From today’s Observer:
A much-publicised law designed to stop wealthy tax exiles bankrolling political parties has been quietly dropped until after a general election, the Observer has learned.
The disclosure means that key Labour donors such as Lakshmi Mittal as well as Tory donor Lord Ashcroft will still be able to pump millions of pounds into the forthcoming election campaign, despite promises to curb the influence of wealthy backers. It has prompted accusations that the government has “nobbled” an act of parliament by failing to ask the electoral commission to enforce the rule.
Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman, said he suspected Labour had abandoned its principled stand of just a few weeks ago because of concerns that the party cannot fight a cut-price general election against cash-rich Tories. “To support an important piece of legislation stopping this underhand practice and not bring it in before a general election is like banning a drug-taking footballer but allowing him to play in the cup final,” he said.
“I suspect the electoral commission is not being pushed by the government to get on with it. Labour needs to realise that they will never win an arms race with the Tories on dodgy donations.”
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19 Comments
Must be my poor Blackberry connection here in la profonde France. Could have sworn there was a reference to half-a-million in non-dom donations to the LibDems in that article.
Yours non-domiciled and tanned,
Guido
Ashcroft does not make donations. A legit UK company receives the dosh from afar, and that UK Ltd. Co. passes on the money. An important distinction. This legislation did nothing to stop the flow of money.
An individual who wants to stay Anominious could transfer the cash to Belize, and Ashcroft then move it to his London Co. who then give it to local Tories. Simple….
Companies receiving “consultation fees” like this can just carry on….
Mr. Fawkes! Nothing wrong with your Blackberry…. Party debts would presumably be £1-million in debt without.
And we are soon going to fight the Tories with £50million in their war-chest??
I think the problem most of us mere mortals have is in understanding why a donation given directly by a non-dom is “dodgy”, but a donation given by a non-dom through a company is perfectly OK. At least a direct donation has the virtue of transparency…
Good point. So, Mr. Fawkes sits in France, gets his mates to form a company in the UK, it has a telephone, address in the Yellow pages, looks and sounds legit. It trades in “consultancy” work. Mr. Fawkes gives it regular bungs from his pad in the south of France, and Legit Traders Ltd pay the party of his choice. His annual accounts show his income and his expenditure. Transparent, geddit? It might now say who Mr. Fawkes is, or even mention him, but, look, c’mon, do keep up… we have made this new law for reasons of transparency….
Personally, I think it’s time that all people who value democracy started gluing themselves to the doors of polling stations (there are bye elections most weeks), encouraging people to start trashing their voting cards in large numbers.
The other alternative is to start putting up single issue candidates for the “Ban the Bung” party.
My point was that while Matthew Oakeshott criticises other parties for receiving “dodgy donations” from non-doms, the Lib Dems have themselves received money from non-doms, donated through their companies.
In much the same way, Oakeshott previously described donations to the Tory party from short-sellers as “dirty money”, even though the Lib Dems had themselves received donations from short-sellers. And even though Oakeshott’s hypocrisy on this issue had already been pointed out!
https://www.libdemvoice.org/top-lib-dem-donor-shortselling-bank-shares-10736.html
And Oakeshott has also just called for the Conservatives to make Lord Taylor of Warwick pay back money he has wrongly claimed for overnight subsistence, when his main residence was allegedly in London:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6736141.ece
Has Oakeshott called for the Lib Dems to make Lord Rennard pay back the money he claimed for overnight subsistence?
Herbert Brown makes a good point.
Who cares if someone living in France gives a few grand to a party. The latest changes suggest the limit has gone up to £7,500, a 50 per cent increase, on the previous limit where greater transparency starts. What we are more concerned about is the likes of Lord Laidlaw getting his peerage after giving zillions to the Tories, liviing in Monteo Carlo, and playing no other interest in the political process. And Ashcroft’s mysterious zillions friom Belize.
Membership fees, jumble sales, cant sustain a national piolitical party. That was the 1960s. The Liberal Demiocrats need bady big hitter doners, from impecable scources given that £6 million a year running costs only gives a costly bank deficit of half a mill. No organisation can go on year after year trying to sustain itself, and, compete, from an overdraft.
So we should jojn the others in the dirty game rather than try to clean up the rules the game is played by? No thanks two parties in the pockets of weathy individuals is more than enough for me.
“No organisation can go on year after year trying to sustain itself, and, compete, from an overdraft.”
Just like the UK Government?
Let’s be clear here – any attempt to level the playing field and remove the cash factor from political success is entirely Liberal/liberal, but if in an environment where you need that cash factor to promote your Liberal/liberal agenda you have to hold your noses. It’s either that or demand higher payments from the members, which is entirely not Liberal/liberal. I’m sure that even Guido would agree with little me – a political world where money is not a factor in success is something to strive for, because it promotes the equal hearing of candidates.
