UKIP must be laughing themselves silly over this...

From The Electoral Commission:

The Electoral Commission has today (8 January) removed the British National Party (BNP) from its register of political parties in Great Britain for failing to confirm their registration details with the Commission - a legal requirement that must be submitted annually...

The BNP’s statement of accounts were due on 7 July 2015. Their annual confirmation of registered details was therefore due on or before 7 January 2016. The Electoral Commission did not receive the notification by this date and is required by law to remove the BNP from its register of political parties in Great Britain.

Now that the party has been removed from the register, BNP candidates cannot, at present, use the party’s name, descriptions or emblems on the ballot paper at elections. The party can, however, submit an application to re-register at any time and their name, descriptions and emblems are protected under PPERA for two years to prevent other parties using them. Any application will be considered by the Commission in line with its usual processes for assessing new applications to register political parties.

Let's hope the Electoral Commission has a closer look at this...

From The Daily Mail:

A powerful new lobbying group containing dozens of the country’s super-rich – and backed by a Tory MP – has been set up to thwart moves to introduce a mansion tax.

The secretive outfit hopes to overturn public support for the proposed levy on multi-million-pound homes by arguing that it is ‘economically illiterate’ and would trigger a devastating crash in property prices…

Not many Poor Widows In Mansions were present, of course, but Boris Johnson has invented a new human shield:

"Labour and the Lib Dems would have you believe that the people they want to hit are oligarchs and international bankers.

"But the overwhelming majority of victims would be Britons who find themselves living in a house that has nudged over the threshold…

‘It is hard to think of a tax that is more viciously unfair. It hits families who have worked hard and traded up the property ladder only to find themselves walloped for their success."

Not many of those present either:

The new lobbying group, organised by a property mogul who operates in some of the capital’s most exclusive areas, was discreetly launched last November at a meeting in a West End restaurant attended by 65 of the richest people in the UK – including Russian oligarchs and multi-millionaires from the Middle East.

They were addressed by Tory MP Richard Harrington, who urged them to ‘donate to the Conservatives’ if they wanted to stop the levy.

Of course, as we well know from when UKIP got turned over by the Electoral Commission a few years ago (quite unreasonably and unfairly as it happens) political parties are only allowed to accept donations from people who are on the UK electoral register, which is British citizens and EU citizens resident in this country (plus a handful of Commonwealth citizens).*

So let's hope these kleptocrats donate generously and then El Comm claws all the money back again.

* The Lib Dems circumvented this by accepting donations from the UK front company of an overseas resident, who happened to be a convicted fraudster, but El Comm turned a blind eye for some strange reason.

Er... which assets exactly?

From The Metro, 9 November 2010:

The Equality and Human Rights Commission asked Lord Justice Moore-Bick and Mr Justice Ramsey to find the trio guilty of contempt for failing to comply with a court judgment ordering the removal of potentially racist clauses from the BNP’s constitution... The watchdog asked the judges, sitting at London’s High Court, to fine the BNP leadership or seize party assets.

From The Daily Mirror, 3 November 2010:

BNP leader Nick Griffin faces being axed as a Euro MP as he fights to avoid bankruptcy over his party's soaring cash crisis. He is among top officials thought to be personally liable for the racist group's £700,000 debts - which it admits it cannot pay.

I have no idea whether that figure of £700,000 for the deficit (i.e. negative assets) is accurate, but the latest BNP accounts available from the Electoral Commission are those for 2008, which show a deficit of about £200,000. Those accounts are 'under enquiry', and heck knows what the BNP spent on the EU Parliament elections in 2009 or the General Election in 2010. Half a million quid would seem a fair guess.

Sour Grapes Of The Week

From El Comm's press release on the judgment handed down today by the House of Lords Supreme Court:

Lisa Klein, Director of Party and Election Finance at the Electoral Commission, commented "Throughout this process, we have made clear that what we wanted to achieve was clarity about the way the law should be applied. Today’s Supreme Court judgement sets out how the rules on forfeiture apply to impermissible donations. The law on what an impermissible donation is has not changed."

From that, you'd never guess that the court found - very narrowly - in favour of the smaller political party which El Comm have been hounding mercilessly for the past four years or so. El Comm are acting as if they were no malice involved whatsoever and it was genuinely unclear to them what the law meant.

And, via UKIP Forum, The Judgment (pdf) and the Summary (pdf).

BBC write up here.

