It’s not that unusual for a would-be Parliamentary candidate to be selected for a seat and then, after a period of time, to quit – perhaps because of a change in their personal circumstances, because they found being a candidate wasn’t really for them or because of an internal dispute.
However, the case of Michael Ellis – Conservative candidate for Northampton North – is a little different from the rest as, after three months consideration by Conservative chiefs, his resignation has been undone.
As the local paper, the Northampton Chronicle, puts it:
Barrister Michael Ellis, who had said he would quit the General Election trail,
The scale of secret cash links between senior Conservatives and wealthy backers was revealed yesterday after George Osborne was told that he should have declared how his office was being funded. The Shadow Chancellor was the subject of a parliamentary investigation after it emerged that he failed to register almost £500,000 in donations. Donors had given the money to the Conservative Party but asked that it be used to bankroll Mr Osborne.
Ten other Shadow Cabinet ministers have also been benefiting from money channelled from Tory headquarters, the final report of the investigation
The folks from www.publicwhip.org.uk have just released a vote-match style website for the Crewe & Nantwich Parliamentary by-election. It serves up a number of different policy questions, and then tells you which party is the best fit for your answers.
As their news release says:
While activists are descending from all corners of the country to Crewe & Nantwich to help with their party’s by-election campaigns, volunteers from the Public Whip today launched an online questionnaire to help people make up their minds about who to vote for. The webpage http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/byelection compares people’s opinions to the way each party has voted in
Friction.TV has done an interview with David Howarth MP ahead of tomorrow’s debate in Parliament on his bill to introduce fixed term Parliaments. I won’t spoil the fun by telling you who the presenter is…
Peter Black has the details of how our good results in this year’s Welsh local government elections are translating into increasing amounts of power and influence across Welsh councils.
Ah happy memories. Remember the glories of last summer and the Ealing Southall by-election when the Conservatives sanctimoniously threatened the Liberal Democrats with legal action over use of an image in a leaflet, saying that this was an outrageous breach of the law, would result in a huge financial penalty, the end of the world etc etc – all at the same time as putting out a leaflet themselves that, er…, did exactly what they were complaining of others doing?
You might have thought being caught out saying one thing whilst doing another would have resulted in a slight pause for caution …
Most of the coverage in the UK of American elections in the last couple of days has focused on Hillary Clinton’s latest primary victory and then John Edwards’s endorsement of Barack Obama.
However, also of significance is the special election (by-election) win chalked up by the Democrats in a formerly solidly Republican Mississipi congressional seat. George W Bush carried the district with more than 60% of the vote in 2004, but in this week’s election Democrat Travis Childers won through. This makes it three special election victories for the Democrats in a month – all in strongly Republican areas – and …
Councillor Sarah Turley (Boyd Valley) has left South Gloucestershire’s ruling Conservative group and joined the Liberal Democrats.
Sarah says, “When I stood for election last year I was determined to stand up for my local community. Unfortunately, over the last year I have found that my work has been undermined by members of the Conservative group on the Council.”
“In particular, when I wanted to speak up on behalf of local residents against the in-vessel composter, I was discouraged from doing so. At the same time I have worked closely with community campaigners, many of whom are
I’ve already blogged about how London Elects admitted to failing to count all the votes in the London Mayor election. Now looking through the detailed figures I see that Lambeth has sprouted two extra wards.
What seems to have happened is that some, but only some, of the ballot boxes in Brixton Hill and Thornton wards were reported in to the central number crunching venue in City Hall with typos in their names – and so the official results have votes for both Brixton Hill and Brxiton Hill (note the x and i) and also both Thornton and Thirnton (note …
Today’s announced tax changes, designed to deal with the fallout from the abolition of the 10p tax rate, will cost £2.7 billion (to be funded by extra borrowing).
Of that, only £630 million will go to people who lost out in the first place due to the abolition of the 10p rate.
In other words – more than three quarters of the cost of today’s announcement won’t go to the people it’s designed to help.
Whatever happened to prudent financial policies I wonder?
A letter has gone out today from Anthony Meyer, the Greater London Returning Officer, providing further details of the London election results. In it he admits that the Mayor result as declared at the time was inaccurate, as not all the valid votes were included in it:
The Mayoral 1st and 2nd preference figures for two ballot boxes from Merton and Wandsworth did not transmit successfully to City Hall for aggregation into the London-wide Mayoral declaration. Only the data on rejected ballot papers were received.
In total, 746 votes for Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson were therefore missed out from the final …
UPDATE September 2008: the story below accurately reported that Stephen O’Brien’s website stated it was paid for by Parliamentary funds. It’s since been pointed out that at the time the website was in fact no longer being paid for by Parliamentary funds and the statement to the contrary has been removed from his site.
