The headline summarises the full story quite neatly:

Tory councillor forced to resign after he made up claims he suffered from testicular cancer

Tribune thinks it’s pretty close:

Labour chiefs have until the end of this month to plug a £4 million hole in the party’s finances and avert the possibility of a formal declaration of bankruptcy.

The financial crisis in the wake of the party’s drubbing at the local and London polls comes as Gordon Brown faces another humiliation with a possible defeat by the Tories in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

Auditors are due to sign off the party’s accounts soon after the end of May, but there are fears that they will refuse to do so and instead declare the party insolvent.

Arrangements have been made to account for most of the party’s £21 million debt, through negotiations with the Co-op Bank and rescheduling deals done with the donors of the controversial loans which led to the “cash-for-honours” affair.

But officers have identified a gap in the balance sheet of around £4 million which must be closed in order to satisfy the auditors, either by cash in the bank or certifiable promissory notes.

The size of Labour’s financial problems, and the possibility of incurring personal liability, are reported to be the reasons for City financier David Pitt-Watson refusing to take up the post of general secretary.

Read the full story here.

Benedict Brogan reports that the new Labour General Secretary has quit and won’t be taking up the job after all.

The local newspaper reports:

‘Mayor-Elect’, [Labour] Councillor Robin Parker, will be investigated after trying to use his influence as a Councillor to get [Liberal Democrat councillor] Jean Ashworth sacked from her job at Rochdale Infirmary. The complaint to the Standards Board related to a series of emails that Councillor Parker sent to health bosses demanding that Councillor Ashworth be disciplined.

For more on this story, see my previous posting.

Interesting information to be found if you read the latest proxy votes list for Thursday’s Winchester Council elections. Since the news broke that a Conservative activist in Whiteley ward, John Hall, has been charged by the police with false registration information, false proxy voting application and making a false instrument, the council has issued the final list of proxy votes for Thursday’s elections.

Comparing this list with the previous list shows that six proxy votes in the Whiteley ward are no more. Of the six, two had John Hall down as the person to cast their vote. Another two had his wife, Sue Hall, and the last two had the wife of this year’s Conservative candidate down. It looks as if all six were taken out in suspicious circumstances, though of course we don’t yet know who knew what about what went on.

This time it’s Hampshire where the police are taking a close interest in the election tactics of Conservative Party members:

POLICE have charged a political activist with attempting to rig one of Thursday’s local elections.

John Hall, who has been campaigning for the Conservatives in Whiteley, is accused of applying for a proxy vote without the person’s permission.

The fiercely-contested Winchester City Council ward was won by the Tories at the last election by tightest of margins, beating the Liberal Democrats by just 19 votes…

Hall has been charged with false registration information, false proxy voting application and making a false instrument.

UPDATE: Liz Leffman has some further information on her website.

UPDATE 2: The Conservatives appearing to be trying to distance themselves from John Hall, so it’s worth recording that he used to be mentioned on the Meon Valley Conservatives website. A search there at the moment for his name produces zero results, but courtesy of Google’s cache (on display at the moment of writing here) we can see that he used to be listed as the contact for one of their fundraising events. Contact for a fundraiser? You’d normally call such a person “an activist”.

Screenshot of the cached web page is preserved for posterity here.

UPDATE 3: More proxy votes have now come under suspicion.

More news on the Swansea nominations paper story - the police have made an arrest:

TORY ARRESTED IN FRAUD ROW
The man at the centre of an election fraud row has been arrested.Tory Norman Whitlock has been accused of forging signatures on the nomination forms of Uplands Conservative candidate Simon Bright.

Following yesterday’s double reports of Conservatives in trouble with the police (in Slough and Swansea) today brings news of a third legal incident involving the Conservative Party. This time, it’s Sutton. (What is it about places starting with an S?)

The time: Wednesday 16 April, approximately 3pm
The place: near a front door in the London Borough of Sutton

An aggrieved resident takes up the story:

“I was watering plants in the space near our front door when I heard the sound of the letterbox flap. I looked round to see a hand take out the [Liberal Democrat] Sutton Gazette … I waited for it to be pushed back in again with whatever the person who took it out was delivering, but only a Conservative election pamphlet appeared. I opened the door, and asked ‘Could I have that back please?’. The gentleman turned around and handed it back (he had one other Gazette in his hands), saying ‘It fell out’. I then went back inside, quite stunned, and turned back again to say ‘This really isn’t on, is it’. He then said again that it had fallen out, and walked on. There was another gentleman delivering, also holding a few (about 2, 3) Gazettes. My husband then went out and took [photographs] and confirmed that he also saw Sutton Gazettes in the pocket of the conservative pamphleteer in the photographs … I stress that the Gazette was definitely taken out of our door, and it had *not* fallen out … I was and am quite angry at this, so yes, I can confirm this with anyone necessary.”

Investigations are, as they say, continuing. One of the people featured in the photographs is Steve O’Connell, the Conservative GLA candidate for Croydon and Sutton.

