Stephen Tall

The LDV Saturday Open Thread (20 Jun ‘09): what’s on your mind?

By | Sat 20th June 2009 - 8:00 am

We don’t do an LDV Daily View 2 x 2 round-up on Saturdays, so instead here’s an open thread. What stories have caught your eye? What issues are on your mind? Have you been scrutinising Lib Dem MPs’ expenses? Who do you think should be the next Commons Speaker? Have you read the Government’s Digital Britain report yet? Do you have suggestions for the next LDV party members’ survey? Discuss away in the comments below…

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60 Comments

  • Cogload 20th Jun '09 - 9:40am

    One comment – does anybody have a spare 2.5million?

  • Mark Williams 20th Jun '09 - 10:13am

    One story that caught my eye was the police investigation into the Michael Brown donation and the question of whether it might be confiscated under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Interesting.

    Did anyone else spot that?

  • Herbert Brown 20th Jun '09 - 10:17am

    Yes, and it appears the police are taking the matter seriously:
    “The head of the economic crime unit, detective chief superintendent Stephen Head, said: “On the face of it they seem to be serious allegations.”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8110452.stm

  • Hywel 20th Jun '09 - 11:05am

    Herbert – Mind you it’s pretty rare that the police receive an allegation of a serious offence and say (before investigation) “this is nonsense and frankly we can’t be bothered”

    I don’t see how POCA applies. If a drug dealer has a conversion and donates £1million to charity which then spends it on something which doesn’t produce an asset I can’t see how POCA or any other tracing remedy would allow recovery.

    That all assumes that good faith was involved, and good faith is not the same as doing extensive due diligence.

    Remember Brown was a good enough con-man to persuade a US tax lawyer with £several million on the hip to invest with him.

  • Herbert Brown 20th Jun '09 - 12:12pm

    Call me naive, but I would hope the head of the Economic Crime Unit at the City of London Police would have a reasonable working knowledge of the Proceeds of Crime Act. Or at least as good a knowledge as the posters here.

    And if what he really thinks is “These allegations are nonsense – the Act clearly doesn’t apply”, then I would hope he wouldn’t say to the press “On the face of it they seem to be serious allegations”.

    If a frivolous complaint against someone is made to the police, and the police issue a statement to the press saying that it is prima facie a serious allegation, then that is very damaging to the reputation of the person who has been accused.

  • Herbert Brown 20th Jun '09 - 12:18pm

    Hywel:
    “That all assumes that good faith was involved, and good faith is not the same as doing extensive due diligence.”

    But hasn’t Nick Clegg already committed the party to paying the money back if any failing is found in its due diligence?

  • Old Hack 20th Jun '09 - 1:11pm

    If the money had been given to the Tories Lib Dem Voice would be howling with outrage and accusations about the refusal to repay stolen funds.

    Well the rightful owner of some of these funds has come forward.

    He is not a lawful donor to the Lib Dems and he did not voluntarily donate. So, stop dicking about like a bunch of Councillors and PAY IT BACK!!

  • kevin jones 20th Jun '09 - 3:26pm

    Apparently individual LibDem members are liable to pay their share of the £2.5 million if the party doesn’t pay. I’d be careful of travelling to the USA – you may well get arrested at immigration for being involved in racketeering – a very serious offence in the USA – 10 years in gaol.

  • Herbert Brown 20th Jun '09 - 5:05pm

    “Apparently individual LibDem members are liable to pay their share of the £2.5 million if the party doesn’t pay.”

    I’m sure it wouldn’t come to that in any case, but it does bring home what a huge amount of money it is – something like £50 for every member of the party.

    Or, looking at it another way, enough to employ an extra two or three people full time for a year in every seat held by the party.

    In fact, one wonders where it all went…

  • Alex 20th Jun '09 - 7:40pm

    I’m waiting for the blog post about it.

  • Hywel 20th Jun '09 - 7:55pm

    I don’t know what Mr Mann has reported to the police that wasn’t already public domain (Brown is a crook, he took Mr Manns money, he donated to the Lib Dems – all these are widely agreed).

    A report of a potential POCA offence is a serious allegation and the police should investigate it even if there isn’t a strong prima facie case.

    “If the money had been given to the Tories Lib Dem Voice would be howling with outrage and accusations about the refusal to repay stolen funds.”

