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Once again the Tories are seeking to pull out Labour’s relationship with trade unions as an election issue; because what relationship it maintains with unions should not be its own choice, but that of its biggest political rival. Naturally.

It is a convenient distraction indeed from the rather more murky issues going on in their own back yard.

Hugh Muir has already written about this at some length, and I find it difficult to disagree with a single thing he says.There is no equivalence in the first place between individual political fund donations from ordinary people, and tax dodging chains of companies with the obvious purpose of avoiding laws on foreign influence on British elections. Muir is also right about a whole host of other things, which I shall not go further into here.

The Tories seem to be saying that the hundred years of legal political representation afforded by their choice to begin a political party is somehow comparable to their recent buy out on the part of someone who refuses to contribute tax to this country, despite their fundamentally questionable standards of honesty over the whole thing, leaving the plebs to pick up the tab.

The union link can be subjected to public debate all day, but the fact remains that union political funds are open and subject to scrutiny. Above board. They always have been.

Can the Tories say the same of the man they are trying to get out of the public consciousness? They will talk about Unite at their convenience. But when will they answer the key questions?

-Why all the obfuscation around Bearwood Corporate Services?
-When did William Hague and David Cameron become aware of Lord Ashcroft’s tax status? Have they been honest about this?
-Why did they not inform the public or make the nature of these donations apparent?
-Why did Lord Ashcroft tell us ten years ago that he would pay UK tax, before proceeding to land his chunk of the burden on other taxpayers?
-Why did invitees from the Conservative Party refuse to assist the Electoral Commission with its investigations into Lord Ashcroft?

Still no answers from them, predictably. Let’s talk about Unite!

There is also a question for the press and other media to consider.

Why are you spending so much time covering publicly declared donations, under a long established system subject to long political acceptance, consented to by union members… without first finishing up the as yet completely unanswered questions above?

Would reporting that Labour and the unions come out much cleaner get in the way of your election plans? Or have you just allowed yourselves to be bumped?

Update: Iain Dale thinks Labour should change its name. To ‘Labour’, presumably?

According to Ian Hall, editor of lobbying industry magazine Public Affairs News: “Many public affairs consultancies will be left with an enormous amount of egg on their faces if Gordon Brown pulls victory from the jaws of defeat. So many of them have been rushing to hire even the most junior of former Conservative campaign headquarters staff.”  Some people may not need another reason to vote Labour at the general election. Still, as the Tories add to their number of own goals, there is time for Rupert Murdoch’s Sun to change its mind – again.

Mike Smithson of PoliticalBetting.com asks the question of what happens if – as the AA predicts – petrol prices reach a new record high between now and the election.

Smithson appears to show a correlation between the Tory lead over Labour for the past three years and the price of petrol. The cheaper it is to drive, he says, the closer Labour gets in the polls.

He could have gone further. The only time in Labour’s first two terms that the Tories briefly edged ahead in the polls was in during the 2000 fuel protests. If high fuel prices can make William Hague more popular than Blair was during his honeymoon, then they are a very potent political force.

Moreover, Smithson points out that this is even more of an issue in the marginals:

For the English middle-sized towns, where many of the marginals are, private motoring can be a hugely sensitive issue.

For compared with the big conurbations it’s in these places where public transport can be very limited that the motor car is more essential for every day life. Anything that makes motoring more expensive or difficult is politically toxic.

There is of course one big difference between fuel price rises today and those a decade ago, even if it’s not immediately obvious to consumers. The fuel protests in 2000 were in response to repeated increases in fuel duty against a backdrop of low prices on the commodities markets. The reason for the big rises in fuel prices recently is the increased price of fuel on the wholesale markets – which is down to demand outstripping supply.

But does the electorate see the difference? Smithson’s analysis suggests not – with massive policy implications for the future.

It’s interesting to see what Tony Blair had to say about Michael Foot. I think it is fair to say that, despite their initial romance over the relevance of Marxism, it is difficult to find two more different figures under the roof of one tent, big or small.

