This morning Guido revealed Labour’s election battles buses had not been declared in local spending, the exact same trickery which engulfed the Tories in an election fraud scandal. Well, it appears to be widespread…

On April 4 2015, MPs and activists boarded a Labour Express battle bus to Pudsey in order to help the local campaign there. Labour was bussing activists – “troops” as they called them – to a key marginal seat to knock on doors. This should have been declared in the local campaign spend for the short campaign. As you can see below, it wasn’t…

The Labour Express battle bus visited Weaver Vale on January 24 2015, ferrying in a considerable number of canvassers:

Yet in the Weaver Vale long campaign spend, transport costs are nil:

This is really no different to what the Tories were doing. Transport costs for battle buses clearly used for local campaigning have not been declared in the local campaign spend. It’s not dissimilar to the expenses scandal – what was seen at first as party specific, was actually endemic…