    How often have we mentioned Polly Peck?

    “Well the rightful owner of some of these funds has come forward.”

    The evidence here is a bit sketchy to say the least. Brown first approached the Lib Dems before he met Mr Mann AIUI. And the question as to why the party could not have been taken in by Mr Brown as easily as Mr Mann was still hasn’t been addressed.

  • Herbert Brown 20th Jun '09 - 8:37pm

    Hywel

    But of course the police are not under any obligation to say anything at all to the press. It would be the easiest thing in the world to say “We can’t comment until we have decided whether to investigate”.

    Surely if he thought the allegations were plainly nonsense, Mr Head would have said something like that.

  • D McCarthy 20th Jun '09 - 10:37pm

    Gosh – when I was trying to stop the powers that be (and some of whom shamefully are still TPTB) I never realised that they would drag the party so humiliatingly low in the mud.

    That was a body blow to the party’s public moral standing on Newsnight last night.
    I was mortified for the party even though I am no longer a member.

    There was a victim of a major crime telling the British public that he knows who has the money stolen from him, but they wont give it back…. have you ANY idea how destructive this is to liberalism? 8((((((((((((

    I notice the usual tribal apologists have no response to the question Mr Mann asked re if the party is so sure they carried out due diligence, then why are they forcing Mr Manns lawyers to go to court to see the paperwork? Is it because our commitment to transparency and openness in politics applies to Brown but not to the saintly Liberal Democrats?

    This tradition of party grandees hiding behind lawyers and libel threats should really stop.

    Have any of you asked, if and how many times has the Party Treasurer threatened journalists investigating him, with a libel suit if they print the stories they wanted to on him?

    Very very sad and still nobody in the party is calling for any accountability for the people who got you into this mess.

    To answer the question on where was the money spent – AFAIAA it was spent on a jet for Kennedy to rack up huge CO2 emissions during the election and for a huge amount of vacuous pathetic billboards saying nothing about Lib Dem education policy ….

    as you sow – so shall you reap….. the party had this coming to it for its refusal to clean up its corruption and its full out assault on the whistle blowers – goodness knows where all of this is going to end.

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 12:31am

    “To answer the question on where was the money spent – AFAIAA it was spent on a jet for Kennedy to rack up huge CO2 emissions during the election and for a huge amount of vacuous pathetic billboards saying nothing about Lib Dem education policy ….”

    Thank you. I do remember some comments at the time, to the effect of “why is the party wasting so much money on billboard advertising?” But really, was the better part of £2.4m really spent on that?

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 1:04am

    After a bit of Googling, I’m more mystified than ever.

    Apparently a billboard typically costs £1000 for a month. So £2.4m would buy about 40 billboards in every Lib Dem constituency, for a whole month before polling day. I’d be amazed if there was a tenth of that amount of billboard advertising.

    And chartering a reasonable-sized jet for a single journey seems to cost around £10,000. So that would be about 240 journeys for Charles Kennedy during the campaign. Ten flights a day? I don’t believe a word of it.

    All this has to be put into the context of regular party fundraising. I can’t believe my local party was untypical. Our main fundraising event of the year involved a huge expenditure of time and effort, and considerable generosity by party members, over and above their subs and all the practical help they were already giving the party. And we felt we were doing really well if we raised £1500.

    I think Cowley Street must be on a different planet.

  • D McCarthy 21st Jun '09 - 9:15am

    Herbert – interesting research!

    As I was no longer a member of the FE after the GE, I did not see the accounts and so my posting was reporting my memories of what people were saying at the time that it had been spent on – your research puts an interesting light on this.

    I do remember however, being present at the first meeting looking at the accounts of a previous general election and being appalled that the party has paid over £40,000 for the “design” of the party manifesto to a mate of one of the campaign leaders.

    When I raised my objections, I was shouted down for raising something that had been in the past (even though this was the first meeting to look at the accounts following the general election!!

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 2:38pm

    I note that Nick Clegg, on this morning’s Andrew Marr show, made the following claim:

    “We received a donation from this man, from Michael Brown, before the 2005 general election … later he was convicted of a theft which took place after his donation, and now one of his creditors from America, a California businessman … is seeking to drag us, the Liberal Democrats, into the spat which he has with Michael Brown.”

