AJ fightback is good for democracy

Good to see Alan Johnson robustly rebutting the absurdly overblown allegations which the BBC thinks are the most important news story of the day. Most politicians are not crooks or deliberately deceptive. But the idea that every donation is dodgy, every donor devious and every politician bent is destroying our democracy. Registering donations late on one register while you have already done so on another is a transgression, not a hanging offence, since there is hardly a deliberate attempt to deceive; not knowing that somebody asked their brother (who is both on the electoral register and a party member) to donate a few thousand pounds on your behalf is not illegal at all. It is about time we got a sense of proportion about all this. Unless we do, as I have argued here before, every party - and our democratic system - will be the losers.