G-d Bless Channel 4 News

As we well know, the purpose of the Electoral Commission is to create huge administrative barriers to entry, and, should a smaller party threaten to become a bigger party, to hound them mercilessly through the courts for minor technical breaches of the rules.

It appears that El Comm didn't bother looking through all the expense returns submitted for the last General Election, but to be fair, they published them online so that interested parties - such as Channel 4 News - could have a look.

Political Party Funding Fun (2)

Bayard asked: "Any suggestions as to how [the political parties concerned] actually got their mitts on the [taxpayer funded] loot (and kept the Ulstermen's off it)?"

Yup. Try Funding of Political Parties - A Brief Overview, start reading at page 10.

More Lib Dem Fun

From an article on the BBC regarding donations to the Tories which were allegedly made via a front company:

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said he would be asking the Electoral Commission to conduct an inquiry. "Back-door gifts through front companies blatantly break the spirit of the law on cleaning up Britain's moneybags politics," he said, "If the Conservative Party have nothing to hide, why not declare straight out their thousands instead of using the cover of Unicorn Administration? It is hard to see how these can be simple errors."

*ahem*

5th Avenue Partners

*/ahem*

There's one law for them and another law for us (Part 94)

From the BBC:

The elections watchdog has ruled that the Liberal Democrats can keep £2.4m in donations which it had been suggested came from a man convicted of fraud.

Michael Brown was convicted of stealing more than £30m from clients last year. The court case heard he channelled money through a company called 5th Avenue Partners to the Lib Dems. But the Electoral Commission said there was no "reasonable basis" to conclude that he had donated the money.

Wot?

Whether or not "he" donated the money and what the source of that money was is irrelevant. The only question is whether 5th Avenue Partners Limited was carrying on a business in the UK, see Section 54(2) of PPERA 2000.

The first place you look when you're trying to find out about a company is Companies House Direct, which tells us that neither this company nor the similarly named 5th Avenue Partners (UK) Limited ever filed accounts, i.e. there was no reason for anybody to assume that they were trading in the UK, unless of course the company proved to the Lib Dems that it had already started carrying on a business but, being newly incorporated, had not yet filed accounts.

El Comm say that they examined an "accountants' analysis", I'd love to see that, as I am in this line of business myself. I'd assume it includes stuff like an 88(2) subscription for share capital, bank account details, rental agreements, employment contracts, PAYE and VAT registrations, payments for this, that and the other. You don't exactly need to be an expert to understand this, do you?

End of discussion.

UPDATE: Back in October 2006, a High Court, in a separate case brought by aggrieved investors, ruled that the company had not traded, although from the circumstances, what the judge meant was the company had not traded [in bonds on behalf of its investors]. Hmm.

According to El Comm, the Lib Dems managed to produce loads of evidence suggesting that this was an actual business. Ho hum.

What on Earth is this doing on a BBC 'blog?

Via UKIPWebMaster, an article titled Alan Bown and Michael Brown - spot the difference(s) on Newsnight's political editor Michael Crick's BBC 'blog.

The main thrust of which will not be news to the well-informed reader:

Case A: Alan Bown gave a political party £363,697
1) It was his money
2) He had a business trading in this country, making him eligible to donate money
3) He was not on the electoral register when he donated although he was the year before, and also the year afterwards.

Case B: Michael Brown gave a political party £2.7m
1) It was not his money, he had defrauded it
2) His business was not trading in the UK, so therefore he was ineligible to donate money
3) He was not on the electoral register; neither was he the year afterwards, nor the year before.

Do you see the difference(s)?

I'd like to say that not much surprises me any more, but seeing this on a BBC 'blog did, to be honest.

Weird.

One rule for UKIP, one rule for them ...

From the BBC:

The Liberal Democrats broke electoral rules when accepting donations from a south London MP's son, it has emerged.

Jonathan Kramer, son of Susan Kramer, MP for Richmond Park, donated more than £1,300 to the Liberal Democrats between December 2008 and March 2009. But the party was forced to repay the money when the Electoral Commission discovered Mr Kramer was not registered to vote in the UK. Parties can only accept donations from those on the electoral role [sic]...

Parties have 30 days to check whether donations are permissible or return them - something the Lib Dems failed to do. Legal action against the party was not necessary because the money was repaid as soon as the error was pointed out, the Electoral Commission confirmed.

HOPE Not Hate

You may well have been handed a copy of this leaflet in the past day or two, it's all worthy stuff - especially the jibe about 'British jobs for US models' (click to enlarge) ...