A curio from the local newspaper coverage of the story:

Mr O’Connell, Croydon Council’s cabinet member for public protection, denied he had ever taken Liberal Democrat literature out of a letter box.

“It is something I personally have never done. However, there are a lot of people doing stuff for me.

“This is very clearly not referring to me, although we have been up there delivering. I am not aware of any confrontation or any row.”

 
Now that last sentence - “I am not aware…” - puzzles me. According to the resident quoted above, someone came out and photographed Steve O’Connell from a short distance, and the photographs certainly look to have been taken from close up. Personally, if someone came up to me and photographed me, I’d ask them what it was all about. So what happened in this case?

It isn’t that easy to get a ship to sail to Uganda you know. What with it being a land-locked country and all that.

The background: earlier this year a special election court ruled that Eshaq Khan and his supporters carried out “corrupt and illegal practices” to secure his election as a Conservative councillor in Slough. Subsequently, five people were charged by the police with electoral fraud offences, including both Eshaq Khan and the Deputy Mayor, Cllr Mohammed Aziz.

And now … after dawn raids, four more people have been arrested by the police on suspicions of perjury and conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

News reaches me that the police are now investigating allegations of forged signatures on a Conservative candidate’s nomination papers in Swansea.

At issue is the nomination paper collected by Norman Whitlock, one of the four Conservative candidates in Uplands ward. Local Liberal Democrats called for an investigation after several residents said that their were down as signatures on a nomination paper, but had not actually signed it. The residents then lodged statements with the council, who have now called in the police.

(Corrected as per Peter Black’s comment below - thanks Peter.)

Brian Hendley is the Labour candidate in Davenport and Cale Green ward, Stockport Council. Given his background, this raises some questions as to what standards we expect of councillors and would-be councillors:

“Striking Dr Hendley off the medical register on Friday, committee chairman Professor Kenneth Hobbs said: ‘The consequences of your failings were that the lives of patients under your care were put at risk. The nature of the findings against you, both on this occasion and on your previous appearance before the committee, are extremely serious. It would not be safe to allow you to continue in medical practice.’” (BBC, 10 December 1999)

“A dangerously incompetent anaesthetist allowed to keep working after his mistakes gave a patient gangrene went on to make serious blunders in more operations - causing at least one death. Brian Hendley, 42, who had been observed to be a ‘problem trainee’ as far back as the 1980s, worked in operating theatres in a long series of hospitals.” (Daily Mail, 24 January 2001)

“Mr Hendley was disciplined by the General Medical Council in 1997 but was allowed to continue working. Two years later he was struck off after further blunders, including the death of an overweight patient from a heart attack.” (Daily Telegraph, 16 June 2001)

“A disgraced anaethetist is to remain struck-off after a series of disastrous blunders” (The Northern Echo, 4 November 2001)

Looks like the new week will be much like the old week when it comes to Labour infighting, for Monday’s Times brings us a letter from Charles Clarke in which he lays into Ed Balls:

His injunctions about the “indulgent nonsense” of “private briefings against the Labour leader” certainly come from one who is well acquainted with this kind of activity. Such things do discredit politics and take us back to the days of faction and party-within-a-party that were so damaging in the 1980s…

It’s certainly true that many Labour MPs, including myself, are disappointed by policy decisions such as the abolition of the 10p tax rate, the over-bureaucratic and insensitive nature of the post office closure programme, and the problems arising from lack of preparation for a Northern Rock-style economic challenge. These all stem from Treasury positions with which he is very familiar. It’s also true that many, including myself, are disappointed with many aspects of his education policies, of which the most serious is the absence of a coherent and focused reform strategy for the 14-19 curriculum, along the lines of Mike Tomlinson’s proposals.

As far as his remarks about “falling for false prophets” are concerned, I would advise him to examine himself and his own role. He should stop attacking others anonymously or in code and look to his own performance and record.

Ouch.

From their Prospective Parliamentary Candidate in Westmorland and Lonsdale:

I seem to be in the middle of a nightmare at present.  The BNP are standing all over my home constituency.  Everyone seems depressed where I am standing for parliament.  Gordon has decided to take money away from his core vote,  PPS’s are threatening to resign!! When are we going to wake up!!!  There is hundreds of councillors who are going to lose their seats if Gordon doesn’t listen.  I am asking please Gordon for the last time wake up and smell the coffee and save the party as in rectify the tax change!!!

With Regards

John Wiseman
PPC Westmorland and Lonsdale

I’ve not seen this passage from Ming Campbell’s memoirs, My Autobiography, quoted elsewhere, so here’s the story of the Conservative Press Officer and the defamatory email:

A former Liberal Democrat party employee working in public relations rang to alert my team to a damaging e-mail. It accused me of taking money from defence manufacturers in return for asking questions in the House of Commons. If true, which it most certainly was not, it could have led to my expulsion. I was furious about its potential damage to my leadership campaign [to succeed Charles Kennedy] if any newspaper published it. We had lawyers standing by … The e-mail trail led back to a press officer in the Conservative Party. We suspected a political smear. Ben Stoneham, the Lib Dem head of human resources, complained to the Tories who apologised immediately. A letter arrived from Henry Macrory, head of the party’s press department.