Trouble brewing for Conservative MP Stephen O’Brien, who has been promoting Edward Timpson – Conservative candidate in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election – on his website. The problem? The website is paid for by the Parliamentary funds. And that’d be funds for which the rules expressly forbid such campaigning. Tsk tsk.
A formal complaint has now been lodged with the Director of Finance and Administration of the House of Commons by Gwyn Griffiths, one of the local Liberal Democrat councillors. The key part of his complaint says:
On his website Conservative MP Stephen O’Brien promotes Edward Timpson, the Conservative candidate for Crewe and Nantwich, Stephen Mosley, Conservative candidate for Chester and Graham Evans, Conservative candidate for Weaver Vale.
He also uses the site to promote the policies and advance the cause of the Conservative Party in breach of the explicit rules laid down by the House.
Paragraph Seven of the ‘Rules and guidance on Members’ Websites funded from the Communications Allowance’ clearly states that it must not be used to fund party political activity or campaigning.
7. You must not use your website:
to campaign on behalf of or against any person seeking election
to advance perspectives or arguments with the intention of promoting the interests of any person, political party or organisation you support, or damaging the interests of any other such person, party or organisation.
On his website, Mr O’Brien states that it is paid for out of his parliamentary allowances.
Please launch an investigation into Mr O’Brien’s use of his Incidental Expenses Provision and Communications Allowance to promote the Conservative Party and their candidates.
Meanwhile, happy news from Tim Farron MP, who has been out meeting farmers and getting a very warm response for Elizabeth Shenton:
It looks as if the impending self-imposed term limit for the Labour Mayor of Doncaster has helped trigger a split in the Labour Group. The current Labour Mayor, Martin Winter, has twice been elected as Mayor but Labour’s internal rules don’t allow someone to run for a third time. However,
Doncaster’s mayor, Martin Winter, has been given an ultimatum by party officials after it emerged he and two other leading Labour councillors in the borough had set up their own independent group in the wake of the local elections earlier this month.
Furious regional party officials have told Mayor Winter and cabinet
As I blogged about a few days ago, the Labour Party in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is attacking the Conservative candidate for opposing “making foreign nationals carry an ID card”. As I said then,
The use of the word “foreign” there seems to come with some rather unpleasant overtones in this context, the implication being that ‘ooh, foreigners – they’re terribly nasty aren’t they – so surely you can’t be against keeping tabs on them now, can you?’
But – as Alex has reminded me – there’s more to this than that. Because, you see, making foreign nationals carry an …
Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, will today use a speech in the City to call for the scrapping of tax loopholes that make London the accountancy equivalent of “a Swiss cheese” and to propose using the proceeds to cut corporation tax.
Mr Clegg will accuse the Treasury of devising a complex tax system for the City that encourages behaviour which “by any other name is tax avoidance”, claiming there is no evidence the loopholes are vital for London’s success as a financial centre. “If we create greater stability and transparency in the tax regime we can deliver cuts
It’s gone largely unremarked so far, but Mark Walklate, who is standing as an independent candidate in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, is a former Conservative activist.
He stood for the Conservatives in both the 2006 and 2007 local elections. Moreover, his nomination papers look to have been signed by two prominent local Conservative activists. All in all, that doesn’t seem like a happy ship.
P.S. It’s always unfortunate if you get your own phone number wrong in your leaflets. It’s doubly so when the wrong phone number turns out to be for the member of another party. But it’s quite nice …
The communities that make up Greenhead Ward deserve a team of experienced, hard working and effective Councillors, who will represent you and always put your interests first. As your Labour team in Greenhead Ward, we endeavour to work all year round on the issues that affect you and are a priority for the local communities.
A fairly standard piece of election direct mail you might think. Substitute a word or two here or there and it could easily be a letter from pretty much any party in any …
It’s early days, but there have been some interesting write-ups already, including in today’s Sunday Times which, amongst other things, points out that,
At least two ideas mooted by Johnson during his campaign have been squashed by his rigorous new policymen.
Dropping a couple of election promises so quickly is the sort of act which often gets lost in the initial media coverage of “new person in post”, but it is also the sort of act that can come back to haunt you. If Boris Johnson hits bad times and struggles on policy, the early dropping of two promises could become highly …
Matt Wardman and Helen previously commented on this site about the website for Joan Ryan, Labour MP for Enfield North.
Now I’ve had a time to take a proper look, and talk to one of her constituents, it raises some interesting questions.
