Author Archives: Andy May

Opinion: Lib Dems must grasp the nettle of party funding reform

By Andy May | 26th March 2012 - 9:54 am

I remember Peter Cruddas, co-treasurer of the No2AV campaign and the No campaign’s single biggest donor. Without him they never could have afforded those sick baby billboards.

Shortly afterwards in June 2011 he was rewarded with a prestigious position as co-treasurer of the Conservative party. Now he lies at the centre of yet another donor scandal, this one leading right to the Prime Minister’s door and is potentially as serious as the cash for peerages scandal under Tony Blair.

The …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged party funding | 5 Comments

Opinion: Unfair and unbalanced – the scandal of print media referendum coverage

By Andy May | 2nd July 2011 - 1:37 pm

Buried amongst the furore caused by #harigate this week was a pretty damning ruling by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) against the Sun and the Daily Mail. The complaint in question was made in relation to the AV referendum nearly two months ago by Electoral Reform Services – the business arm of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS).

The Sun and Mail were asked by the PCC to print letters apologising for some articles run during the AV referendum campaign. The article which ran on page 2 of the Sun and the front page of the Mail quoted George Osborne after he stood up in Parliament to claim that the ERS, one of the major funders of the Yes campaign would benefit financially from a ‘yes’ vote. This story was then re-run by Sky News and the BBC – subsequent rebuttals gave the story legs across a range of national media outlets.

You can be forgiven for not noticing since few journalists like to turn the spotlight on their own profession’s sometimes questionable practices.

Let’s just think about the context in which this fallacious claim was printed: