HARMAN PRIVILEGE STRIKES AGAIN
Perry Worsthorne noted last year in the Spectator (with his usual degree of prescience) that Bankers had taken over from Trade Unionists as the power-elite abusing their privilege. Since then of course, politicians have found themselves alongside the bankers - an entirely appropriate arrangement given that they are mutually interdependent.
One of the many voices calling for a political clean-up and an end to such privilege (which, as a Socialist, you'd expect of her) is Harriet Harman. She first of all lashed out at the bankers - to be silenced by a Hislop in top form, who said on Question Time "You lot were all sucking up to these people". Then she had a go at misuse of expenses in the Commons.
But Harriet has been on the gravy train since the time - all those years ago - when her Union mates were running things. In fact, she married one of them: Jack Dromey.
Jack Dromey, deputy general secretary of the Unite union, is "very likely" to be chosen as Labour's candidate for the safe seat of Leyton & Wanstead, according to senior party sources - and the Torygraph recently.
Harriet & Jack bought their house at 1 Winterbrook Rd SE24 at a time when interest rates were going through the roof....on a subsidised TGWU 'perk' mortgage at 2.5%. What's been mainly on that roof since are the Fathers4Justice protesters trying to let the rest of the country know what a gender bigot Hattie is....but that's another story.
Jack's TGWU eventually morphed into Unite, of which he is now Deputy General Secretary. So of course he knows the right people (being a former Deputy Party Treasurer) and - with a word in a few ears from the Mrs, sorry Ms - Dromey slithers neatly into the vacant space there.
But the problem may well be that Jack is something of a vacant space himself. Two years ago, Labour insiders branded him 'at best lazy and stupid', wondering how he could keep his job after he claimed he was unaware of the long-running way-round Party donation laws used to channel cash through proxies. At the time, these seething backbenchers pointed out how he'd previously admitted being in the dark about a Labour funding scam - after similar revelations in the loans-for-lordships scandal. Yet this was the man who chaired the Party's audit committee and business board.
These two fighters for the underprivileged took out a £40,000 mortgage extension on their Herne Hill house to fund Harman's £100,000 campaign for the deputy leadership in 2007. Paying three-fifths of Fanny Adams interest, this wasn't as onerous as one might at first think. However, they failed to declare it to the Electoral Commission. (The EC was already investigating at the time whether Miss Harman broke the law by accepting a £5,000 donation from Mr Abrahams's secretary Janet Kidd)
So there we have it: woman promotes her gender and twice-clouded husband while oblivious to the socio-familial consequences of her madness, bending constitutional practice, and protecting her wealth from Labour government economic cockups
No doubt Jack thinks the Leyton & Wanstead seat is as safe as houses. But maybe this is yet another constituency where an Independent should stand to challenge the troughers in the Establishment. C'mon man in the white suit, put someone up for it.
Strain of marriage to Hattie
Before........Jack the Lad After....Jack in a Box