What caught everyone’s eye is that most of the content on http://www.joanryan.net/ is only accessible if you register – and in order to register you have to be a constituent of hers. All MPs face some issues with getting casework from people who are not constituents of theirs, and it’s not uncommon to see various messages or even restrictions on contact …
An interesting snippet from some of the Labour material in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election: they are attacking the Conservative candidate for the (current, known to have changed a few times) Conservative policy of opposing ID cards.
However, from what I’ve seen of it, they’ve mostly given up on most of the arguments previously used and instead retreated into the following very narrow approach:
Do you oppose making foreign nationals carry an ID card?
The use of the word “foreign” there seems to come with some rather unpleasant overtones in this context, the implication being that ‘ooh, foreigners – they’re terribly nasty aren’t …
The headline summarises the full story quite neatly:
Tory councillor forced to resign after he made up claims he suffered from testicular cancer
UPDATE: The story has been widely covered in other media outlets, including the BBC, though only this local newspaper report really adds anything to the orginal report linked above.
Back last year when we had two Parliamentary by-elections going on at the same time, in Ealing Southall and Sedgefield, there was a concerted online campaign by Conservatives making comments around the web to claim that the Liberal Democrats were struggling in Ealing, had given up on winning and were instead concentrating on Sedgefield. My favourite was the supposed eye-witness account from someone in Ealing who claimed they saw people in the Liberal Democrat HQ there preparing lots of letters for Sedgefield.
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.
The Liberal Democrat-led administration has just had the piece of good news that it:
has become the first English council to achieve top marks from the local authority watchdog.
Audit Commission inspectors praised the council’s responsiveness and the strong leadership of its councillors and officers, who it said have displayed “excellent” understanding of the social, economic and environmental challenges facing the borough’s communities.
The Audit Commission’s assesment rules are not without their problems and controversies (particularly over the relative importance given to financial issues) but in this case it seems a fair representation of the many good things the administration has been doing.
Michael Thrasher has an interesting piece on the Sky News website, particularly explaining the difference in the seat change figures between those published by Sky and the BBC. As has become a consistent pattern over several years now, his national vote share projections put the Liberal Democrats two per cent lower than the BBC’s figures.
Several people (including myself) have commented on how well the Liberal Democrats did against the Conservatives in those Parliamentary seats that are key to the next general election. Martin Tod reports from Winchester than in fact the Liberal Democrat vote there hit a 10-year high …
Stanislas Magniant wrote about what happened after he gave a presentation about online politics:
During the Q&A session, one person helped me put things in perspective, in the most humbling manner. That person is a member of the Parliament in Lebanon.
Because of political threats on his life and that of his family, he’s been forced to live in highly secure locations, with bodyguards 24/7. And because he can no longer go out and meet with his constituents, he’s resorted to use Facebook to keep in touch with them, to exchange ideas, and to prepare for next year’s election. I don’t know if
A rather unfortunate posting over on Iain Dale’s blog this evening about the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. Iain writes:
It seems to me that the Conservatives should be very careful not fight an aggressive campaign here. They don’t need to launch attacks on the Labour Candidate. They need to be the voice of sweet reason and play up their candidate’s local record – but then go for Gordon Brown’s throat on the 10p tax debacle and other issues. And this is exactly what Edward Timpson seems to be doing. He’s just released this rather interesting letter to the press…
Edward Timpson, the Conservative candidate for the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, is busy calling himself local. So I thought I’d take a look at his official biography on the Conservative Party website. And here’s what I found:
(Click on the thumbnail to see full size version.)
Update: just to provide a little background as I commented below: the reason for picking up on this is that the Conservatives are running the message that their candidate is local whilst
Mohammed Amin @David Raw
You have misunderstood my comment. There are many sensible Lib Dem supporters in Makerfield. They showed how sensible they are by NOT voting Lib D...
Tom Bailey “But Norway voted in 1973 not to join the EU. “ The EU didn’t exist in 1973, and that is not just a a *clerical error*. Harold Wilson gave the UK a vo...
Tristan Ward "But in the process of she’s made herself the voice of pro-business low-tax anti-red-tape-ism"
On the other hand Badenoch is making the Tories the party of...
Tristan Ward @David Raw
"I am beginning to despair of opinion in so-called ‘Middle England’ which has so dominated this party since 2010."
Terrible isn't it that L...
Tristan Ward "Badenoch is forging a coherent Tory identity that is ........not easily meldable into Reform
Is this the same Kemi Badenoch who:
a) has said she will pu...
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More missing scientists: Remembering the GEC-Marconi deaths panic of the late Eighties
A bumper set of of council and Parliamentary by-elections
Makerfield: we can breathe again.
Brexit has cut trade in almost every sector of the UK economy
Mohammed Amin 
Tom Bailey 
Tristan Ward 
Tristan Ward 