HUBRIS ABOUNDS

James Cleverly asks the question : "Is Labour rotten to the core?" Well, given recent events, the simple answer would have to be a resounding "Yes!"

But there is an intense irony in the current situation. In a quite palpable sense, the Great Bottler is inheriting what Bliar had sown during his period in office; in other words, Bliar's immediate 'legacy' to the clunking fist is to mire him ever deeper in the sleaze that so dogged his last days. According to the BBC, that (Man-of-) Straw, Jack, accepts the underlying principle in this and believes that "there [are] questions to be asked of Tony Blair, because many of the donations were made when he was Prime Minister". So much for all that tosh about leaving front-line UK politics with the public begging for more!

Isn't it strange too - almost 'ass-covering' one might say - that Bliar has been seeking to distance himself from his pre- (and post-) 1997 savaging of Major and the Tories over sleaze? His football analogy is especially apposite - it suggests that he knows full well that he 'took a dive' in order to gain political advantage. Regret on his part? Well, he says yes. Contrition? No way. But, more intriguingly, this sort of intervention from the sidelines must be making the Great Bottler apoplectic. Having effectively dumped him in it, the only Christmas present his old boss can offer him is that it was all a load of stuff-and-nonsense anyway. As for Blair, I have the teeniest suspicion that he might be just be revelling in the Great Bottler's discomfort - a sort of arrogant "Well, Gordo, it's not as easy as you thought" and "Now you know why I kept you out of No. 10 for so long" attitude.

Mind you, the Great Bottler may have already sown some seeds of revenge. Taken together with Straw's comment above, his insistence that the mess of the Abrahams donations is "illegal" is tacit acknowledgment that our erstwhile PM may well have a criminal charge to answer to. Could it be that he will have his collar felt again by the men in blue as they act on the Electoral Commission's referral of the file to them?

As to the hubris in all of this - and the thing that is so odious to anyone observing from the outside - it is the mind-numbing way in which all the players can just sit there and maintain that they personally have done nothing wrong - Hain is an absolutely classic example ("administrative error" doesn't cut it!). It beggars belief that they really imagine that we will be prepared to take such mendacious posturing seriously.