    Unfortunately this appears to be untrue. In a report of Brown’s trial for theft from Martin Edwards, published on 11 November 2008, the Guardian said:

    Edmunds said: “We say Mr Brown claimed to be a bond trader, someone who had the experience and expertise that would allow him to trade in high value bonds on the international market so that he could make huge profits for people who would invest through him. But Brown did not do as he claimed he would and it is the prosecution’s case that he simply never intended the funds be used for the purposes of trading bonds … he therefore deceived Mr Edwards to get the money.”

    The two men met in February 2005 at Brown’s lavish apartment in Mayfair, London, rented for £49,000 a year.

    A company called Univest had already put in the first $10m of investments and this financed the first tranche of £100,000 which Brown gave to the Lib Dems.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/11/liberaldemocrats-ukcrime

    It would also be easy to get the impression from what Clegg said that Robert Mann’s investment in Brown’s company took place after the donation. That is not the case either.

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 4:08pm

    It’s also rather disturbing to hear Nick Clegg saying repeatedly that the party made all the necessary checks to make sure that Michael Brown was eligible to donate money to the party.

    Of course, the fact is that Michael Brown wasn’t eligible to be a party donor, which is why the donation had to be channelled through his company instead.

    This was hardly an ambush – Clegg must have known he would be asked about it. His presentational skills have certainly improved over the last 18 months. But his grasp of anything approaching detail is still woefully inadequate.

  • Hywel 21st Jun '09 - 5:50pm

    “There was a victim of a major crime telling the British public that he knows who has the money stolen from him, but they wont give it back….”

    He thinks he knows. In fact he can’t possibly know where his money ended up. If it was so easy to tell that Brown was a crook why did Mr Mann invest £5 million with him at about the same time as the party (he says) should have been identifying Brown as a crook.

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 6:47pm

    Hywel

    “He thinks he knows. In fact he can’t possibly know where his money ended up.”

    I don’t really see the point of that comment.

    You’re not in any doubt that the £2.4m was part of a larger sum that was obtained dishonestly from various people, are you? Would the rights and wrongs be any different if it had all neatly been stolen from just one person?

    “If it was so easy to tell that Brown was a crook why did Mr Mann invest £5 million with him at about the same time as the party (he says) should have been identifying Brown as a crook.”

    But the situations were scarcely comparable.

    There is nothing inherently suspicious about a businessman investing money on people’s behalf. It happens all the time.

    But how often does someone unknown to the party – someone who has never voted for it and isn’t even resident in the UK – offer it the biggest donation in its history, by a factor of ten?

    Do you really think the party shouldn’t at least have been able to discover that Brown’s company wasn’t really “carrying on business” in the UK?

  • Paul Griffiths 21st Jun '09 - 7:10pm

    The reason discussion of this issue tends to deteriorate into mutual incomprehension is that several distinct strands keep getting muddled. For example, the proven illegality of Brown’s fraudulent behaviour is confused with the alleged illegality of failing to make proper checks as to the permissibility of Brown’s donation. The two things are quite separate.

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 8:52pm

    Mark

    “Indeed, the Electoral Commission has looked into the checks the party made and not found anything to criticise in what was checked and how the checks were done.”

    Can you point me towards the source of that statement, please?

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 9:52pm

    You see, the only statement on that subject from the Electoral Commission that I can find was back in 2006, to the effect that it was “not re-opening the question of whether the party or its officers failed to carry out sufficient checks into the permissibility of the donations” but that if additional information came to light it would consider the matter further.

    Now I suppose that can be represented as its “not having found anything to criticise”. But to my mind it sounds much more like “not proven” than “not guilty”.

    Given that Michael Brown’s company had no website, no listed telephone number, no UK employees and no filed accounts, given that it operated from an accommodation address and that – though it was supposed to be a hedge fund – it wasn’t listed on the main database of hedge funds, it’s difficult to imagine any checks were carried out at all!

  • Malcolm Todd 21st Jun '09 - 9:55pm

    Herbert

    “There is nothing inherently suspicious about a businessman investing money on people’s behalf. It happens all the time.

    But how often does someone unknown to the party – someone who has never voted for it and isn’t even resident in the UK – offer it the biggest donation in its history, by a factor of ten?”