... but ... but ... if you look go to the HOPE Not Hate website, you'll see that this leaflet was published by Searchlight (originally a decent bunch of coves who made it their job to document the activities of the National Front and later the BNP, their magazine was so good that the fascists themselves subscribed to it). One branch of Searchlight, the Searchlight Educational Trust is a registered charity. Their 2007 accounts show that the government smiles favourably on them - from pages 3/4:

A major project this year was the publication of Young Citizen, a 12-page glossy magazine distributed to 400 schools all over the country. Written mostly by young people, it covered a number of themes around citizenship in a diverse society and resisting racism, in a project to promote cohesion in a diverse society... The magazine included a message from Ruth Kelly, who at the time was the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. The competition winners were invited to a reception at the Department for Communities and Local Government, where they were presented with their prizes. Rob Flello, MP, then took them on a tour of the Houses of Parliament.

There's no full breakdown of income, but Note 10 on page 14 states that "A grant of £5,000 was made by Unison for sponsorship of the Barking and Dagenham “Street Games” project in 2006. This money was spent during 2008. A grant of £20,000 was made by the Home Office in 2006 towards the “Young Citizen project”. This money was spent during 2007."

It'll be interesting to see how much the government bunged them to produce the 'Lest We Forget' leaflets, if and when they publish their 2009 accounts!

Anyways, while the government are free to say what they like about their political opponents, is it acceptable for them to use taxpayers' money to co-opt venerable institutions such as Searchlight to mount a campaign against a single, specific party? In an election that doesn't matter that much? One of the reasons I joined UKIP was because the UK government, acting via The Electoral Commission, deliberately tried to bankrupt them because of an administrative oversight*. I thought, if The State hates UKIP that much, they can't be all bad (and they're not, I'm happy to report), so think what you like about the BNP, I'm just not comfortable with this.

* A fair summary at 'Notes to editors', point 3 here - the rest of the whining on that page is yet more government propaganda. I must try and find out what happened to that appeal, BTW.

No surprises there, then.

From Sky News:

No one will be charged over secret donations worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Labour Party from property developer David Abrahams.

Mr Abrahams gave Labour £650,000 through a series of associates to get round the law requiring political donors to be declared. The then General Secretary of the party Peter Watt resigned over the affair after it emerged he was aware of the arrangement...

Mr Abrahams also used a proxy to give money to Harriet Harman's deputy leadership campaign. The money was repaid in full when the true source of the cash was revealed.

My copy of PPERA is at home, so I can't give you chapter and verse, but the really important point here is not the lack of criminal charges, but the fact that such donations are forfeit and have to be handed over to El Comm; it is not enough merely to repay it to the original donor - see e.g. here.

Bastards.

That's strange - the BBC appear to have 'overlooked' this one ...

The BBC doesn't show up on a Google search for "jack straw" saudi donation BBC, but The Telegraph does:

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is facing an inquiry over an allegedly illegal donation to his campaign fund from a company backed by Saudi property developers.

The Electoral Commission has received a complaint over the £2,000 gift from Westminster International Consultants (WIC), a shell company which has never traded in the UK. Electoral law states that MPs must not accept donations from non-trading companies. The money from WIC was paid to the constituency Labour party in Mr Straw's Blackburn seat on the same day it received a £3,000 donation from Lord Taylor, the peer at the centre of the "cash for amendments" row.

Mr Straw could now be forced to pay back the money and apologise to parliament if the Electoral Commission decides he was guilty of breaking the rules. The only donors to the Cabinet minister's 2005 election campaign were Lord Taylor, WIC and a third man, Arif Patel, who runs a clothing firm in Preston. Mr Patel, who donated £2,000, is currently the subject of an ongoing police and customs investigation into an alleged multi-million pound VAT and counterfeit goods fraud...

No doubt the BBC will pick up the story soon ..?

UPDATE My bad, the BBC explained that this was all just an innocent mix-up with cheque books yesterday.

Man with orange face is let off the hook

Damn.

"Donor unlikely to get cash back"

Excellent news indeed!

El Comm appear to have finally read PPERA 2000 s65(6), which says basically, if the failure to comply with the rules on how donations should be reported (in this case, no anonymous/proxy donors) was attributable to intention on the part of anybody in the chain, then El Comm can make application to the Court to order the party forfeit the donation.

So, trebles all round!