Tag Archives: lord ashcroft

Mark Pack

Should those who set UK laws also be UK taxpayers? (UPDATED)

By Mark Pack | Fri 14th March 2008 - 12:08 pm

I’ve blogged before about Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oakeshott’s plans to introduce a bill requiring all members of the House of Lords to be paying taxes in Britain:

This will increase the pressure on controversial Conservative Party donor Lord Ashcroft, who promised to become a UK taxpayer when he was appointed to the Lords but hasn’t provided clear evidence that he has kept this promise.

The bill is having its second reading in the House of Lords today, and Lord Oakeshott has lined up cross-party backing:

Labour MP Gordon Prentice has agreed to sponsor Lord Oakeshott’s Bill should it pass the Lords

…

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Stephen Tall

Top of the Blogs: The Golden Dozen #54

By Stephen Tall | Mon 3rd March 2008 - 8:26 pm

Welcome to the 54th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (24th February – 1st March), together with a quintet hand-picked by Lib Dem blog readers you might otherwise have missed.

Here we go, in descending order of popularity:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 18 Comments
Mark Pack

Monday morning miscellany of stories

By Mark Pack | Mon 11th February 2008 - 11:06 am

Nick Clegg has spoken out against moves to stop British Olympics athletes from speaking out over China’s human rights record, calling any such ban “a real abdication of our moral responsibility”

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oakeshott is introducing a bill into the House of Lords to require all its members to be British taxpayers. This will increase the pressure on controversial Conservative Party donor Lord Ashcroft, who promised to become a UK taxpayer when he was appointed to the Lords but hasn’t provided clear evidence that he has kept this promise.

James Purnell, he of the photoshopping and staff problems, …

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Mark Pack

Lord Ashcroft, the Conservatives and money

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th February 2008 - 7:56 pm

The Evening Standard reports today that three Conservative associations show in their accounts that they received donations from Lord Ashcroft (the controversial Conservative donor) but that these sums don’t appear in the lists of donations declared to the Electoral Commission.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that an Ashcroft donation to a constituency hasn’t been declared. The previous cases of undeclared donations involved a range of other Conservative local associations, including North Norfolk Conservatives, who received a donation when Iain Dale was their Parliamentary candidate.

All parties rely heavily on volunteer local treasurers, so some mistakes in book-keeping are …

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Mark Pack

An unfortunate turn of phrase from Iain Dale

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th November 2007 - 1:34 pm

Writing about Michael Ashcroft, Iain said:

Not a single story has actually alleged any wrongdoing. Everything has been duly declared.

Now, that’s a rather careless choice of words. Why? Well, because Ashcroft gave money to the Conservative Party in North Norfolk whilst Iain was their candidate, and the party broke the law by failing to declare it – as the Electoral Commission subsequently found out and reprimanded them for. Not quite all duly declared Iain 🙂

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Mark Pack

Boris Johnson, Lord Ashcroft and David Lee: Conservatives in trouble

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th November 2007 - 10:55 am

Boris Johnson: “A senior source inside CCHQ has approached ConservativeHome to warn of “worrying drift” within the Boris Johnson campaign.” (ConservativeHome)

Lord Ashcroft: “Lord Ashcroft, the multimillionaire bank-rolling the Conservatives’ controversial campaign in marginal constituencies, was last night coming under increasing pressure to explain whether he has honoured pledges, made before he received his peerage, that he would return to the UK and pay income tax.” (Guardian) 

David Lee: “The Mayor of Chelmsford has been suspended from his party after a police investigation into pornography.” (BBC)

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Mark Pack

What Conservative HQ staff think of Osborne’s tax plans

By Mark Pack | Mon 1st October 2007 - 10:22 pm

So, George Osborne wants to change the tax arrangements of non-domiciled residents.

Bit of a problem really that CCHQ staff think the following then:

A change in the tax status of non-domiciled resident individuals will devastate the London shipping business centred on the Baltic Exchange, cost thousands of City jobs, destroy London’s position as the international centre for shipping, undermine its ability to attract key foreign personnel in all its other areas of activity and result in a lower, not a higher, tax take for the Exchequer.