    So – you think the natural inference when a businessman unexpectedly gives the third party in British politics a huge donation is that they’re a crook? Um – what exactly do you imagine Brown thought he was going to get out of it?How does giving money to a non-governing party advance criminal aims? And if it doesn’t, why should it imply criminality?

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 10:28pm

    Malcolm
    “So – you think the natural inference when a businessman unexpectedly gives the third party in British politics a huge donation is that they’re a crook?”

    No, my point was that it was such an unusual occurrence that the party should have been alert to the possibility that something was wrong.

    And given that he was not himself an eligible donor, and given that it was such a stupendous amount of money, they should have made absolutely sure that the business through which the money was donated really was bona fide.

    I don’t suppose they had a clue that the money had been stolen, but it should have been extremely easy to find out enough about the company to cast grave doubts on the permissibility of the donation.

    Either they were unbelievably incompetent and didn’t get that far, or else they did get that far and decided to take the money and turn a blind eye to the warning signs.

  • Paul Griffiths 21st Jun '09 - 10:33pm

    HC: I suggest you are failing to appreciate the difference between these two propositions:

    A. The Party acted legally in accepting the donation from 5th Avenue Partners.

    B. The donation from 5th Avenue Partners was permissible.

    As the Act makes clear, it is possible for both A to be true and for B to be false. I regard the Electoral Commission’s statement of 27 October 2006 as saying that it regards A to be true, but reserves judgement on B. Others can read it for themselves and make up their own minds.

    You’ll note that at the end of its statement the EC said that it expected to rule on the permissibility of the donation “in the next few weeks”. Two and a half years later, we are still waiting.

  • Paul Griffiths 21st Jun '09 - 11:02pm

    Just to emphasise the point: the Party had 30 days to decide whether the donation was permissible. The Electoral Commission has had more than 30 months and still can’t seem to make up its mind.

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 11:15pm

    Paul
    “I suggest you are failing to appreciate the difference between these two propositions:”

    No, I appreciate the difference perfectly. Probably you just need to read my comments more carefully.

  • Paul Griffiths 21st Jun '09 - 11:21pm

    Yeah, that’s probably it.

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 11:27pm

    Paul
    “Just to emphasise the point: the Party had 30 days to decide whether the donation was permissible. The Electoral Commission has had more than 30 months and still can’t seem to make up its mind.”

    Well, the implication of that is that the party couldn’t possibly have satisfied itself that the donation was permissible before it accepted the money.

    Surely, in those circumstances, to accept £2.4m and immediately spend it, in the knowledge that it would have to be repaid if it turned out to have been impermissible, would have been grotesquely irresponsible?

    But to be quite honest I’m amazed that anyone is still in doubt as to whether Fifth Avenue Partners was genuinely carrying on business. What business do you think the company could have been carrying on?

  • Herbert Brown 21st Jun '09 - 11:48pm

    Mark

    Yes, I quoted that above. And Stephen did quote it previously. And of course, both of you very carefully missed out the following paragraph:

    “Nevertheless, we have always said that if any additional information that has a bearing on the permissibility of the donations comes to light, for example as a result of the ongoing police investigation or legal proceedings relating to the affairs of 5th Avenue, we would consider the matter further.”

    This is yet another exercise in “My Party, Right or Wrong” for you, isn’t it?

  • Paul Griffiths 21st Jun '09 - 11:58pm

    We may actually agree on this. I think the donation probably was impermissible.

  • Herbert Brown 22nd Jun '09 - 12:33am

    Paul

    Just out of interest, do you think the party suspected that that was the case, and turned a blind eye?

    I don’t mean did they suspect that the money had been stolen – I don’t believe that – I mean did they suspect that Fifth Avenue Partners was just a cipher.

  • Paul Griffiths 22nd Jun '09 - 12:50am

    No. I suspect that Michael Brown was very convincing, and the party was ready to be convinced. He is, after all, a con man.

  • Paul Griffiths 22nd Jun '09 - 1:07am

    Just to be clear, that’s not to say I think the party is beyond criticism. Even if party officers believed that the donation was permissible, they were still incautious in accepting it. But my censure is tempered by the knowledge that I wasn’t in the room, and I have the benefit of hindsight.

