The paper has discovered that, over the past decade, Unite – the union that is now apparently doing its best to destroy British Airways – and the two unions of which it is the merged product, Amicus and TGWU, have received almost £18 million of taxpayers’ money.  During the same period, the Labour party has received over £29 million, or over 24 per cent of its revenue, from the three unions.

Over £17 million has been paid to the unions from the Union Learning Fund, established by the Government in 1998 to help train union representatives and members.   Funding for the scheme was increased shortly after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007.  However, Unite does not give details of how the money is applied and evaluation reports ceased to be published years ago.

In addition, Unite has received over £380,000 from the Union Modernisation Fund, administered by Lord Mandelson’s Business Department, which has the ostensible aim of helping trade unions improve their management structures.

Unite, therefore, has received a huge wodge of cash from the taxpayer without, extraordinarily enough, having to tell the taxpayer where a single penny of it has been spent.  What the taxpayer does know, however, is that:

• Unite is the Labour party’s biggest donor;
• its political director, Charlie Whelan, is now once again ensconced in Downing Street, where he is helping Peter Mandelson  mastermind Labour’s election campaign;
• Jack Dromey, Unite’s deputy general secretary and Harriet Harman’s husband, has just been selected for the safe Labour seat of Birmingham Erdington from what was supposed to be an all-women shortlist;
• 108 Labour MPs, or almost a third of the Parliamentary party,  are members of Unite.

On Wednesday, at PMQs, David Cameron suggested that the Labour party is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Unite.  It’s hard to disagree with that.

Today, Francis Maude, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, commented that the financial arrangement uncovered by the Telegraph “looks like money laundering – taxpayers’ money is being funnelled into Unite then put straight back into Labour’s coffers.”

On the face of it, it’s hard to disagree with that, too.

It seems likely that the Prime Minister will visit the Queen the same day and that the general election will be held on 6 May.

The waiting will soon be over, thank heaven.

Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show, Adonis said:

“The stakes are incredibly high. I absolutely deplore the strike;, it is not only the damage it is going to do to passengers and the inconvenience it’s going to cause — which is quite disproportionate to the issues at stake — but also the threat it poses to the future of one of our great companies in this country.

“It’s totally unjustified. I do call on the union to engage constructively with the company at this late stage.”

Contrast Adonis’s admirable plain speaking with the mealy-mouthed comments that have thus far come from Gordon Brown, who has merely said that “the disruption to services is unacceptable”.

Readers who have spent the last three years marooned on a remote desert island may wish to know that:

• Charlie Whelan, Unite’s political director, is Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor;
• it is widely anticipated that Whelan will have a central role in Labour’s general election campaign;
• Labour has received up to 25 per cent of its funding from Unite since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister;
• Unite’s deputy general secretary, Jack Dromey, was recently selected as parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Erdington.  Proposals that the selection should be made from an all-women shortlist were overruled by Labour’s National Executive Committee;
• Mr Dromey is the husband of Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman.

Sadly, I strongly suspect that Lord Adonis’s political career is unlikely to advance significantly further.

Shadow Leader of the House, Sir George Young, raised the issue in the House at Business Questions today:

Sir George Young: May we have a statement from the Prime Minister on his assertion at Question Time yesterday? He said that under this Government

“the defence budget has been rising every year.”—[Official Report, 10 March 2010; Vol. 507, c. 291.]

That is a claim the Prime Minister made repeatedly at the Chilcot inquiry last Friday, but as he should know, spending on the Ministry of Defence was in fact cut in real terms between 2003–04 and 2004–05. The Leader of the House will know that the ministerial code requires Ministers to correct

“any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.”

Given that the Prime Minister is at risk of inadvertently misleading Parliament, when will he put the record straight?

