Bill Carmichael: Donations and indignation

THERE'S a scene in the classic Hollywood film Casablanca when Captain Renault, played by Claude Rains, feigns surprise at the goings on in Rick's Café.

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" he says in a little speech that is slightly undercut by the fact that a croupier chooses that exact moment to hand over his winnings from the gaming tables.

If they ever film a remake of Casablanca, Peter Mandelson will be a

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shoo in for the Captain Renault role following his performance this week over revelations that Tory Party donor Lord Ashcroft is a "non-dom", and thereby avoided tax on his overseas earnings.

Mandelson was so shocked I thought they would have to break out the smelling salts. After all, you'd never catch the workers' champion Lord Mandelson consorting with rich, foreign-based businessmen, would you?

And the Labour Party would never sully itself by accepting donations from rich non-doms, would it? Er, well not exactly. It turns out on closer inspection that whereas Lord Ashcroft has donated 4.5m to the Tories over recent years, Labour has netted more than 10m from non-doms including Lord Paul, Lakshmi Mittal, Sir Ronald Cohen and Sir Gulam Noon among others.

Now that Labour has belatedly decided that such donations are wrong, surely the party will repay every penny or at least donate an equivalent amount to charity? Let's put it this way – there is as much chance of that happening as Lord Mandelson paying for his own holiday this summer.

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In terms of stinking hypocrisy, Mandelson really puts Captain Renault to shame. For he went on to demand an investigation into whether Ashcroft was a proper person to sit in the House of Lords.

Is this the same Peter Mandelson who was forced to resign from the Cabinet, not once but twice, for behaviour that would have landed a lesser mortal in jail? Yes, indeed. And now, dripping in sanctimony, he delivers a finger-wagging lecture on probity and decency in the Upper House!

Even a Hollywood scriptwriter couldn't make that one up.

Before the Lib Dems become too smug, it is worth pointing out that their hands are far from clean. Not only have they accepted cash from non-doms, but they also pocketed 2.4m from convicted fraudster Michael Brown – money the party has steadfastly refused to pay back so Brown's victims can be compensated.

The Tories have certainly handled this one badly, but they are

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perfectly entitled to respond to the attacks from other parties.

What is the old biblical saying about motes and beams? The trouble is the more mud politicians fling at each other, the more the public find it hard to distinguish between them.

On the wrong Foot

Michael Foot, who died this week at 96, was a brilliant politician – passionate, committed, self-less and of course a thrilling, blood-stirring orator.

What a pity then that he was entirely wrong about virtually everything.

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He believed that punitive rates of taxation would deliver social justice, that if Britain scrapped its nuclear weapons it would somehow convince the Soviet Union to do the same, and that untrammelled union power was good for the country – and he was thoroughly mistaken on all counts.

But it didn't stop him persuading thousands to follow him – and leading the Labour Party to electoral disaster in 1983.

Listening to his speeches again this week, it is easy to see why – his righteous anger and desire for fairness can still make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

Even then he seemed a throwback to an earlier age, when politicians would jump up on the back of a lorry and give the hecklers a run for their money. It is all a far cry from the highly managed, manicured TV appearances of Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

But for all we admire his honesty and integrity, thank goodness he never got his hands on the actual levers of power.