‘Short money’ (named after the politician who instituted the system, Edward Short) is the name of the state funding to opposition parties to enable them to conduct the business of being an opposition.
As the largest party in opposition, Labour receives around £5.5 million in Short money for the current financial year – plus £789,000 specifically for the purpose of funding the office of the Labour leader.
In September last year, I sat through an excruciating session at Labour’s annual Conference, listening to the party’s treasurer patting herself and the platform on the back over the abundant condition of the party’s debt-free finances – ironically with no acknowledgement whatever of the fact that the party owes that state of affairs to the massive surge in the Corbyn-supporting membership, which now takes the annual income for the party to around £50 million.
The Labour Party is not ‘short’ of cash. So there is no excuse for what you’re about to read.
There have been rumours for some time that the Blairite-controlled Labour HQ is withholding resources from Jeremy Corbyn’s office, to such an extent that he is unable to pay for the usual complement of staff to run it.
Those rumours intensified when the release of Corbyn’s tax return there has been speculation that he is spending his own money to fund salaries for some of his staff and this has also been mentioned as fact by other sources.
Now, the SKWAWKBOX can disclose that those rumours are correct. A senior Labour source has confirmed to this blog that Corbyn’s office is being forced to run with only half the staff that Ed Miliband had.
It appears that the Labour right has little confidence that Corbyn’s leadership will fail on its own, properly and normally resourced, so they – and we are talking headquarters staff here, according to this blog’s source, not the NEC – are taking extremely direct action to try to make sure it fails.
This means a situation in which Labour ‘right-whingers’ who care only about their own position and careers and not in the least for the fact that the country desperately needs a real alternative to the Tories:
- are relentlessly sniping at Corbyn and undermining him and his team to every ‘journalist’ who will listen over every assumed or manufactured mistake and
- deliberately underfunding his office by half in order to have more ammunition
The most senior Labour Party staffer is Iain McNicol. The senior Labour source lays the blame for this ridiculous situation squarely at his door.
McNicol and those aligned with him are deliberately setting up Labour to fail. They have betrayed the Party, its principles, its members and the tens of millions of people who need it – and they have no place near the Party, let alone running its HQ.
If you are a Labour member, make sure that your next branch/CLP meeting moves no-confidence in McNicol – and demands that Jeremy Corbyn’s staff is funded to at least the same level as the hapless Miliband’s was.
And that Corbyn – with no interference or limitation – chooses the personnel who will complete the team that he and his vision deserve.
The SKWAWKBOX is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you found this article useful and can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal. Thanks for your support so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.