The Leader of the House, Harriet Harman, would have none of it:

Ms Harman: The Prime Minister gave evidence to the Chilcot inquiry last Friday, he answered questions about defence spending in Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, and there will be a defence debate on Monday. I strongly refute any suggestion or implication from the shadow Leader of the House that the Prime Minister has in any way misled the House or, indeed, anyone else. He has been absolutely forthright about the defence budget and about this Government’s long-standing and strong commitment to ensuring that our defence forces have the resources they need. They have the full backing of the Government and, indeed, the British people.

So no prospect of an admission of fallibility from Gordon.  Indeed, he was  in denial again today.  When it was put to him that senior commanders – Lord Guthrie included – were adamant in their contention that he had rejected requests of additional funding, he replied simply: “They are wrong.”

Mr. David Jones (Clwyd, West) (Con): The Business Secretary once famously remarked that Labour was intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich. Is the right hon. and learned Lady equally relaxed about how the Prime Minister’s predecessor has decided to go about it?

Ms Harman: We have asked the National Equality Panel to look at how we can ensure that we help social mobility and—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I want to hear the answer.

Ms Harman: We are determined to ensure that there is social mobility, and one of the important findings of the NEP report is that more unequal societies have less social mobility, which is why we are determined, with Government action, to continue to support policies that spread fairness and equality.

I’m sure that the Rt Hon Tony Blair (Fettes, Oxford and Louis Vuitton) is intensely grateful for the leg-up.

The first PMQs of the New Year were a more than averagely raucous affair.  The Prime Minister was on slightly better form than usual, although not so outstandingly sparkling as to merit the Labour cheers and cries of “More!” that greeted his characteristically clunky joke:

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman talks about love and marriage, when he is the person who cannot give a straight answer on the married couples allowance: he cannot say, “I do,” or “I don’t,” when it comes to the married couples allowance.

Certainly, by Gordon’s standards it was good, but Dorothy Parker it wasn’t.  Nevertheless, his backbenchers rolled around, seemingly helpless with laughter.  Labour-watchers from the Tory side of the chamber, however, could see that the hilarity was fairly obviously orchestrated by the whips, who were dotted strategically around the Government benches.  Indeed, the loudest cheers and most vigorous order paper-waving were concentrated around the PM’s enforcer-in-chief, Chris Evans lookalike Ian Austin, who sat smirking on the extreme right of the back benches.

Something was up, and before too long we knew what: the vibrating BlackBerries informed us that “Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt to make statement about Gordon Brown’s leadership after PMQs”.

It turned out that Hewitt and Hoon had written to the entire Parliamentary Labour party noting that it was “deeply divided over the question of the leadership” and urging a secret ballot on whether to hold a leadership contest.  The noise from the Labour benches was a whips’ exercise designed to bolster the PM at what must have been a more than anxious moment.

At the time of writing, all members of the cabinet appear to have come out in support of Brown, though David Miliband and Harriet Harman were somewhat tardy in pledging their fealty.  The repercussions of Hoon and Hewitt’s helpful intervention, however, will rumble on for some while yet; they have confirmed openly that the Labour party is divided and politicians know that people tend not to vote for divided parties.  That will unsettle Labour even more.

At the height of the ersatz Labour merriment, the Speaker felt obliged to rise to his feet and remonstrate that “we are not on the hustings now”.

Actually, he was quite wrong.  At least, so far as the Parliamentary Labour party was concerned.

The Telegraph reports that Harriet Harman will be one of the principal “faces” of Labour’s general election campaign.  Harman, according to Labour strategists, “could prove important in reaching out to both women and middle England, two groups who are resistant to Gordon Brown”.

An interesting point of view.  In my experience, no politician on either side of the divide is more likely to make the denizens of middle England, middle Wales or middle anywhere else foam at the mouth than the exquisitely correct Ms Harperson.

