A glance at the Electoral Commission's latest report into party finances shows that the Muslim Friends of Labour donated over £300,000 to Scottish Labour's election campaign this year.

When the group was set up a few years ago with a dinner at Glasgow Central Mosque, the obvious problem was not whether Muslims were friends of Labour, but whether Labour were friends of Muslims.

The Herald reported that the "Muslim community" had donated £300,000 to Labour. While not strictly true, what MFL does is give cover to those giving donations by it not ending up on the Electoral Commission's web site. Noman Tahir calls for a naming and shaming.

Over the last few years, the decline in Muslim membership of the Labour Party has been well documented. What hasn't been reported however was a corresponding drop in donations from Muslims - probably because there wasn't much in the way of Muslim philanthropy of this sort in the first place. MFL is an attempt to recognise that money can buy you love in politics.

And what love they were trying to buy! Obviously the biggest donation to a Constituency Labour Party was Mohammad Sarwar's Glasgow Central (£6,000). On top of that, £4,000 went to Tom Harris's Glasgow South, £2,000 each to Jim Murphy's East Renfrewshire and Tommy McAvoy's Rutherglen & Hamilton, and £1,000 to Frank Roy's Motherwell and Wishaw. All of them pro-war, all of them very strongly for the assault on civil liberties, and in the case of Jim Murphy, also a former chair of the Labour Friends of Israel. The CLP donations may have been channelled into the respective Holyrood campaigns. I wonder still though what their thinking was behind them.

On top of this was the £300,000 to the Scottish Labour Party. If the Barnett formula was applied to this money from London, then there is some serious cash in the MFL. It may well be though that this money was raised from the fundraising dinners they hold in Glasgow. Otherwise I'm not sure of the logic behind such a large intervention into the Scottish election. Sure, Muslims in England appear to be panicking at the idea of a Tory government and trying to get back in bed with Labour, but that is not the case at Holyrood with the SNP defeat of Labour. MFL is obviously closely tied to the Labour Party, but it still pulls at the heart and purse strings of the Muslim community and needs to justify the money it spends.

Meanwhile, the Daily Record donated £10,000 to the Labour Party - on top of the free advertorials (which apparently don't have to be declared to the Electoral Commission).

Source: osamasaeed.org