The giant opus on the Abrahams fiasco that dominates the Observer’s focus pages this week is really rather good. I was particularly interested in the detail about the close involvement of Conservative Campaign HQ. Journalists must get their leads from whatever sources they can, but for years Labour’s official opposition has been frankly useless. Jonathan Oliver at the Mail on Sunday must take the lion’s share of the credit for breaking the Abrahams story, but as the Observer reveals, the Tory research team played an important role here.
This part of the story begins with the Tories pulling out of talks on the future of party funding:
“The Tory response to the collapse of the talks was clear: expose Labour’s dodgy donors and their donations. Operation Under the Water was under way. From his desk at Tory HQ, a young researcher, Richard Hardyment, filed a request under the freedom of information laws to the Highways Agency. Nothing in his request indicated initially that Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition was sniffing for a scandal. Hardyment left a mobile number and a Google mail address on the request form. But his questions showed that this was no fishing expedition.
Would the Highways Agency, Hardyment asked, provide him with details of all its correspondence with Durham Green Developments about its recent planning application for a development near junction 61 of the A1? An innocent enough request, it seemed to officials, until they later realised this was the controversial planning application by David Abrahams. Durham Green Developments is registered at his Gosforth home.
There was more which showed that Hardyment, a young Cambridge graduate, had an eagle eye. In addition to asking for the Highways Agency’s letters, he also asked for correspondence with ‘persons acting on behalf of Durham Green Developments including but not exclusively Raymond Ruddick and Janet Kidd’. They were the company’s sole directors. But more importantly Ruddick and Kidd were the two employees used by Abrahams to funnel donations to the Labour Party. A month before the Mail on Sunday revealed their names, the Conservatives were on to the case. Now Brown is struggling to regain the political initiative.”
Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday’s latest revelations about the £830,000 donation from Mahmoud Khayami, a French citizen who can’t vote in Britain twist the knife even further. The article also mentions international fixer Anthony Bailey. I remember encountering him as the spokesman for British Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, when I was writing about him for the Observer.
NOTE: THIS POSTING HAS BEEN ALTERED IN THE LIGHT OF THE COMMENTS BELOW AND SOME COMMENTS HAVE BEEN REMOVED AS THEY NO LONGER MADE SENSE
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