  • Hywel 22nd Jun '09 - 1:32am

    “But the situations were scarcely comparable.
    There is nothing inherently suspicious about a businessman investing money on people’s behalf. It happens all the time.”

    If someone invests £5 million on my behalf I would assume they had made some pretty thorough checks as to where the money was going.

    However in this case (AIUI) it was Mr Mann’s own money. I would expect a tax lawyer who has made north of £5 million would know a thing or two about investigating companies prior to investments.

    And if, as he seems to claim, Mr Mann donated this money to Brown just before the donation was made to the party it would be a piece of evidence in favour of Mr Brown “carrying on a business” (though I’ll admit it’s not clear on the “in the UK” aspect).

  • Hywel 22nd Jun '09 - 1:34am

    “I don’t suppose they had a clue that the money had been stolen, but it should have been extremely easy to find out enough about the company to cast grave doubts on the permissibility of the donation.”

    Again – if it was so easy how come Mr Mann (as I keep saying a US tax lawyer so hardly a naive investor) had no doubts before handing over £5 million of his own cash?

  • Herbert Brown 22nd Jun '09 - 8:42am

    Hywel

    Once again, I’m really not clear what point you’re trying to make with your continual references to Robert Mann.

    Remember that the issue of permissibility relates to whether Fifth Avenue Partners was genuinely carrying on business in the UK, or whether it was just a fictitious company that the Swiss-based Brown, who was not a permissible donor, used to channel some of his ill-gotten gains to the Lib Dems.

    I may have missed it, but I haven’t seen any indication that Mann’s donation had anything at all to do with Fifth Avenue Partners. If he didn’t have any dealings with the company, he could hardly be expected to have investigated it. Nor could it be evidence that Fifth Avenue Partners was carrying on business.

  • Herbert Brown 22nd Jun '09 - 8:43am

    Sorry, that should be “Mann’s investment” not “Mann’s donation” (!).

  • Hywel 22nd Jun '09 - 11:17am

    “Once again, I’m really not clear what point you’re trying to make with your continual references to Robert Mann.”

    I didn’t think it was that complex a point but I’ll try to summarise

    1) The issue of permissability solely hinges on whether Fifth Avenue Partners was carrying on business in the UK. There is nothing to suggest that a newly set up company can’t be “carrying on business” (hence the absence of accounts etc is a red herring)

    Therefore if you were making an assessment of whether this is the case you would rely largely on representations made by the company’s directors.

    2) Brown is pretty clearly an accomplished con-man. This is evidence by the fact (among others) that he got Mr Mann to invest £5 million with him.

    3) If he could con someone with quite a bit of experience of high finance, who had time and the reason for making much more stringent checks than required by PPERA then it’s not impossible that he was equally able to con the party.

    4) It isn’t actually that easy to establish whether a newly set up company is carrying on business other that through information from the principals concerned. As has been well rehearsed the Electoral Commission has held that the party undertook all reasaonable checks to comply with PPERA.

  • Herbert Brown 22nd Jun '09 - 12:07pm

    Hywel

    Thanks for that, but considering the point I’ve already made – that unless Mann’s investment was handled by Brown’s UK company he would have had no reason to investigate that company – I still don’t see the relevance of these references to him.

    It still baffles me that anyone could believe (1) that, considering what we now know, the company was genuinely carrying on business in the UK or (2) that even the most elementary checks – such as looking in the phone book or doing a Google search for its website – would not have alerted the party to the fact that something was wrong.

    But I can see what a difficult position the party is in, and I realise that in a sense party loyalists have to take this line, because it’s the only one available.

  • Hywel 22nd Jun '09 - 12:22pm

    “(1) that, considering what we now know, the company was genuinely carrying on business in the UK”

    Exactly. What we know NOW

    “or (2) that even the most elementary checks – such as looking in the phone book or doing a Google search for its website – would not have alerted the party to the fact that something was wrong.”

    Not necessarily wrong as neither are a requirement of carrying on business particularly if it is newly set up. What it should have led to is inquiries as to whether that enterprise was actually carrying on business. But those questions can only be answered by the company principal who, as is widely established, was able to con some pretty experienced people.

  • Herbert Brown 22nd Jun '09 - 12:53pm

    Hywel

    I’m afraid you are missing the point again. There are two separate issues here.

    One is whether the party should have been able to work out something was wrong.

