Labour has got itself in more trouble on top of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s decision to postpone plans for a general election this year. Reports in some of today’s newspapers claim that the overall cost of “The election that never was” to the party was around £1million.
At a time when the party is deeply in debt (some claim it is around £20million), they had spent resources they didn’t have on preparing for the election. Donations to the party had been reduced because of the “cash-for-honours” controversy, and that many of the trade unions, angry at the refusal of Brown to switch direction in government policy (Brown criticised the striking postal workers in their long-running dispute with the Royal Mail), may consider stopping contributing alltogether (some, like the RMT, jumped ship a while ago).
Gordon Brown, while as Chancellor of the Exchequer, claimed to have a reputation for “fiscal prudence”. The problem was that it was found to be untrue. What hope does he have to sort out the financial problems of his own party?