Alas, poor Guido Fawkes. Blogger Paul Staines has posted so often, and with such utter certainty, claiming that there’s something dodgy about Sarah Teather’s expense claims that he seems just a mite reluctant to admit, “I was wrong”.
Which is why you won’t find him reporting today that Sarah Teather has been cleared by the Electoral Commission, instead insinuating that Sarah got off on a technicality.
For the benefit, therefore, of Paul and his readers, here’s what the Electoral Commission said following their review of the case:
… following the inquiries made during this stage, we have satisfied that there is no evidence of unreported donations to the Brent Liberal Democrats. We are satisfied that the evidence before us indicates that the Liberal Democrats have in fact been supporting your work as an MP and there is no evidence to suggest that you have been using your parliamentary allowances to support party work, or make donations to them.
It’s also why you won’t find Paul reporting that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon, also looked at the evidence and has written to Sarah to say:
I would like to make clear that, on the basis of the evidence which I received, at the time I discontinued this inquiry I had not established grounds for believing that over the period 2004–05 to 2007–08—the period into which I inquired—your claims from parliamentary funds for your office provided support to the costs of your political party.”
And it’s is why you won’t find Paul reporting that after John Lyon dropped the investigation, he then got another complaint – this time not from a forged address – and rejected that too, saying:
He can only accept a complaint for an inquiry where he is satisfied that the complainant has provided him with sufficient evidence to justify his making an inquiry. He does not consider that the evidence you have provided, which he has already considered, is sufficient to justify him making a further inquiry.”
We all get it wrong sometimes, Paul. The grown-up thing is to admit it, and move on.
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16 Comments
Can we have more focus on Liberal Democrats and campaigning and things that matter, rather than bloggers blogging about blogs that bloggers blogged on the blogosphere? Let’s keep the “celebrity blogger” spats to Twitter where they can be safely ignored 😉
Dave Page – thanks for feedback. I think if you look at the variety of posts on LDV on any one day, you’ll see there’s a lot of focus on Lib Dems and campaigning.
However, given the Guido Fawkes blog is read by a lot of people – and he’s targeting a Lib Dem candidate in a tight race using smear tactics he’s happy to decry in others – it’s right that LDV helps Sarah Teather make clear that she’s been independently cleared of the accusations that have been levelled against her.
Frankly I can’t see any votes being shifted by this. It’s all Westminster Village stuff. Entertaining for us anoraks but boring to the electorate.
“basis of the evidence which I received”
well Labour couldn’t run a bath let alone put a decent complaint in.
just because they cocked up the complaints doesn’t mean there isn’t a case.
and don’t forget the age old sniff test, if the rent agreement was within the law then the law is an ass.
Remember: if there’s no evidence for your claims, that just means the conspiracy is even bigger than you thought!
In Labservative Britain, innocence is just a technicality.
Tory Bear’s ‘smell test’ appears to be another manefestation of the “forget the conclusions of the enquiry, if I believe a thing hard enough, doesn’t that make it true?” argument so beloved of a certain type of blogger.
@ Jen
Lol.
@ Tory Bear
“just because they cocked up the complaints doesn’t mean there isn’t a case”
In the absence of a credible case, we call someone this word ‘innocent’; that doesn’t mean they are necessarily innocent in an objective sense; it’s just that we’ve tried erring the other way (“guilty until proven innocent”) and it hasn’t tended to work out so well.
This is a system that has managed to get only 3 out of the 600 odd in front of a beak. You are now claiming that the failure of this system to dig up the goods are proof of innocence? I wonder how many of you jokers think that Campbell didn’t spice up the dossier just because of the results of the farcical enquiry? The Lib Dems and their glorious principles of convenience.
‘Labservative Britain’
This is a great new idea. The general public think they are all the same so you guys will be the different ones.
Just line up Lib Dem policies over the last few years and try and see the thread running through them all. Opportunism and desperation. High tax, low tax, somewhere in the middle. Like the teenage goth all you guys can do is work like bad to appear ‘different’. Also like the goth you do it in such familiar ways.
Cannot wait for the debates. Giving the Lib Dems a chair at the adults table should be the best thing that ever happened to them. Except of course it will be Nick Clegg sat in it. How must it feel having a party leader no more intelligent, charismatic or useful than your average village curate or assistant branch manager. But then that’s the Lib Dems for you. Redefining mediocre.
Could you send us the entire letter rather than selectively quoting from it? We have FoI’d it but it will take some time before we see that.
You should know that Sarah Teather’s lawyers threatened to sue me months ago. No sign of that.
The fact is that the LibDem HQ in Brent is subsidised by the taxpayer disproportionately.
Care to cite any evidence for that last claim, Guido?
Come on, Guido. If you want to make claims like that then you have to have the evidence to back it up. If there’s a smoking gun, you usually put it on your blog, so why so scared?
OK if you want, will devote some resources to Ms Teather.
Fallen Idol
I used to think Guido Fawkes was a noble fellow a sort of flamboyant Norman Baker; but then I discovered he was a hedgefunder by profession, earning his living by speculation on and with other people’s money; a kind of parasitic lifestyle.
Then I had to include him in the bloggers, (all male I’m afraid) who adopt great historical names to try to lend weight and authority to their (usually) pitifully narrow views.
But finally, as his readership has increased and encouraged him, I find myself mostly repelled by his obvious enjoyment of his own malice. As his original gentle malice has become more strident thoughts of glasshouses and stones come to mind.
@Elizabeth
Which historical name are you blogging behind to lend weight to your views? Elizabeth I or Elizabeth II?
What, what, what… is the Queen dead? Gawd,. not Charles, please!
There is nothing inherently wrong with hedge funds [1], which are little different from buying new lines of products at a shop in the hope they could be sold at a profit. Teather said on Question Time that the problem was those who happily took the profits and expected others to pick up the losses… or was that Victoria Coren? Can’t remember. I was too busy chortling at the little snot nosed kid getting a dressing down from Richard Littlejohn, and groaning at Teather’s bringing in Iraq (apparently forgetting the majority support for it, and the 2005 GE results).
Coren was funny, yes she was… sorry, where was I? Oh, yes, expenses…
… the Parliamentary Commissioner may have dropped the complaint against Teather ‘cos of fraud, but as far as I can see the Electoral Commission has cleared her directly. Even if she had acted improperly (I haven’t followed the case closely enough to express a personal opinion), the allegations ain’t nothing compared to what Butler has done… even when we take into account Teather’s bathroom.
There’s a similar attempt to ride with the expenses scandal in Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross where the Labour PPC attempted to claim that John Thurso was sitting on a multitude of consultancies, several of which turned out to be unpaid; as well as drawing attention to the rent.for his London flat, as if buying London property would have been any better.
The real foot in mouth moment came when he suggested that Thurso Castle was a stately country pile.
[1] But there is with being a nut-job libertarian who had drinkee-poos at South African Embassy bashes in the 1980s, although at least then he didn’t drive himself home.