    Your point of view seems to be that elementary checks would have alerted people in the party to the _possibility_ that something was wrong, but that their only recourse then was to ask Michael Brown whether the company was genuinely carrying on business.

    Frankly, I find that attitude amazing. If I were engaged in a business transaction that could leave me liable for the payment of millions of pounds – which was precisely the situation – and if I had doubts about the bona fides of the person I was dealing with, then I wouldn’t simply go and ask him whether he was what he appeared to be. I would ask _other_ people. If he claimed to be providing financial services, my next move after the phone book and Google would be to check whether he was registered with the FSA (which apparently 5th Avenue Partners wasn’t). I would ask around to see if people in the City had heard of him. Isn’t that simple common sense?

    The other issue is indeed whether the company was genuinely carrying on business. If it wasn’t, the donation was impermissible and – as I understand it – the normal course would be for the Electoral Commission to rule that the money should be forfeited, though that would be at its discretion. That’s a separate issue from whether the party did proper checks, though if it did that might influence the Commission in its exercise of discretion.

    Does anyone really believe, given what we know now, that 5th Avenue Partners was genuinely carrying on business in the UK?

  • Herbert Brown 22nd Jun '09 - 9:24pm

    Mark

    You are completely misrepresenting what the Commission said.

    Here is a link to the statement:
    http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/news-and-media/news-releases/electoral-commission-media-centre/news-releases-donations/statement-on-fifth-avenue-27.10.06

    (1) On the adequacy of the checks, the Commission said this:
    “It remains the Commissions view that the Liberal Democrats acted in good faith at that time, and the Commission is not re-opening the question of whether the party or its officers failed to carry out sufficient checks into the permissibility of the donations.
    Nevertheless, we have always said that if any additional information that has a bearing on the permissibility of the donations comes to light, for example as a result of the ongoing police investigation or legal proceedings relating to the affairs of 5th Avenue, we would consider the matter further.”

    The Commission did not say anything remotely resembling “the party did its checks properly, end of story”. They said that at that date they were not reopening the question of whether the checks were adequate, but that they might do if fresh evidence about the permissibility of the donation emerged.

    (2) On the question of permissibility itself, they said this:
    “We are considering the available evidence and expect to reach a decision on whether to apply for such an order in the next few weeks.”

    As far as I know, despite that expectation, the Electoral Commission has not yet reached a conclusion about the permissibility of the donation. If you know differently, by all means provide us with the evidence.

    But perhaps I can ask you a couple of questions. Do you not think the facts that this company – which had been registered nearly a year before – had no listed phone number, no website, no offices of its own, and no FSA registration, were clear signs that something was wrong?

    And are you really suggesting, in the light of everything we now know, that the company was carrying on a legitimate business in the UK? If so, I can only ask, as I asked above, what you suppose that business was.

  • Hywel 22nd Jun '09 - 10:00pm

    No your missing the point (I respectfully suggest etc 🙂

    “One is whether the party should have been able to work out something was wrong.”

    What I don’t conceded is that seeing that a company doesn’t have a website, phone book entry etc suggests something is wrong (eg I could set up a company for my self-employed business and would probably have neither)

    I wouldn’t (at least not in 2001) think that some was wrong – as in someone was operating illegally). However it wouldn’t have been clear that the company was actually carrying on business (which is the ONLY think that needed to be checked on).

    I found the electoral commissions guidance on what constitutes carrying on a business comprises today. They say that a single transaction can be sufficient if it is intended for their to be further transactions and this intention can be evidence by eg a business plan. Answering such questions really needs a conversation with the company principal. Asking around “in the city” won’t establish a lot where a company only has such a small record in business as few people will have heard of it.

    It is at this point that Brown’s proven record as a plausible con-man becomes highly relevant.

    AIUI the party took advice from the Electoral Commission about what information they needed to satisfy the “carrying on business” part of the relevant qualification

  • Hywel 22nd Jun '09 - 10:00pm

    I wouldn’t (at least not in 2001)

    I meant 2005

  • Herbert Brown 22nd Jun '09 - 10:04pm

    Mark

    “… their wording is about reopening if there is further evidence about “permissibility” not about checking.”

    Quite clearly, the matter that might be “considered further” was the question of whether the checks had been sufficient – which the previous sentence had said was not being reopened at that time.