And who is it that thinks that? Well, it’s a quote from the Evening Standard approvingly …

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Stephen Tall

Telegraph: Tories in marginals tell unpopular Cameron to stay away

By Stephen Tall | Sun 23rd September 2007 - 10:53 am

The Daily Telegraph today details some of the internal unhappiness in the Tory party with their leader, David Cameron – the least popular national party leader according to recent opinion polls.

The article is headlined ‘Tory pressure as David Cameron effect fades’, and claims:

Mr Cameron’s standing in some marginal seats is so bad that some Tory candidates have requested that their leader does not visit them during an election campaign. It is an extraordinary turnaround for a man once hailed as the saviour of the party.

The paper also reports on the latest activities of Lord Ashcroft, Tory deputy chairman, who …

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Mark Pack

Why is Michael Ashcroft considered an election winning expert?

By Mark Pack | Tue 28th August 2007 - 1:50 pm

Lord Ashcroft, the controverisal former Conservative Treasurer and now Deputy Chairman, is back in the news again. Over the weekend, the Daily Mail ran a piece about internal Conservative disagrements over his role and there’s been plenty of criticism of him on Conservative Home, some of which made The Guardian.

Defenders of Ashcroft essentially say: he knows what it takes to win elections so having Ashcroft in charge and the serial losers being given the push is a good thing.

But how good is Ashcroft?

Well, here’s his own account of his record supporting target seats at the 2005 general election:

The

…

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Stephen Tall

Lib Dem peer attacks Lord Offshore Ashcroft

By Stephen Tall | Mon 27th August 2007 - 12:30 pm

‘Ashcroft’s hold on party raises fears of Tory rift’ shouts the Telegraph headline, re-reporting the (month-old) news that top Tory peer, Michael Ashcroft, is directing and funding the party’s key seats strategy:

Tory concerns at the growing influence of Lord Ashcroft have been heightened by a memo to candidates from the billionaire peer instructing them on how to run their election campaigns. … Lord Ashcroft has moved into a large office in Conservative Campaign Headquarters in London’s Millbank from where he will run the party’s strategy for target seats.

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Mark Pack

Andy Coulson, Grant Shapps and George Bridges

By Mark Pack | Fri 27th July 2007 - 2:29 pm

There’s an interesting write-up in this week’s New Statesman of the goings-on in the last few days in the Cameron bunker, including Andy Coulson’s initial impact.

People with an interest in by-elections though might be taken by this part of the piece:

It has not been a good month for the ferret-like campaign manager, Grant Shapps, who is still facing a barrage of abuse from fellow MPs and party workers. Says a shadow minister: “Shapps is immensely pleased with himself for very little reason, overpromoted and inexperienced.” Another fan adds: “He overegged our chances by claiming huge successes at the beginning. It was political suicide.”

Shapps also appears to have upset the team around him. One member of the Ealing by-election ground team says: “Something as simple as placing a news story was beyond him. He took a very London-centric story that was perfect for the Evening Standard and insisted it was given to the Times. The resulting coverage was a pitiful few lines.”

“Ferret-like” seems a mite unfair to me. He seemed pretty human when we had a brief chat about YouTube passwords at the Ealing count 🙂

But one thing about the New Statesman piece puzzles me.

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Mark Pack

Conservatives keep their funding secret – again

By Mark Pack | Tue 28th November 2006 - 9:33 pm

Today’s headlines have been caught by the massive debts run up by the Conservative and Labour parties.

Full marks in the irony department to Tory HQ for unveiling a website calling people in debt tossers just before the publication of figures showing their own huge debts.

Buried in the figures are a few interesting snippets, such as the Tory party’s reliance on a £3.6 million loan from an overseas company – and as it is based in the British Virgin Islands, it has to publish almost no information about its activities.

So once again they’ve been using a funding method which allows them to …

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