Until seven years ago, large scale donations were laughably recorded in political party accounts simply as ‘£5,000 plus’. And Robinson gave ‘£5,000 plus’ in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000. That might equate to £5,001 for each of the years concerned; on the other hand, we could be talking £50,001 or more. It's a little secret, just the Robinsons' affair.

But more important is the question of why he wrote those cheques, and why he has decided to stop writing them now.

This, remember, is the man who starred in a Labour party political broadcast just before the 1997 general election, grotesquely boasting of how he had backed the Tories throughout the years in which Thatcher crushed the miners’ strike and pushed through the poll tax.

‘I have always voted Conservative. I’ve been a Conservative voter all my life,’ he revealed. Now he had become a Blairite. Gee thanks, Gerry. Great to have you on board!

Who can doubt that the conversion of the guy who was then just a plain mister was sincere? But businessmen usually expect a return on their political investments, just as they do with any other kind of investments.

So when that deal – worth millions of pounds - to provide catering at the Millennium Dome coincidentally went to one of Robinson’s companies, maybe he felt that all those ‘£5,000 plus’ outlays had been well worthwhile. That job as head of the Arts Council – not to mention the knighthood – won’t have gone amiss either.

Now it looks like there isn’t going to be any money any more. All those Conservative-supporting businessmen who switched to New Labour once it was clear that Blair would win the next election are suddenly no longer interested now it is likely that Cameron will soon be appointing the quangocrats and drawing up the honours lists instead.

The guess has to be that criticisms of the prime minister’s leadership style would maybe not be quite so strident if only he were doing well in the polls.

Instead, New Labour is reduced to rescheduling its debt, in much the manner of a third world nation that has blown all the soft loans on stretch limos, call girls and an unnecessary presidential palace or two.

But where the International Monetary Fund would at least have the wit to insist on a structural adjustment program, the terms and conditions asked for by leading unions are lenient indeed.

This is unlikely to be enough to secure a recovery in Labour’s political fortunes. To top the humiliation of finishing behind the British National Party in Henley last week, there is even talk that the Scottish National Party will overturn its 13,507 majority to take Glasgow East in an impending by-election. No wonder that the Sir Gerrys of this world want out.

The shocking truth – and I write this as a Labour Party member - is that all the unions are doing is keeping the government on life support. The electorate are about to pull the plug.