Author Archives: Mark Pack

Writing on the party’s official website, Nick Clegg has challenged Gordon Brown and David Cameron to live up to their words on cooperation:

Shortly after I was elected as Leader of the Liberal Democrats, the Prime Minister phoned me to offer his congratulations and express his wish that we should work together on the issues that unite our country. Similarly, shortly before I was elected as Lib Dem Leader, the Conservative Leader made a posting on his website seeking support from the Liberal Democrats to build a “progressive alliance”. His approach was a little less personal and a bit preemptive,

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Leader
Nick Clegg

Deputy Leader
Vince Cable (unchanged)

Chief Whip
Paul Burstow (unchanged)

The economy and business
VINCE CABLE (unchanged)
Shadow Chancellor

Jeremy Browne (was Julia Goldsworthy)
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Sarah Teather (was Lembit Opik)
Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform

Home Affairs
CHRIS HUHNE (was Nick Clegg)
Shadow Secretary of State for the Home Department

David Heath (unchanged)
Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor

The Rt Hon the Lord Thomas (unchanged)
Shadow Attorney General

David Howarth (unchanged)
Shadow Solicitor General

International affairs
ED DAVEY (was Michael Moore)
Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Chair of Campaigns and Communications

Nick Harvey (unchanged)
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence

Mike Moore (was Lynne Featherstone)
Shadow Secretary of …

David Cameron’s constituency party has admitted receiving £7,000 in donations that, er…, it wasn’t allowed to receive. The money has now been forfeited.

Labour activist Hopi Sen has the story on A blog from the back room.

The newly published Thrasher & Rallings analysis of May’s local election results has some interesting figures on gender balance amongst candidates and councillors:

30% of Conservative candidates were female
31% of Labour candidates were female
34% of Liberal Democrat candidates were female

29% of Conservative councillors are female
31% of Labour councillors are female
34% of Liberal Democrats councillors are female

It looks like forthcoming report from the IPPR (a left-leaning think tank that is very well-connected in Labour circles) could be an interesting read:

The Government’s flagship Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos) are creating a culture that encourages children into crime, according to a think-tank.

The measures can become a “self-fulfilling prophecy” of offending and should not be applied to under-12s, the Institute for Public Policy Reform (ippr) warned…

A report due to be published by the think-tank next month warns of a burgeoning “Asbo culture” and urges that they should only be handed to children under 12 if accompanied by family or parenting

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The Sunday Times reports:

ONE of Labour’s biggest donors was able secretly to channel more than £300,000 into the party’s election funds through an Islamic lobby group that hid his identity.

Inquiries by The Sunday Times have established that Imran Khand, a 43-year-old computer entrepreneur, was behind three large donations to the party earlier this year.

But his name was never disclosed to the Electoral Commission, which regulates party funding, because the money was given in the name of Muslim Friends of Labour, a lobby group.

Separately, Harriet Harman’s deputy leadership campaign registered a £5,000 donation from Muslim Friends, when the cash was

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The Councillors Commission, chaired by the former Labour leader of Camden Council (Jane Roberts), is due to report to the Government on Monday and leaks to the media suggest some highly controversial proposals will be included.

The media coverage has led on proposals to significantly increase the money paid to councillors.

But in the leaks are two other hot potatoes: the suggestion that council by-elections should be axed (and instead any vacancies filled from a list of names) and the suggestion that term-limits should be introduced for local government elections.

And now, some variety. It’s a donation story and it doesn’t feature Labour.

Over to the East London Advertiser:

A NEW crisis has engulfed MP George Galloway‘s troubled Respect party after it emerged this week that the Electoral Commission has been called in over a suspected unlawful foreign donation.

The election watchdog is probing a $10,000 cheque from a Dubai construction company that ended up in the bank account of an organisation set up by Respect, the East London Advertiser can reveal.

Even more troubling for Left Wing Respect is the donor company is owned by one of Britain’s biggest private finance initiative

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Crikey, this is bizarre, so let’s take things one by one.

1. Ken Follett (husband of Barbara Follett, Labour MP and Equality Minister) tells Andrew Marr’s Sunday AM program that, “She spends all of her allowances and all of her salary running her office and I actually subsidise it to the tune of at least a hundred thousand pounds a year.”