Well I am sure Guido having an Irish passport is giving his millions to the New(old)Force in NI.
Today’s Daily Telegraph suggests the reason why Jack Straw and the rest of the Government has “caved in” is because in private, senior Tories said if there was an attack on funds from Non-Doms, then the next Tory Government would attack Trade Union funding of Labour…and last year, Labour raised 34 million quid, half of that came from Trade Unions (er, isnt it amazing they could still find the other half), and since 2001, Unions have given Labour no less than £91 million pounds.
Every PPC, and the Research Dept, should make a note of these figures.
Meanwhile, the Lib Dems report a half million pound debt – membership fees, and cheese-and-wine parties, don’t cut the mustard when you have a Conservative Party with £50 million in its General Election fund, and the Labour Party still pulling in 34 million a year.
Page 4 of the Telegraph ( Aug 3) : “Labour Forced To Delay Party Funding Law” – says: ” Ministers abandoned plans to ban wealthy tax exiles bank-rolling political parties because they feared the Toires would try to break trade union funding of the Labour Party if they won the election.” Adding: Lord Paul, the steel tycoon, who is a non-dom, announced he would stop giving to Labour if the law went through. The law would also have hit Lakshmi Mittal, one of Britain’s richest men, who gave Labour 2-million pounds in 2005.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice says “We do not believe at present that it will be practicable….but we will keep the provisions under review.” In other words, its now kicked into the long grass.
So there we have it. The Tories are steamrollering their way to power on the back of Ashcroft’s dodgy war chest. Labour know they are being screwed by the Tories’ dodgy donors, but they themselves need the relatively small sums they get from dodgy donors, just to survive. So they won’t change anything. Lib Dems know that they are in an even worse position, but they too are desperate for the pittance they can get from dodgy donors, even after having been badly bitten by Mr Michael Brown. So their protests are at best muted. Ashcroft must be laughing himself silly!
Neale Upstone proposes a Ban the Bung Party. I have considerable sympathy. That’s why I helped Craig Murray’s “Put an Honest Man into Parliament” campaign in Norwich North. Well, we beat the BNP, but we learnt the hard way that enthusiasm is not enough and that you also have to get the strategy right. I thought that “put an honest man” was a great slogan – until I found myself spending all my time explaining why I thought the British Ambassador who resigned on a point of principle had proved himself an honest man. When you’re explaining, you’re losing. Another time, perhaps, a simple “Ban the Bung” slogan will achieve greater success.
Will it have to be an independent who uses it, or will the Lib Dems get there first?
Philip: the Lib Dems had a deficit last year but that’s not the same as saying the party has a “half million pound debt”, which were the words you used. In fact, overall the party is in the black – unlike Labour and the Conservatives, who overall are in debt.
Well, thanks for qualifying that. So, when is a debt, not a debt. Answer, when its in the black. Presumably, there has been a significant turn-around since last year. Its the only conclusion I can draw from what you say. If so, brilliant…
We used to fight General Elections 10 to 1 against, ie, Conservative and Labour spent ten times what we had in the kitty…unless there is some sort of miracle, the odds look like lengthening even longer.
Mark….one other point, how come you suggest the Conservatives are “overall, in debt”. We all know they are swimming in funds. Depressing, all of this, including some of the comments from people who seem to think any large donation is “dodgy”.
My next door neighbour has just given a large sum to the Life Boat Institution, well in excess of six figures. (Im working on him to be a bit more broad-minded with his largess!). Nobody in the RNLI would write on a forum that we must be purer and purer in the funding of life-boats and turn down large donations because they must surely be “dodgy”.
Philip
“Depressing, all of this, including some of the comments from people who seem to think any large donation is “dodgy”.”
The term “dodgy” was used by Matthew Oakeshott, with reference to donations from “tax exiles”. That is the only sense in which it has been used on this thread so far. Absolutely nothing to do with the size of the donation.
Philip: in answer to why I suggest they are overall in debt, that’s because that is what their accounts (published by the Electoral Commission) show. You can, of course, have a lot of money passing through an organisation but still be in debt.
So, political parties, think-tanks, newspapers all largely funded by very rich people who naturally favour the opinion that very rich people should be given lots of favours as they are wealth creators blah-blah-blah. It seems to me the increasing view is that society is run for the benefit of such people with the rest of us just supplicants to them, hoping to pick up the scraps that fall from them. The dear old Observer newspaper, for example, threatened with closure because none of them would subsidise a newspaper which occasionally questions the assumption that we must always kowtow to the super-rich.