“I am writing,” he said, “to offer my sincere apologies for a serious error of judgement last Friday when a Conservative press office e-mailed three university friends in a private capacity with comments about you which we fully accept were defamatory. Her e-mail was sent without the knowledge of anyone else at Conservative Campaign Headquarters, and she bitterly regrets her action.”

1. November 2007: Government minister Admiral Lord West says he isn’t convinced that the 28 day limit on detention without trial needs increasing. He talks to Gordon Brown. And lo, within hours of the original story, he changes his mind.

2. April 2008: Government minister Gerry Sutcliffe questions the Government’s policy on alcohol duties. Senior Government sources apply pressure. And lo, within hours of the original story, he changes his mind.

3. April 2008: Angela Smith is going to resign her Government post. She talks to Gordon Brown. And lo, within hours of the original story, she changes her mind.

Note: Gavin Whenman got there first with his posting, though only with the two Gordon Brown cases.

A letter, courtesy of Save the Labour Party website, from the Weston-super-Mare Constituency Labour Party to Gordon Brown:

At the last GC meeting of Weston-super-Mare CLP on the 3rd April 2008 there was a general consensus amongst the attendees regarding the poor performance of the Labour Party in government and unfortunately much of this criticism centered on you…

I refer to the appalling lack of foresight when it was decided to abolish the 10p rate of income tax which according to reliable sources will cause most harm to 5.3 million of the lowest paid – the very people that our Party should be protecting. No amount of assurances that millions will benefit can or should hide the fact that 5.3 million poorer people will be disadvantaged. This situation is further exacerbated by ministers publicly reneging on an agreement with backbenchers to re-assess the impact of this decision on the poorest in our society. The case for your tax policy is further damaged by the apparent stubbornness on your part to ignore the entreaties of the PLP at last weeks meeting; a stubbornness which will only serve to damage your and the Party’s reputation rather than portray you as a strong leader.

This error of judgment coincides with the calamitous decision to support the closure of Post Offices across the country – which emulates all that was worse about ‘Thatcherism’ – and will again affect those people whose well-being has always been the Labour Party’s crusade and if fully implemented will further impact on the electoral chances of many of our sitting M.Ps and make the task of the activists in the Party more onerous than it is at present…

Your performances in public are lacking in conviction and give rise to a feeling that you are out-of-touch with the pressing issues of the day and that your responses to questions seem to consist of political platitudes and vague references to topics which are of little or no interest to the man or woman in the street.

Ouch.

From The Scotsman:

POLICE have been called in to investigate allegations that a Scottish Conservative Party worker stole £150,000 from party funds.

Senior party officials called in the police after the money, thought to have come mainly from subscriptions, disappeared from their Edinburgh offices over the last year.

The missing funds were discovered after a routine financial check, and officers are understood to be investigating a string of accounts to try to trace the money.

The missing funds have sparked a financial crisis, and forced the party to ask donors including Rangers owner Sir David Murray for help covering the shortfall.

A source within the Conservatives was reported to have said: “The whole thing has been a major embarrassment. It has shown the accounting system was not too robust – which is why no-one noticed until it was too late.”

Councillor quits party and stands as an independent candidate is not a particularly unusual story. It’s not normally a council leader doing this though … so enter stage left, Michael Walton, the Conservative Leader of Tynedale Council who is standing as an independent in May’s elections, up against an official Conservative Party candidate amongst others.

As the Manchester Evening News reports:

Mayor elect in ’sacking bid’ row
A MAN earmarked for mayor is accused of abusing his position in a bid to get a political rival sacked from her job as a nurse.

[Labour councillor] Robin Parker, who is due to take over as mayor of Rochdale next month, admits repeatedly emailing bosses of Rochdale Infirmary asking them to take action against Coun Jean Ashworth for publicly criticising the trust.

In his emails he has cited the case of Manchester nurse Karen Reissman who was sacked for speaking out against changes.

He claims he was not using his official town hall role when he complained about Coun Ashworth’s online diary.

But he admits revealing he was a councillor when he felt Pennine Acute Hospital Trust (PAHT) managers were stalling over his complaint. He has since told the M.E.N. that he did not aim for Coun Ashworth to be sacked.

Hospital bosses say they will not take action against Coun Ashworth, who represents Smallbridge and Firgrove, and works as a healthcare assistant, for comments she made in her role as a councillor.

Rochdale MP Paul Rowen has referred the issue to the standards board - who have the power to suspend councillors found guilty of breaching guidelines…

He said: “This type of bullying, aggressive behaviour should not be tolerated and I feel in the light of the publication of his crude attempt to get Jean sacked he should consider whether he is the type of person fit to represent our borough.”

Lib Dem Coun Ashworth has been an outspoken critic of reorganisation plans which will see the infirmary lose some services…

John Saxby chief executive of Pennine Acute Hospitals replied to Coun Parker’s complaints saying: “The comments about which you complained and which she has made as a local councillor in her councillor’s diary are not a breach of her terms and conditions of employment.”