James Forsyth

If I was Gordon Brown, one of the things that would worry me most is how much more relaxed Labour figure are becoming about expressing unhelpful thoughts. Just today we have Matthew Taylor, Tony Blair’s former chief strategic adviser, telling The Guardian that the Brownite handling of donor-gate has been “inept” and that it’s "too early to say that the position for the government is terminal" and a minister who was dropped when Brown came to office confiding to a Sky journalist that he thinks the government is a ‘disaster.’ There’s also pressure on Brown from the opposite end of Labour’s ideological spectrum.

Tony Blair recently complained of how in Britain people think of politicians as nuts if they talk about God. But Blair was a lot better off than Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts who is running for the Republican presidential nomination. Tomorrow, Romney is delivering a speech which could be entitled why a Mormon can be president too. The polls show that Romney’s Mormonism is a serious electoral problem for him with as more than one in four voters saying they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon candidate in some polls. To compound Romney’s problem his main rival in the must-win for him Iowa caucuses is Mick Huckabee a Baptist preacher who is running, perhaps, the most faith-oriented campaign in history.

One inevitable consequence of donor-gate is that Labour will find it even more difficult to raise money. If things were hard after the whole ‘cash for honours business’, just imagine how much worse it will be now. For a party, that’s £20,178,392 in debt this is a serious problem. Guido, though, has found a silver lining for the Labour bean-counters. As all the deputy leadership candidates were required to give 15 percent of all money raised to the Labour party, Peter Hain will now presumably have to write Labour a cheque for 15 percent of his unregistered donations. Does this mean, though, that Harriet Harman's indebted campaign can get a rebate for the cheques that it has had to return to sender?

Last week events drew forth plenty of “worst week ever” headlines in the Sunday papers. But there is reason to think that this week could be even worse for Gordon Brown. First, there’s the situation in Scotland where Wendy Alexander’s position looks increasingly untenable. Second, there is the fact that David Abrahams has no intention of going quietly—articles in the Guardian on Saturday and the Independent on Sunday are hardly suggestive of a man trying to keep his head down. While his comments about who knew about how he was funding the party have been phenomenally damaging. Third, the question of who in the Labour party knew about how Abrahams was funnelling money to the party has yet to be answered satisfactorily.

As this scandal drags on it is becoming clearer that Gordon Brown made a huge political mistake on Wednesday morning.  When Jon Mendelsohn confirmed Nick Robinson’s report that he was aware of the arrangements by which David Abrahams was funding the Labour party, Brown should have sacked him.  Brown could have issued a statement saying that he had requested the resignation of anyone in the party who was aware of what was going on with Abrahams. His failure to do so means that Brown has effectively endorsed Mendelsohn’s actions and anything that damages Mendelsohn damages him. There is now a row going on between Mendelsohn and Abrahams about who knew what when.

Any Tory feeling almost light-headed about the speed with which things are collapsing around Gordon Brown, should read this typically intelligent posting from John Rentoul on the danger of the Tories thinking they can just coast to victory. Another sobering thought comes from Martin Bright, who writes “In terms of the loss of trust in the political class I really don't think it could get any worse. But then I thought that last week too.” If the Tories do win the next election, as looks increasingly likely, restoring people’s faith in politics will be one of the biggest challenges that faces them.