Far too much is being made of tangoman Peter Hain’s funding of his ill-fated deputy leadership challenge. Despite his resignation as a minister, he has not been found guilty of anything and even if he is found to have broken the rules, who has lost out? Not you, nor I. If self-engrossed business people think it will benefit them to hand over cash to campaigns for ambitious politicians, fine. Someone has to pay. We don‘t want to. Even ardent enemies find not a trace of Hain having unduly helped any funder in return.
So what exactly is his crime here? He used a dormant think-tank to channel the £103,000 donation and possibly keep it out of the public domain for a bit. So? It was doing nothing anyway so better to find some use for it. If that is not a crime, and it is not, then the only other mud they can fling is he did not declare the donations. Wrong. He did but too late. If everyone in this country who has been late submitting tax papers were to put their hands up, how many of Hain’s detractors would have limbs aloft right now.
I will take my own hand down now and add that as the useless, toothless Electoral Commission has passed the matter onto the flatfoots, then obviously Hain had to stand down and prepare a defence. These are hectic roles running work and pensions and Wales. There is a time-consuming process he now has to concentrate on. But do not hold your breath for Hain to be flung in the pokey at Tower Hamlets. We claim not to like gawping at a hanging yet the average British citizen is famous for doing just that, or the modern version. These days, many of us are quite partial to a spot of public humiliation. That is why so many will hope he will be caught out. What a rogue. He is like all the rest. Hell mend them all, I hear you hiss.
Yet this is a bright and decent guy with a good, solid record. From his early days, he fought the atrocities of apartheid and conspiracies in South Africa while British politicians sat on their hands. He helped inspire people like me about the injustices there at that time before going on to prominence in Ireland and elsewhere. His have been a steady pair of hands. I remember my disappointment way back when he fled the Liberals but I also came to realise that to achieve what he wanted to do he probably had to make sacrifices to get nearer to the power base. Unless you were an activist, and the problem the Liberals had was that they could enthuse too few of those, it was completely forgiveable.
Contrary to ill-informed nonsense, there is no evidence that Hain has been corrupted by his rise. Not like so many others on the left and right of their parties with their snouts in the trough. Some are so intoxicated by their own power that they will tackle anyone – usually their secretaries and anyone else within groping distance. What if Hain had actually become deputy leader? What a change that would be from be from snotty disaster magnet John Prescott. It would have saved us the faceless embarrassment that is current vacuous incumbent Harriet Harman. They hardly let her out on her own nowadays.
Hain will not only survive this but, in the fascinating way that the spotlight creates enduring images, will benefit hugely from it. I predict he will be cleared of any deliberate wrongdoing. That will position him conspicuously at the head of a list of straining successors to that erudite but joyless son of the manse. So deluded is he that he even thought waiting in the wings for a decade would be sufficient grooming to be a leader. The future is bright for Peter Hain. For us, the future’s orange.
