Labour Party Finances 1900-2006

Labour Party Finances expired today after creditors decided to call in loans of £23.4 million. LPF had been poorly for some time with doctors saying it had had a “difficult financial year”.

Labour Party Finances was born on February 27, 1900 following the marriage of the Trades Union Congress and the Fabian Society. It earned its keep by winning numerous beautiful baby contests – mostly in the industrial districts of North England, the Midlands, Scotland and Wales – and, at the tender age of 23, it hit the jackpot when it won its first national popularity contest.

Following Labour’s landslide election victory in 1945 LPF became so cash-rich that it was able to give vast sums of its money back to ordinary voters by nationalising coal, electricity, gas, the railways and iron and steel. In 1948 millions of Britons benefited from a massive dividend on their taxes with the introduction of the welfare state.

Labour Party Finances went from strength to strength in the 60s with the nationalisation of the Beatles, which allowed every teenage girl in the country the chance to own a piece of a Moptop – normally a lock of hair or a piece of a collarless suit torn off Paul McCartney. But despite this boost to LPF, Harold Wilson lost millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on Tony Benn’s disastrous concept album, Lucy in the Sky with Keynesian Economics, and had to devalue the pound.

However, it was James Callaghan’s refusal to pay the binmen’s Christmas box in 1978 which led to the infamous Winter of Discontent and financial ruin as LPF lost its job in 1979 and was forced to sign on at the DHSS.

For the next 18 years, LPF failed to find gainful employment. Reduced to watching daytime television and fulminating against the Conservatives as they financed the nation by selling off coal, electricity, gas, the railways, iron and steel, Labour Party Finances only managed to claw its way out of debt in 1997 by promising to sell off anything else that wasn’t nailed down as well.

Sadly, the long spell on the dole had done severe damage and LPF was forced into selling first its principles, then offering Private Finance Initiatives, NHS hospitals, Foundation schools and peerages at knock-down prices. In the end the decision to consolidate all LPF's debts into “one, easy-to-manage debt” sounded its death-knell as, in April 2006, the Fraud Squad launched an investigation. Choked by an extensive paper trail and a number of irate men who had been refused a peerage, Labour Party Finances finally gave up the ghost and passed away surrounded by close friends and family including Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch and Steptoe and Son.

Labour Party Finances will be buried in a pauper’s grave at St Vorderman’s Church of the Receivers and is survived by Conservative Party Debts of £35.3 million. Well-wishers and anyone who likes the smooth feel of ermine against their skin are requested to send cash in used notes.