Alan Johnson and the ghost of scandals past

As Benjamin mentioned in the last post, rumours have started to circulate about Alan Johnson and one Karl Milner, one of the key players in the 1998 lobbygate scandal. This was half picked up by Jon Henley at the Guardian diary, who posed the question, could this be the same person?

The lawyers no doubt stepped in on that story, but looking around, it certainly seems like Alan Johnson’s donations are being handled by the scandal-ridden lobbyist.  As the site explains, “Paypal account is in the name of the Johnson for Deputy Campaign Trustee K Milner”. It gives the email address K.Milner@Leedsmet.ac.uk.

A bit of a search throws up a PR week article from January 27th 2006, which talks about Karl Milner, Leeds Business School lecturer and Finsbury lobbyist. The Finsbury site, reveals that “Karl worked for Rt. Hon Gordon Brown MP, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer and before that as a Labour Party organiser and assistant to a number of Labour MPs.”

You may remember that Milner was forced to applogise after it was found that he passed confidential parliamentary reports to journalists ahead of publication.

It certainly looks like the same Milner. Anyone out there know for sure and want to tell us?