Says James Swede, of solicitors' firm Darlingtons in a letter to the Law Society's Gazette,

“The Labour Party can accept funds without identifying the true source.  We, the legal profession, find ourselves bound by anti-money laundering regulation, which means that if we were guilty of the same offence we could face a lengthy prison sentence....”

It is right that our professions are bound by the very highest standards of integrity and that the penalties for failing to do so are harsh, but Labour should ponder why it believes that similarly rigorous standards (and penalties for breach of those standards) should not apply to those who purport to govern us.

“For almost two decades we’ve allowed the message of political Islam to breed unchallenged within the British Muslim community, preaching separation and confrontation. The blame for that must rest solely with Muslims…”

Shiraz Maher - The Sunday Times

“The rest of the country may find it hard to believe that the present Prime Minister has nothing to do with the decade commanded by his predecessor, but I think Mr Brown really has convinced himself that he is not implicated. In this he is, I think, weirdly, sincere.  Somewhere in this strange mind has arisen an idea so palpably absurd when articulated that he has never articulated it, maybe even to himself: but it drives the way he feels about the past. It is the idea that he was somehow not there, or not completely there, from 1997 to 2007: just a sort of hostage, mute witness to a decade he neither willed nor bears responsibility for. To such an imagination, the stink of rotten fish left by his predecessor beneath the sofa cushions at Downing Street can be greeted almost triumphantly, vindicating rather than indicting him.”

Matthew Parris – The Times

“But what is true is that this [donor] scandal serves Labour right. It is mired in the consequence of the false morality from which it profited so much in the 1990s.”

Charles Moore - The Daily Telegraph