Labour Party Follow

There is a land where New Labour stands for socialism, a land where the party’s founder Keir Hardie is held up as an icon.

Since Gordon Brown became prime minister in June last year it seems as if the Labour Party has lurched from one crisis to another. The crisis at Northern Rock and the funding scandals engulfing Brown’s allies are just a couple of the deep problems he faces.

Socialist Worker has previously reported that disgraced MP Peter Hain took over £15,000 from the GMB union and then decided to slash jobs for disabled workers at the Remploy factories, many of them represented by the GMB.

Alan Johnson, the health secretary, seems to have given special access to a private NHS contractor owned by one of the biggest donors to his deputy leadership campaign.

For those having trouble meeting their housing costs there is over £20,000 available to help. The only catch is you have to be an MP.

It may be easy to dismiss Peter Hain, who was forced to resign last week over donations to his deputy leadership campaign, as just one more sleazy politician with his nose in the trough. Was he just one more sharp suited ambitious greedy product of the New Labour era?

Peter Hain, still New Labour’s secretary for work and pensions as Socialist Worker went to press, should take advice from the adverts his department runs on benefit fraud. They have the slogan "No Ifs, No Buts".

Gordon Brown broke the Labour Party’s own donation rules after his campaign to become Labour leader last year.

The work and pensions secretary Peter Hain started the week calling for ordinary people to "take responsibility" for pensions.

New Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling appeared at a Labour fundraising breakfast last week hosted by a bank involved in the takeover bid for Northern Rock.

The Newcastle businessman at the centre of the Labour party donations scandal had a planning application fast tracked under a scheme the government is now pushing across the country.

Gordon Brown is facing a crisis over donations to government ministers and their various election campaigns – it is a crisis that goes to the very heart of the New Labour "project".