While we wait to find out if the Labour Party will return money to putative peers, and David Cameron will return the money obtained from misuse of his office, the Lib Dems have decided to return a donation that broke the rules.
According to the Guardian:
The Liberal Democrats have agreed to repay a £40,000 donation, the Electoral Commission confirmed today.
The party conceded that the money, donated by Christopher Nicholson on December 31 last year, was impermissible because the donor was not on the electoral register at the time the donation was made.
I doff my cap to Liberal Review for being a more attentive Guardian reader than me!
Interestingly, having a donor who wasn’t on the electoral register is also what UKIP were accused of recently - that donation was for £367,697. Cough up, Farage.
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Hopefully he’s on the register now and can donate it straight back again.
The money was probably forfeited to the Exchequor rather than returned to the donor, so we’d be asking for another £40,000 donation from him.
Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks it is crazy that the Electoral Commission is waiting for the outcome of a police investigation to determine what should be done about the Michael Brown? Surely their decision should be based on what a political party could reasonably be expected to have checked out in the run up to an election, rather than what a police team working for months can discover?
The money was forfeited, not returned as reported in the Guardian.
Even the Labour Party isn’t calling on political parties to have their own private police forces, with powers to investigate any citizen it sees fit (note: and hopefully as long as John Reid doesn’t read this and get ideas, it’ll stay that way). So I’m always astounded at bloggers who think the Liberal Democrats should have acted like the Stazi.
Will you now be returning the Brown money?
Yes – an agreed forfeiture. and an interesting precedent
http://www.politics.co.uk/press-releases/party-politics/party-political-funding/unlock-democracy-welcomes-forfeit-lib-dem-donation-$469879.htm
That would be the Chris Nicholson who is Lib Dem PPC for Streatham! I assume he was in the process of moving house.
What a ridiculous ruling.
Now there is just the problem of £2.5 million….
So, the The Guardian diary had another new angle on this. I suppose all publicity is good publicity.
Now here’s a thing. Last Friday, as was reported in this very organ, the Lib Dems returned to a Mr Christopher Nicholson a £40,000 donation because his name had been inadvertently omitted from the electoral register (as was not, happily, the case with his many and generous previous donations to the party). What was not reported is that just before he signed the cheque, Mr Nicholson, a partner at accountancy giant KPMG specialising in public-private partnerships (which we thought were rather against Lib Dem policy, but that’s by the by), was selected to be the party’s parliamentary candidate to challenge Keith Hill MP in Streatham. Happily, after all this loans for lordships business, cheques for candidatures are clearly out of the question.
hi all.