She was pressed repeatedly by several Members, including the shadow Leader, Sir George Young, as to why the Government did not propose to make a statement on the local government settlement.  Finally, she lost the plot altogether:

Mr. Andrew Mackay (Bracknell) (Con): In every single previous year, the appropriate Secretary of State has come to the Dispatch Box to give an oral statement on the local government settlement, and there has been, entirely separately, a pre-Budget report from the Chancellor. Why is that not happening this year, and what have the Government got to hide?

Ms Harman: I understand that there has been cross-party discussion on this, and there is an answer. [Interruption.] This is a serious point. This settlement is the final one of the first three-year settlements, and it is unchanged from January 2008. Therefore, following discussions with Opposition Front Benchers, the usual procedure was not seen as necessary. A letter was sent to Opposition spokespeople about this on 12 November, and there have been no objections from Front Benchers. [Interruption.] No, I see that that is not so. Ignore what I have just said—I will look into it.

I’m not entirely sure how far back Harriet wanted us to go in ignoring what she had to say.  Erring on the side of prudence and caution, I intend to start somewhere around May, 2005.

Damage reduction exercises by the Prime Minister, Lord Mandelson and Harriet Harman have only made matters worse.   The video of the final moments of Gordon Brown’s interview with Sky’s  Adam Boulton reveals the full extent of his anger; Mandelson was forced to deny using a particularly forceful  expletive in a telephone conversation with News International’s chief executive, Rebekah Brooks; and Harman used her speech on equality to point out that – wait for it –  the Sun features pictures of topless models on page 3.  Well, I never.

The PM’s discomfiture is unlikely to be eased by this morning’s edition of the Sun, which continues its less than flattering critique of the last 12 years of Labour government.  Worse still, however, it contains an “exclusive” report that Tony Blair is poised to become the “first President of Europe in weeks”.

The latter will surely cause particular displeasure to the beleaguered Brown.  Readers may like to be  reminded of William Hague’s vision of the scenario, delivered during the debate on the Lisbon treaty in January last year:

We can all picture the scene at a European Council sometime next year. Picture the face of our poor Prime Minister as the name “Blair” is nominated by one President and Prime Minister after another: the look of utter gloom on his face at the nauseating, glutinous praise oozing from every Head of Government, the rapid revelation of a majority view, agreed behind closed doors when he, as usual, was excluded.

Never would he more regret no longer being in possession of a veto: the famous dropped jaw almost hitting the table, as he realises there is no option but to join in.

And then the awful moment when the motorcade of the President of Europe sweeps into Downing Street. The gritted teeth and bitten nails: the Prime Minister emerges from his door with a smile of intolerable anguish; the choking sensation as the words “Mr President” are forced from his mouth.

And then, once in the Cabinet room, the melodrama of, “When will you hand over to me?” all over again.

Benedict Brogan says that Brighton was particularly quiet last night.

Fresh from her triumph in excluding Britain’s first female Prime Minister from a list of “

Speaking at “a meeting on the sex industry and business” (yes, honestly), Harman declared her intention to press the Treasury to disallow the cost of nights out at lap dancing clubs as business expenditure.  Apparently, some companies are in the habit of entertaining clients at such establishments and are successfully clawing back corporation tax and VAT from the Revenue.

Harman’s principal objection to the practice is that it “excludes women in the workplace”, on the basis, presumably, that lap dancing clubs offer few obvious attractions for most female employees.  Secondly, however, it is:

“also part of a larger industry of exploitation of women and selling sex, so we have to look at it in both respects.”

Oh yes, of course.

Perhaps Harman should also spend some time reflecting on her own Government’s role in the matter, given that it was its notorious Licensing Act of 2003 that designated the squalid places as “leisure establishments”, rather than near-brothels, as well as providing for the 24-hour drinking culture that has done so much to promote temperance and public order.

The consequence of that landmark piece of Labour legislation is that central parts of the great cities of this country are now poorly regulated versions of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, rather than places of resort for decent people.

If open rebellion hasn’t yet broken out within the Parliamentary Labour party, it is fair to say that barricades are being manned – or, in the case of Harriet Harman, personned. 

