and it is probably too early for talk of 'Black Wednesday' moments. That said, the latest polls make grim reading for the Prime Minister, showing the Conservatives on course for an overall majority at the next election.

It is worth giving some thought to what that would mean. For one thing, it would pave the way for the scenario canvassed by Fraser Nelson last week:

Barnett on e-borders

Anthony Barnett has picked up the e-borders issue over at OurKingdom, placing it squarely in the wider context of the Database State.

OurKingdom has joined another valuable new group blog, Liberal Conspiracy, in backing Henry Porter's call for a mass 'movement in defence of our privacy, security and freedom.'

'Informal deal' between SNP and Tories

Interesting coverage in Scotland on Sunday of the quiet rapprochement between the SNP and the Tories. Eddie Barnes suggests this is a no-brainer for Alex Salmond, but not necessarily for David Cameron:

as his party's grass roots will no doubt be reminding him, the Conservative Party still has the word 'Unionist' in its title. So should he really therefore be pandering to the agenda of a Nationalist purely because it will buy him some medium-term political advantage? Isn't that exactly the kind of cynical politics which Cameron has spent several months profitably accusing Brown of employing? (scotsman.com)

It certainly makes for a striking contrast with the recent tensions between the Tories and the DUP. I wonder how unionist the Tory grassroots really are these days?

Update: More on this point from Fraser Nelson at the Spectator.

Making the case for Irish unity in Britain

I popped up to Camden on Saturday for the Sinn Fein conference on Irish Unity, which it appears is a prelude to the creation of a new solidarity group in Britain.

The most interesting speaker was Coleraine Councillor Billy Leonard, who talked about the implications of Scottish and Welsh devolution for Ireland, the decline of Britishness and the contrasting growth of the all-Ireland dynamic.

This was an important theme, but there was no great sense from any of the speakers that the Irish in Britain could play a role in shaping that wider dynamic. The planned solidarity group sounds as if it will be mainly focussed on supporting domestic election campaigns.

One exception was John McDonnell who suggested that supporters of Irish unity need to rebuild their position in the Labour Party, following it's decision to organise in Northern Ireland.

In my view, one of the the most effective things the Irish in Britain can do for a united Ireland is to bring their perspective to bear on the constitutional debate here.

If Irish nationalists are currently missing that opportunity, the same may be true for unionists, according to Mick Fealty:

ID cards: It's time the penny dropped

Remarkable piece by Martin Kettle on the data debacle:

There can hardly be a person alive who hasn't lost something important - keys, wallet, passport, watch, car, even children - at some time or another through their own inadvertence or stupidity. We've all done it. A lot of us have also had things stolen too, not least in the post or by couriers. So, in that sense, today's announcement that the Revenue and Customs have lost some CDs full of data is actually a very human story. We've all been there. It's incredibly annoying, but it's life. We ought to feel sympathetic.

Of course people make mistakes. That is exactly why the Government should have foreseen that making more and more data accessible to more and more officials on fewer and bigger databases was a recipe for trouble.

What is most culpable is that even in the face of a debacle that has demonstrated the dangers of this approach, the Government is still fully committed to carrying a flawed policy to its logical conclusion, a national identity database.

I have long thought that the ID cards plan could become Labour's poll tax. (In fact, given that we will all be forced to pay through the nose for the privilege of having them, ID cards effectively are a poll tax.) It represents an epochal shift in the balance between the state and civil society, that will fundamentally change this country for the worse.

I have come across a fair few Labour people, including some I greatly respect, who have a blind spot on this point. Well, the loss of data about every child in the country ought to be evidence enough that this is a bread and butter issue. Any national identity database will be intrinically and inevitably prone to similar problems.

Nothing less than the end of the ID cards plan will demonstrate that the Government has learnt anything from this episode.

National identity database: You've got to be joking

As many people have already pointed out, today's debacle shows just how vulnerable a centralised idenity database would be. NO2ID is calling for all government 'identity management' initiatives to be stopped until a full audit of all personal information on government systems has been conducted.

Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator, said:

"This data disaster shows up the madness behind the government’s ID schemes. People had no choice about giving up that information. It makes the government the biggest identity thief of all.

“It’s bad enough that HMRC can’t be trusted with basic financial details. But within five years the Home Office could be leaking or losing people’s complete identity records. And ‘data-sharing’ plans would make your whole life depend on government ID management. If you are not on their list, you won’t exist.

“Development of the National Identity Scheme should stop now. But more than that – we all need to know what information the government holds about us now, how it is already being shared among departments, and what the dangers are. That will only happen if there is a full and independent audit of what personal information is currently collected and the ways it is used.” (NO2ID)

The Border Campaign: Fifty Years On

In today's Belfast Telegraph, Eamonn McCann draws some parallels between the five IRA volunteers whose death fifty years ago at Edentubber was commemorated last weekend, and the recent spate of activity by dissident republicans.

The men were George Keegan (29),   from Wexford, Paul Smith (19), from Bessbrook, Michael Watters (54), from   Edentubber, Oliver Craven (19), from Newry, and Paddy Parle (27), from   Wexford.

They were dissidents in the sense that those who shot and   wounded off-duty members of the PSNI in Derry last Thursday and in Dungannon   on Monday are dissidents. That is to say, they had rejected the view of the   majority on the island who defined themselves as republicans, and had   instead maintained a commitment to armed struggle. They enjoyed no electoral   mandate nor any substantial public support and didn't believe they needed to   justify continuation of armed action. (Belfast Telegraph)

When I went to Ruan O'Donnell's talk on the 1956-62 border campaign on Wednesday, it was with a related thought in mind, namely that the campaign had demonstrated the futility of applying an old-style military approach to the northern situation.

However, O'Donnell presented a much more complex reality, and one which challenges the argument that McCann presents here: