LABOUR ADMITTED SELLING HONOURS SOME TIME AGO

This from the Guardian:

Police had arrested Labour's chief fundraiser Lord Levy, another close No 10 aide and a millionaire donor during the inquiry but yesterday they were told by the CPS that there was an unrealistic prospect that the evidence would lead to a conviction. Senior Scotland Yard figures were said to strongly disagree.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/funding/story/0,,2130916,00.html

So in other words the Police had collected enough evidence to prosecute but the CPS has been nobbled. We know that Labour are guilty because early on Frank Field admitted as much however he said it was OK because “everybody does it.”

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Field, a former social security minister, said the selling of honours "needs to be seen in context"."It has always gone on and probably always will. Most people know that for the best part of two centuries that honours were appropriated by money," he told the newspaper.'In the 18th century honours and cash for political parties were in effect the constitution. It is a different relationship now. But of course it is still going on today.'

http://www.politics.co.uk/News/domestic-policy/constitution/honours-system/honours-have-always-been-sold-$458742.htm

From the Mail on Sunday:

There is no doubt that British political parties (and not just Tony Wright's own New Labour) are basically corrupt and have been for many years. All of them are bankrupt and have, at times, sought to make good their cash shortfall by offering favours to party donors. In some cases, as in the Ecclestone scandal over tobacco advertising for Formula One racing, they change government policy in order to help out their donors. On other occasions, they offer meetings with ministers or senior politicians in return for hard cash.

But the practice of exchanging honours for money, either in the form of donations or loans, is most common of all. Both Tories and Labour have raised scores of millions of pounds in this way. A recent piece of research showed that a Labour Party donor was 7,000 times more likely than a non-donor to receive a peerage, and 1,600 times more likely to receive some other kind of honour.

It's long been an open secret that honours were for sale, so much so that the former Downing Street policy chief Geoff Mulgan once remarked that "in later years, the scarcely concealed sale of peerages to wealthy party donors, and the appointment of the party's top donor - Lord Sainsbury - to ministerial office, did little to restore public confidence in the Government".

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=469858&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=382