It was Harriet herself who threw the fat in the fire yesterday by stridently demanding that a female MP should always form part of the Labour leadership team.  That provoked a pretty blunt response from John Prescott, who berated her roundly in his blog:

I know you don’t choose the headlines. But you did choose the words in the interview.

You said: “I don’t agree with all male leaderships. Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it’s thoroughly bad to have a men-only leadership.”

Quotes like this just raise leadership issues once again just at a time when we should all be pulling together and defending our record.

But Harriet in the meantime has opened up a campaign on a second front by falling out with Peter Mandelson, who apparently refused to discuss her proposals for extended maternity leave at the recent cabinet awayday in Cardiff. 

Mandelson and Harman are apparently taking it in turns to mind the shop during Gordon Brown’s absence on holiday, an arrangement that appears only to have added to the friction that exists between the two.

Eric Joyce’s implicit reference to his boss, Bob Ainsworth, as “politically bonkers” has also stirred up a hornets’ nest.  One unnamed minister said that Joyce should be “toast” for his insubordination, but Joyce remains stubbornly and embarrassingly in situ.

Meanwhile, Alan Johnson’s protestations that he is unable to stop the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States because to do so would be illegal have been undermined by his former deputy leadership rival, Peter Hain, who last night criticised the way the Government had handled the case, asserting that it should have been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider possible charges in a “British context”.

It doesn’t look good; in fact, it looks awful.

And while all this mayhem is breaking out, there is nary a word from Downing Street, not a squeak from Gordon Brown, who sits, brooding, somewhere in the Lake District, while what little was left of his authority is publicly, comprehensively and humiliatingly shredded.

In her appearance on this morning’s Andrew Marr Show, Harriet Harman said:

“The Tories are insufferably arrogant about this, saying: ‘Labour’s already lost the next election; we’ve already won.  We already have the keys of Downing Street.’

“I think that’s arrogant.  I think that’s taking the voters for granted and I don’t believe at all that we’ve lost the next election.  We’re in it for the fight.”

It’s extremely good to see the Labour deputy leader evincing such fighting spirit.  As I have blogged previously, it is the hallmark of the politician that he or she will fight to the end and never give up.

On the other hand, Ms Harman was herself showing considerable arrogance in her accusations against the Conservative party. 

No Conservative politician I know, or have ever heard of, thinks that the election is in the bag, much less has asserted it in the repellent manner alleged by Ms Harman.  We know full well that we have a fight on the hands and cannot take the outcome for granted.  What is more, Ms Harman knows full well that that is the case. 

In suggesting that the Tories are guilty of such overweening  pride and  of declaiming it, Ms Harman is herself guilty of  treating the voters as idiots.  That is real arrogance, for which she and her party deserve to be soundly punished next year.

This is how Politics Home reports it:

13.11 Also on the World at One, Harriet Harman calls the result “very disappointing”.

She says: “It is really a reflection of the quite unprecedented circumstances.”

She also describes Theresa May as arrogant for saying she thought the Conservatives would win Norwich North in the general election: “I never take the voters for granted, I think that is arrogant.”

For a start, I know of no Conservative, Theresa included, who took the by-election result as a certainty; everyone worked flat out right up to close of polls.  A similar attitude will certainly prevail at the next general election.

Theresa May’s comment, as reported on the BBC website, is clear enough:

She added: “We’ve overturned a Labour majority of 5,500 to a Conservative majority of over 7,000. If we hold this seat at the general election, we’ll have a majority of over 100.”

I can’t see anything taken for granted there.

Furthermore, Harriet Harman should perhaps reflect on the extent to which Labour themselves have indeed taken certain sections of the electorate for granted over the years.

The fact that they can no longer rely on an unquestioning client voter base appears to have taken her by surprise – which may, in part, be the reason for her silly remark.

Perhaps, having reflected, she will now consider making an appropriate apology to Theresa May.

