The inexplicable blindness of the NEC

Yesterday, the National Executive Committee of the Labour party held a meeting with Tony Blair, in which they expressed their anger over the loans for peerages scandal, and informed the Prime Minister that from now on, they would reassert their control over the party’s finances.

This is all very well and good, but I have one question for the NEC. Seeing as they were purportedly unaware that Blair had borrowed £14m to finance the General Election campaigns, where did they think all that money came from? When they saw all the shiny new posters, battle buses, and helicopters, how exactly did they think that Blair had financed all this? Didn’t they think to ask him back then, and if not, why not? Given that they knew the state of their accounts, they should have known what they could afford, and should have been aware that the election spending was way beyond that. Typical lefties that they are, they probably just assumed that money grows on trees. How could their leader borrow £14m and spend it right before their faces, without them wondering as to its provenance? This failure to make the link between money and its source is also reflected in the attitude of the Left towards taxpayers’ money in general. Spend, spend, spend, without stopping to think where the money is coming from.

Now that they have been embarrassed by their greedy, unscrupulous leader, they hope to salvage some credibility by protesting to the rafters that they were unaware all along. I believe them. It is possible that they did not know. However that very fact clearly illustrates why Labour, both Old and New, can never be trusted with money.