2. The Huntsman blog posts saying that (a) these subsidies need to be declared under the law, and (b) there’s no record of any such declarations.

3. Barbara Follett responds with a statement, exclusively published by Pink News, which …

Oh well, it’s a good thing I included the words “so far” when I wrote this morning that, “Today’s round-up of Labour donation news looks pretty simple so far. Just the one story.”

Because here’s the second of the day.

It’s about Barbara Follett, whose husband has talked about how he provides over £100,000 per year to help run her constituency office.

One slight problem. None of the money seems to have been declared, which is a bit problematic when you start looking at the rules.

The Huntsman (from where I’ve got this story) has got all the details and poses these …

Danny Alexander has got widespread coverage today for his shocking piece of research showing that pensioners are worse off than in 1950. As his news release says:

On the day that the Government has announced the level of benefits for next year, the Liberal Democrats have released figures showing that pensioners now receive less than in 1950.

The figures show that pensioners now receive only 15.9% of the average wage, compared to 18.4% in 1950.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Danny Alexander MP said:

“These figures are disgraceful. We have had a Labour government for ten years, and yet pensioners

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Today’s round-up of Labour donation news looks pretty simple so far. Just the one story. It’s a bit of an explosive one mind:

Labour helped Abrahams set up secret cash transfers
Scheme designed by lawyers and party officials to conceal donor’s identity

Labour officials helped lawyers acting for David Abrahams to draw up complex covenants that allowed the millionaire businessman to pay up to £650,000 indirectly to the party, the Guardian has learned.

Gulp.

The Guardian’s full story has more details.

Good news for Labour! Latest political financial scandal doesn’t involve David Abrahams.
Bad news for Labour! It still involves Labour, in this case London Mayor Ken Livingstone:

A senior adviser to London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, is under investigation after at least £2.5 million in public money was channelled to organisations controlled by himself, his friends and his business associates.

Lee Jasper, the Mayor’s director of equalities and policing, is at the centre of a network of companies which have received large sums of public money from Mr Livingstone while appearing to do little or no work in return.

An investigation by the Evening Standard

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Here we go again.

A former chairman of the Humberside Police Authority has been arrested in Northern Ireland on suspicion of gross indecency and other offences.

Hull City Councillor Steven Bayes, 45, was detained in the centre of Belfast on Monday morning. He has since been released on bail.

Full story on the BBC website.

I think it’s safe to say it’s not a good day, week or month to be a member of the Labour Party.

… but if the news keeps on spilling out, what can a blogger do?

Today’s news – the person (Paul Green) who gave an illegal donation to Wendy Alexander’s Scottish Labour Leadership campaign has said that:

1. Her campaign told him the donation was legal (oops, it wasn’t)
2. He has also given a similar donation to the Glasgow South Labour Party (oops, doesn’t that make for a second illegal donation?)

As surely as night follows day, today brings news of yet another expansion of the Labour donors scandal. Step forward George Crawford, the possible unwitting fifth man:

George Crawford, a Newcastle-based lawyer, went to the police amid claims that his name may have been used to illicitly donate money to the party.

He is demanding an investigation after a man of the same name was registered as giving Labour £36,000 in 2004. Mr Crawford believes he may have been used as a secret conduit by Mr Abrahams to donate money to Labour.

The lawyer suspects that the money was given in his

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Fresh from the BBC:

Cabinet minister Peter Hain has said more donations to his Labour deputy leadership campaign “were not registered as they should have been”.

Looks like Guido was on to something…

The number of senior Scottish Labour figures caught up in the Wendy Alexander illegal donation scandal continues to widen, with David Whitton MSP the latest name to feature.

As the Daily Record reports:

A SECRET list of Alexander’s donors has been leaked to a Sunday paper…

The entry for First Group boss Moir Lockhead gives David – David Whitton – as the contact.

A sum of £995 is listed though there is a question mark over whether it had been received. It said no money had been banked.

Under the heading “Name/address for Electoral Commission purposes” the list gives the name of former Labour

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