The Prime Minister was away today at the G8, enjoying the hospitality of Signor Berlusconi.  As a consequence, Harriet Harman deputised for him at PMQs, and William Hague for David Cameron.

William attempted to get the Leader of the House to explain the Prime Minister’s bizarre turn of phrase at last week’s Questions:

Mr. Hague: Moving on to Government policy more broadly, will she put into plain English for everyone the Prime Minister’s assertion last week that

“total spending will continue to rise, and it will be a zero per cent. rise in 2013”?—[Official Report, 1 July 2009; Vol. 495, c. 294.]

A futile ambition.  Harriet Harman’s response generated no light:

Ms Harman: The right hon. Gentleman will know that all the figures are set out in the Budget book. Our commitment is clear: we are making public investment now to help to back up the economy, get through the recession and ensure that it is shorter and shallower than it would otherwise be…. I understand that the shadow Chancellor revealed last week that he spends 40 per cent. of his time thinking about economics. It is amazing that he spends 40 per cent. of his time thinking about doing absolutely nothing.

No answer there, then.  William tried again:

Mr. Hague: Perhaps the Leader of the House could spend 100 per cent. of the next minute trying to answer the question she was asked about what the Prime Minister meant by a “zero per cent. rise”. Is it not now clear that every single word of the assertion that he made last week is wrong—that total spending will not rise, and there will not even be a “zero per cent. rise”, as he bizarrely called it, in 2013, but that the figures in the Government’s books, which the Leader of House mentioned, show that there would be a fall?

It was no good; Harriet would have none of it.  There was going to be no reduction in spending.

One last try for William:

Mr. Hague: The Leader of the House’s statement “We are not cutting capital spending”, when the Government’s figures show it declining from £44 billion to £22 billion, is exactly the sort of statement that damages the credibility of politics and the Government. It is no wonder that they are abandoning their numeracy strategy when Ministers will not admit that 22 is half of 44.

But Harman wouldn’t budge.  She point-blank refused to acknowledge that there would be spending cuts.

I have to say I was genuinely disappointed in her.  The most damning criticism of Gordon Brown, and one that is doing him real damage, is that he is taking the British people for fools in refusing to acknowledge the self-evident truth that public spending cuts are inevitable, whichever party wins power next year.

As a potential leadership candidate after Brown’s departure, Harriet Harman is doing herself no favours at all by adhering  to the Prime Minister’s ludicrous and discredited line.

For an impartial analysis of the exchange between Hague and Harman, take a look at the Channel 4 website: 

http://tinyurl.com/nhobou 

 Took the opportunity at Business Questions yesterday of raising the issue of the collapse earlier this month of the Dairy Farmers of Britain (DFB) co-operative.  Many of my farming constituents supplied milk to the co-op’s Llandyrnog creamery and have lost thousands of pounds in vital cashflow:

Mr. David Jones(Clwyd, West) (Con): Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to make a further statement to the House on the circumstances that led to the collapse of the Dairy Farmers of Britain co-operative and on what has happened since? Across the north of England and throughout Wales, more than 1,500 farmers are suffering as a result of not having received their full milk cheques for May. That demands a further statement from the Secretary of State. Will the Leader of the House urge him to make one as a matter of urgency?

Ms Harman: The Secretary of State will be answering questions in the House next week. Given that this has been such an important issue in many regions, I am sure that he will be able to account to the House for the situation then.

Many suppliers of the creamery find it hard to understand how, only a few short months before DFB’s failure, the co-op’s annual report could include the following remarkably sanguine statement:

The prospects for DFB are very promising indeed. We have a business model that is capable of sustainable growth, driven by advantaged positions with emerging customers as well as our key relationships with our existing estate and we will maintain a relentless focus on costs and efficiencies, thereby improving our margins in line with business plan expectations.

The failure of DFB demands further investigation, and I have tabled an appropriate oral question to the Secretary of State for answer next week.