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Donorgate? It's obviously all the fault of the unions

After the palaver of the last week, the Labour Party has come up with a magnificent solution to the problem of weird businessmen donating money to them. They've proposed, according to this paper yesterday, "greater transparency on the way unions pay affiliation fees", and that "one-off payments to Labour from unions should be subject to the £50,000 ceiling."

Because that's who's to blame for Labour leaders taking dodgy money from nutty millionaires – the unions. Maybe they'll try this with Iraq as well, and announce, "We sincerely apologise for causing all that trouble with the invasion, and to ensure it never happens After the palaver of the last week, the Labour Party has come up with a magnificent solution to the problem of weird businessmen donating money to them. They've proposed, according to this paper yesterday, "greater transparency on the way unions pay affiliation fees", and that "one-off payments to Labour from unions should be subject to the £50,000 ceiling."

Because that's who's to blame for Labour leaders taking dodgy money from nutty millionaires – the unions. Maybe they'll try this with Iraq as well, and announce, "We sincerely apologise for causing all that trouble with the invasion, and to ensure it never happens him involved in the Department of Work and Pensions."

Because it didn't take Inspector Morse to work out that David Abrahams should be avoided. He was caught inventing an entire family to become a Labour candidate, and with comic genius he paid tens of thousands of pounds through the name of a lollipop lady. Normal people, if they were handed tens of thousands of pounds byalollipop lady, might wonder for a moment whether lollipop lady wages had crept up so much to allow that sort of generosity. But Labour leaders must have thought, "Oh well, in the new enterprising spirit we’ve created there must be a breed of modernised lollipop ladies who sell lattes and pastries to kids waiting to cross the road, and get their sign sponsored so it reads "WAIT – unlike at PC World where our fully trained staff will deal with your computer needs in less time than it takes to cross the road!"

But beating them for cheek is the Conservative Party, huffing about the outrage of it all, when their true feelings when they heard someone had lied about a deal worth £600,000 must have been, "That's disgraceful – it's not nearly enough." Aitken fiddled with far more than that, and then told a pile of stories in court. Even yesterday, William Hague and Boris Johnson wrote to an American judge pleading that their friend Conrad Black has "a deep reservoir of kindness and generosity". These social worker do-gooders seem to care more about the criminal than they do about the victims.

But Labour will probably agree with them, and insist to the judge that the only way we can prevent a scandal like this happening again is to ban anyone from the Fire Brigades Union from coming within 400 yards of anyone who’s ever been in the party.