Friday, 20 July, 2007
- 20 Jul 07, 04:25 PM
By tonight鈥檚 presenter, .
Cash for Honours
鈥淚 would like to take this opportunity to thank the police for their hard work, diligence and decency.鈥
The words of the Labour Party General Secretary Peter Watt. Others aren't feeling quite so warm spirited about an inquiry that went on for 16 months, cost a million pounds, threatened to bring down a government, and ultimately yielded no charges. Last night the 大象传媒 broke the story that no-one would be prosecuted in the Cash for Honours investigation. Today, with the confirmation, came many, many questions. Was it, as some claim, a political stunt by the SNP? Why did police drag it out for so long if evidence was so scant? Was the decision by the CPS not to prosecute the right one? And where does this leave party funding, and indeed party reputations going forward? We've got a panel of those involved together and the discussion promises to be pretty heated.
By-election
It will be hard to think of the MP for Sedgefield as being anyone other than Tony Blair. But as from today, there is a new one. Phil Wilson won the by-election pretty comfortably for Labour, which also won in Southall and Ealing. So will two early successes for Gordon Brown give him the confidence to face the polls early for a General Election? We'll be discussing the implications of these results tonight with our hot political panel of familiar faces.
