What does Labour's Treasurer do?

And how does the Labour Party organise its finances? Jack Dromey, the Treasurer, has announced he was completely unaware of various loans taken by the Party, amounting to several million pounds and has, remarkably, felt the need to call in the Electoral Commission to investigate.

Of course, no-one would expect Mr Dromey (Deputy general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union and, incidentally, husband of Harriet Harman) to know every little detail, but surely to goodness a Treasurer should at least see monthly printouts of financials - one assumes the Labour Party does have computerised accounts and even if these are not very efficient, I daresay they get statements of their various accounts from whichever banks they deal with - you know, just to know what's coming in and what's going out. This whole affair is beginning to sound very 'fishy' - if I was a 'shareholder' (i.e. a paid-up member of this organisation) I'd be asking some hard questions!

I'm just watching Jack Dromey just now on BBC2 'Newsnight', speaking with Jeremy Paxman. I have to say he sounds a sensible man who does not sound like a 'patsy' - oh yes, this is shaping up to be a really top-grade scandal.

UPDATE: (Friday 17MAR06 11.10 GMT) This scandal just seems to go on growing! And the solution, in this writer's view, is NOT to have state funding of political parties - political parties need to spend less money, not more, and get back to dealing with the people they hope will vote for them as individuals, not as 'cattle' to be exploited for their political, and it sometimes seems monetary, benefit by means of increasingly sophisticated 'marketing strategies' which are in the main crude propaganda exercises.