Author Archives: Mark Pack

A special election court ruled earlier today that Eshaq Khan and his supporters carried out “corrupt and illegal practices” to secure his election in Slough. A by-election will now be held, and Eshaq Khan has been expelled from the Conservative Party:

He and his electoral team were found to have created hundreds of false names in the weeks running up to the 3 May election and entered them on the electoral register for the ward, the court heard.

They then made applications for postal votes for these “ghost voters” and used the ballots to vote for Khan.

It was only when Labour party

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Should the Liberal Democrats back nationalisation of the railways? Does Vince’s wife think he’s beautiful? How should binge drinking be tackled? Who is the leader of the Liberal Democrats?

They are just a sample of the rather eclectic mix of questions for Vince Cable in today’s Question and Answer session printed in The Independent. It’s safe to say some of his answers aren’t exactly boring… and he deploys to lethal effect the ability to count to six. Read the full piece here.

David Prescott, son of John, has failed to be selected as the Labour candidate to succeed the former Deputy Prime Minister in Hull East. (BBC)

Matthew Taylor (the Liberal Democrat MP, not the Labour think tanker), who was adopted, has talked to The Times about discovering his biological mother.

It’s here.

From the BBC:

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is calling for the number of MPs in the House of Commons to be cut by 150.

This would save taxpayers millions of pounds and cut political parties’ need to raise cash from big donors, he says.

In a speech setting out his proposals for re-building trust in politics he will also call for a shake-up in party funding and a new electoral system.

He also proposes people be asked, when voting at elections, if they want to donate £3 to a party of their choice.

Mr Clegg is expected to say

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I quote, in all its full glory, paragraph 6.33 of Enterprise: unlocking the UK’s talent, the “Enterprise Strategy” published as part of yesterday’s Budget :

Transparency and easy access to R&D contract opportunities is essential. To ensure co-advertising, a link will be put in place between the TSB website and www.supply2.gov.uk. This will enable maximum exposure for these opportunities amongst the SME sector.

Yes, that’s right. The Government’s answer to what is a serious issue is, drum roll please, adding one whole weblink between one (yes count ’em all, that’s one) website and one other. I’m glad our economy is in …

There was some speculation around the European referendum vote in Parliament that Shirley Williams had threatened to defect to Labour if the party didn’t oppose a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Shirley has a letter in today’s Times which is a very fulsome a rebuttal of those claims, including this bit:

I have never threatened to defect to Labour on any issue or at any time since I helped to found the Lib Dem party.

and

No one contacted me to ask whether this was true.

From the BBC:

The Conservatives say they have withdrawn the party whip from Castle Point MP Bob Spink.

Mr Spink earlier told MPs he had resigned over the party’s failure to deal with serious “criminal and other irregularities” in his constituency.

But the party says it withdrew the whip – excluding him from the Tory group at Westminster – because he had emailed the chief whip threatening to resign…

In a letter the Conservative Chief Whip, Patrick McLoughlin, told him: “As a matter of good party discipline I cannot have MPs making threats to resign the whip at a time of their own

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