It could have been Lord Ian

[lovingboth]

Mike, the person behind politicalbetting.com, is also a 'major gifts fundraiser' and recently posted that Blair was selling peerages too cheaply - apparently it costs £5m+ to get an honourary degree from Oxbridge.

But it's worse than that: if the loans were indeed on commercial terms, then they will have been effectively free - I could have gone along to a bank, borrowed £1m, loaned it to Labour and paid off the bank with the payments...

Comments

[elfgeek.livejournal.com]

But do you really think the bank would have given you £1 million in the first place? ;-)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Of course they weren't on commercial terms - at least, not terms the Labour Party would've got if they went to an actual bank cap-in-hand. Commercial loans are usually 4-5% over base rates for companies with sound finances that are pretty secure bets. Political parties are famously deadbeats with parlous and politically-volatile finances, so one would expect the fair market rate for a loan to them to be correspondingly higher. According to The Thunderer (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2081652,00.html) the loans in question are on terms of BoE base rate +2%. To misquote Ian Hislop, if those are actual commercial terms, I'm a banana.

(The article also points out that it's not clear whether interest is actually being paid or just being added to the loan, which might subsequently be converted to a gift.)

If you can find a bank who's prepared to lend you a million quid at 2% over base rates for anything other than residential property (excluding buy-to-let) I will be seriously impressed and will even give you a banana.