    The possibility of “considering further” obviously didn’t refer to the question of permissibility itself, because that was already under active consideration, and was expected to be decided within a few weeks.

    But above all, the statement simply doesn’t say “the party did its checks properly”, as you claimed. It just says that the question of whether it did its checks properly wasn’t being reopened at that time.

    As you didn’t answer my questions, I’ll repeat the second one again. Are you really still arguing, in the light of everything we now know, that Fifth Avenue Partners Ltd was carrying on a legitimate business in the UK?

  • Herbert Brown 22nd Jun '09 - 10:18pm

    Hywel

    I think in reality you do realise that – while there would be nothing odd suspicious in a one-man window-cleaning business, for example, not having a website or a listed phone number or its own offices – there was something extremely suspicious about a company that was supposedly in a position to give a multi-million pound political donation not having any of those things.

    And in a way I think the discussion is in danger of completely parting company with reality. After all, everyone was already aware that this was effectively a way of legitimising a donation from someone who wasn’t eligible to give one personally. So it’s not as though the question of whether it was a bona fide company or just a “front” organisation wouldn’t already have been uppermost in their minds.

    But, as I said previously, I realise party loyalists have to find a way of justifying whjat happened, because they have no alternative.

  • Malcolm Todd 22nd Jun '09 - 11:06pm

    I don’t understand why it should be thought so improbable that a man who successfully cons millionaire investors out of their money was able to convince party officers that he was conducting a genuine business; and of course nobody believes now that his company was genuinely conducting business in the UK. That’s just irrelevant toth e question of whether the party acted properly in 2005.
    Should we have refused this donation then? Well, in an ideal world, yes. I don’t think political donations of this size should be legal regardless of their source. They distort democracy and push politics and politicians into the hands of the rich. But in a situation where both Labour and Tories are receiving enormous donations from individuals, companies, and trade unions, it’s entirely unreasonable to demand that we turn our backs on a rare gift-horse, even if it turns out to be less than thoroughbred.
    As for paying it “back” now, that’s just ridiculous. We simply can’t afford it, of course – everybody knows we can’t, and repeatedly demanding that we do is just using it as a stick to beat us with. It’s not a real argument.
    But in any case, there’s no moral case for doing it. If someone steals money from your wallet, then when you find out about it you can of course demand that they pay you back. But if you can’t get it back from the thief, do you then think you can go to the pub where he buys his beer, the supermarket where he buys his food, and so on, demanding that THEY “pay you back”, because the thief was really spending your money? Of course not. We didn’t rob anybody. Unless and until the Electoral Commission declares the donation unpermissible (which would in any case be a questionable declaration for it to make after such a long delay – justice delayed and all that), there is no claim against us, either in law or in ethics.

  • Herbert Brown 23rd Jun '09 - 12:13am

    Mark

    I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time to waste going round and round this for ever.

    The simple fact is that the Commission simply didn’t say “the party did its checks properly, end of story” as you claimed.

    On the contrary, as far as I have seen, they did not reach any conclusion about whether the party “failed to carry out sufficient checks”, but specifically left open the possibility that the question could be considered further if more evidence emerged.

    Now, I don’t suppose there’s any point at all trying to get you to answer my question, but I will try once more, and maybe it will be third time lucky:
    Are you really still arguing, in the light of everything we now know, that Fifth Avenue Partners Ltd was carrying on a legitimate business in the UK?

  • cogload 23rd Jun '09 - 6:58am

    And what we now know is frankly irrelevant.

  • Herbert Brown 23rd Jun '09 - 7:59am

    “And what we now know is frankly irrelevant.”

    How so?

    If we now know that the company was not really carrying on business, then we now know that the donation was impermissible. As I understand it, if the Electoral Commission decided that was the case, the normal course would be for it to rule that the money should be forfeited.

    I see Mark Littlewood reckons that if that happened, the federal party would have to be wound up and somehow started again from scratch.

    If I understand correctly, the Electoral Commission would have some discretion in the matter, and if it still thought the party acted in good faith and made adequate checks, presumably it might be merciful and not order the money to be forfeited.

    If you think you can safely rely on that happening, then all this is “frankly irrelevant”. Otherwise it’s very relevant indeed.

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