The revelations in the Sunday Telegraph on New Year's Eve that Labour had received a £2 million donation from a businessman could not have come at a worse time for the party leaders.
The Prime Minister, Mr Blair was at his Chequers country retreat; Mr Alastair Campbell, his press secretary, was relaxing at his London home, and Labour's general secretary, Ms Margaret McDonagh, was enjoying the Portuguese sunshine.
The result was 48 hours of chaos, and a potential crisis to rival the Bernie Ecclestone affair, when it was revealed the Formula One boss had given £1 million to Labour after securing an exemption from a tobacco advertising ban for motor racing.
The money appeared - in one MP's words - "to have been lying under Labour's Christmas tree" for some time and not declared to the public. Yet Labour was pledged to implement the recommendation of Lord Neill, the public standards watchdog, to declare all donations, and had made great play of the Tories' reticence to disclose who was funding their party.
It looked suspiciously like an attempt to avoid pre-election embarrassment by delaying publication of the size of the donation until the party's accounts come out in October - nearly six months after Mr Blair's preferred election date pencilled in for May 3rd.
The turmoil continued unabated on New Year's Day, and it was not just the Tories and Liberal Democrats who were pointing accusing fingers at Labour. The intervention yesterday morning by two former ministers, Mr Peter Kilfoyle and Ms Glenda Jackson, and Mr Clive Soley, chairman of the parliamentary Labour party, who all condemned Labour's failure to disclose the donor, was particularly hurtful to the leadership.
Mr Soley, who objected sotto voce to the Ecclestone donation (later repaid by an apologetic Mr Blair), was particularly noisy this time. His straight-talking appearance on television elicited a strongly worded telephone call from Labour's HQ.
But by then Mr Campbell was back in Downing Street, and had talked to Mr Blair. His advice was similar to that when dealing with the Ecclestone scandal - kill the story by naming the donor and stop media speculation in its tracks. A quick call was made to France - where Lord Hamlyn is seriously ill - with a statement already prepared for Lord Hamlyn.