Part of what makes this interesting is that the 1983 defeat played such a big part of shaping Blair into the man he later became. Even given the feelgood sunshine of 1997, Blair’s politics was always undercut by a deep vein of distrust, and in certain parts, pure contempt for what went before. On a certain level this is forgivable, given the size of defeat, but it also seems to me that this created a kind of fundamental irrationality in Blair’s thought processes, encouraged by those around him.

I am currently reading Alastair Campbell’s diaries, and have only made it up to the period of the campaign against Clause IV, as it was then. Blair seems to have been utterly bemused by the objections to the Trade Unions to removing public ownership as a party commitment.

What did he expect? It’s easier to organise unions in the public sector.

At a certain level, 1983, and what Blair associated with it, started many positive things. It’s not bad to want to campaign professionally, for example.

But it also began a long distancing from the Labour movement, which ended with big privatisation contracts, and unions gathering in hundreds of thousands to march against a war started by their own party. Trust the priests of moderation to bear the icons of overreaction.

This week’s Tribune, on sale from Today in selected branches of WHSmith, and available by subscription features Prem Sikka’s devastating investigation into Michael Ashcroft and the Tory Party’s finances.

We also have a special eight page section on Michael Foot, featuring exclusive tributes by Gordon Brown, Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, Peter Tatchell, Kate Hudson, David Steel and many, many more. This is exclusive to the print edition – it won’t appear on this website – another reason to subscribe now.

Columnists Martin Rowson, Joy Johnson, Paul Routledge and Ian Williams write about subjects as diverse as Michael Foot, the UK and the media circus.

Our Letters page, exclusive to the print edition, features readers’ memories of Michael Foot, plus a passionate debate about electoral reform.

Plus our culture section reviews the latest books and arts.

Remember, the TribuneMagazine.co.uk website doesn’t feature all of the content of the magazine, and most articles published online are delayed. The only place you can read all of the magazine when it’s fresh is in the print edition. So subscribe now!

When he is not funding the Tory Party, Michael Ashcroft appears willing to grant the oxygen of publicity to Nick Griffin and his odious BNP. Total Politics, the monthly magazine published by blogger Iain Dale and part-owned by Lord Ashcroft, has announced it will give space to Griffin before the election. Labour MP Denis MacShane has resigned from the editorial board in protest. He had no qualms about Lord Cashcroft being proprietor, but says all outside money given to any party “corrupts and corrodes”. To give the BNP print space is, he says, part of the “banalisation of the BNP’s anti-Semitic and racist politics”.

The Guardian slipped into the far side in its coverage of Michael Foot’s death. Its main obituary was written by the great man’s biographer Mervyn Jones. Sadly, Mervyn went to that socialist heaven more than a week before Michael. So close were the events that Tribune ran the two obits in the same edition. Now, it’s not unusual for newspapers to have pre-prepared obituaries. It would be disrespectful not to have one ready. But a posthumous piece is unusual, especially if it is accompanied on the letters page of the same edition by a correction to the obituary of the person who wrote Michael’s obit, if you follow.

Something strange is going down in the battle to replace former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon in Ashfield where one candidate is to be picked from an all-women shortlist to defend a 10,213 Labour majority. Questions are being asked about the shortlisting criteria after Pam Tatlow, a councillor in Bristol and London for a combined 16 years, twice Westminster candidate and an employee of trade unions most of her working life was left out after interview. While she loyally refuses to talk about it, friends say she is pretty miffed after finding out that her name was initially on the list but later removed. She does admit to being a bit on the left of the party. Meanwhile, glamorous TV politics presenter Gloria de Piero, whose main political qualification has been acting as an events assistant helping Tony Blair get elected in 1997, is exuding confidence. Having given up her GMTV job to fight the selection, she is rumoured to have moved into the area already.

Welcome to Tribune’s new website. As with all big IT projects, there are bound to be glitches and bugs as we start off, but unlike NHS IT projects, this one at least isn’t billions of pounds over budget.

Comments, criticism and suggestions – constructive or otherwise – are most welcome.