December 19th, 2007

Failure to Follow-Up

Guido has been busy Christmas shopping, spending his Clegg bets winnings, which were not as much as they should be because Guido reduced his exposure as the campaign progressed, or rather as Clegg’s campaign failed to progress.

Meantime in the red corner of Guido’s blog comments a number of posters are complaining that Guido has failed to follow up the scandal of Cameron’s Dodgy Donors. Yet more evidence that Guido is, yawn, a Tory toady.

There is a back story here. When the Abrahams scandal blew up Guido got an anonymous call from a posh voice who seemed to be intimately familiar with Tory fundraising processes. It was inconceivable, the source claimed, that if Labour were following procedures they would be unaware of Abrahams. The Tories themselves checked donations against monthly updated electoral rolls. They returned donations regularly which checks discovered failed to meet the criteria, all donations above £200 were checked, above £5,000 they were scrutinised and at £50,000 they got to know everything about them. Labour were simply not doing this checking and Guido should get on to the Electoral Commission to discover how many donations Labour returned in comparison to the Conservatives. Not enough it now seems.

The Tories are being disingenuous saying they voluntarily forfeited the £5,900 and £1,500 donations. They had no choice, the 30 day grace period to discover mistakes was up. Unless by “voluntarily” they mean “we didn’t want to continue breaking the law” they only did what they had to do.

It is extra embarrassing that it is Cameron’s own constituency association. Is it on a par with Peter Watt, the Labour Party’s national general secretary, being party to a proxy donor scheme to cover-up the party’s third biggest donor? Well, you judge for yourselves…




Lower Taxes, Higher Growth, the Statistical Evidence | CPS
Bash the Unions, Gatecrash the Quangos | ConservativeHome
I Told You So: Euro is Doomed | Douglas Carswell
PM Speaks for the Nation When Bashing Balls | Quentin Letts
Time for an Alliance | Dan Hannan
Farage’s Plan | ConservativeHome
Guardian Open News is a Failure | Heather Brooke
Balls Calls for Deeper Cuts | Speccie
Lessons from the Thirties | CPS
PMQs Idiots | Harry Cole
Jon Cruddas is Not the Messier | Dan Hodges
We Should Honour Victims | Bob Blackman
Bad Al Campbell Spinning for Portland | PR Week
HuffPo’s House Jihadi | Washington Free Beacon
Osborne Gets His Soundbite | Nick Robinson
Moonbat versus Chomsky | Charles Crawford

Previously Seen


Peter Botting



Lord Lamont told ITV News…

“I think the PM is just human and Ed Balls is a pretty irritating person”



AC1 says:

Gangsters keep their promises, unlike party manifestos.



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