Desperate Housewives

Daveybloke's new, clean, cuddly politics appears to have wandered off temporarily, leaving a foetid little memento on the carpet. Fouad Makhzoumi, the arms dealer who bought Jonathan Aitken, and Wafic Said, a "fixer" in the al-Yamamah arms deal which was so innocent that Tony Blair ordered the Serious Fraud Office not to investigate it, seem to have nearly as little acquaintance with their wives' financial affairs as Tessa Jowell had with those of David Mills and his chum Silvio, with the result that several large lumps of cash have somehow ended up in the coffers of the Conservative Party. It is illegal for a British political party, even one so cosmopolitan and internationalist as the Conservatives, to receive financial backing from foreign firms, unless the said foreign firms trade in Britain or have bought the necessary ministers. The Conservatives' financial watchdog, apparently exhausted by the effort of ensuring that the affairs of Lord Ashcroft and his chum, Willem den Haag, were all above board, decided not to investigate the wives' donations, even though Said's teenage daughter was the victim of a clerical error two years ago which recorded her as donating £47,000 which she didn't have - the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, obviously. The reward for donations of more than £50,000 a year is the opportunity of a private dinner, as opposed to a business dinner, in the scintillating company of Daveybloke. The ladies' emotions must simply have got the better of them.