Although the SNP will be relieved to have finally contracted some new auditors this morning, they’re not out of the woods just yet. AMS Group Accountants will still need to sign off on the SNP’s books by the end of their month and based on the bean counters’ own record with this it’s by no means a sure thing. AMS’s confirmation statement was due on April 11^th. It was filed today…

The eventual resolution to the SNP’s arduous struggle to appoint an accountant may have been given a helping hand by the fact AMS has long been involved with politics. They currently handle the books for Baroness Warsi’s charity and have previously donated to politicians. Another company belonging to AMS director, Ebrahim Sedat, donated £2,500 to Chuka Umunna, whilst AMS themselves gave £5,000 to Nick Clegg. They seem to like political clients…

Despite this, AMS are by no means experts in political finance – the company specialises in medical accountancy. If AMS can’t make something out of Murrell’s mess, at least the SNP are prepared for all eventualities. AMS already has a  subsidary set up to deal with insolvencies.

The Liberal Democrats have today released their latest PR stunt – a creative A-Z list of Conservative sleaze and scandal. So, Guido has taken the opportunity to provide a bit of balance to the debate by compiling one for the Lib Dems. Strap in…

• A is for Arson: When Nick Clegg admitted he wasn’t proud of setting fire to a German cactus collection in the 80s.
• B is for Boris death threats. In 2019 a Lib Dem candidate was axed for calling for Tory ministers to be hanged.
• C is for Cyril Smith: the self-confessed paedophile.
• D is for Davey’s dodgy tax returns.
• E is for Expenses. This extends from Nick Clegg’s £1,400 gardening costs to lavish second home refurbishments.
• F is for Forgery. In 2019 their head of press, Rosy Cobb, was suspended for forgery.
• G is for GDPR Breach. In 2018 the party launched an “urgent investigation” after they exposed the personal information of Lewisham voters.
• H is for Hinkley Point. In 2017, the National Audit Office blasted Ed Davey’s “risky and expensive” Hinkley Point deal.
• I is for Internal Polling Breaches. The Lib Dems briefed internal polling based on postal votes – despite electoral rules against it.
• J is for Jeremy Thorpe. Co-conspirators will of course be familiar with this case. The former Lib Dem leader was tried for conspiracy to murder and has the blood of great dane Rinka on his hands.
• K is for Khalid Fezan. The most recent addition to this list, Fezan is Guido’s “cocktail of hatred” candidate, suspended ahead of upcoming local elections.
• L is for Laws. David Laws resigned from cabinet over expenses after “a series of serious breaches of the rules, over a considerable period of time”.
• M is for Michael Brown: the pin-striped donor who stole millions for the Lib Dems.
• N is for Nick named in Bribery case. Nick Clegg was recently named “inadvertently“ in an OnlyFans bribery scheme case implicating Meta execs.
• O is for Oaten. Mark Oaten resigned from the Lib Dem front bench in 2006 when he was exposed for having a threesome with rent boys. The News of the World described one of his requests as “too revolting to describe”.
• P is for Paddy Pantsdown. The former leader famously had an affair with secretary Patricia Howard.
• Q is for Quizzed by Police. In 2018 the Met said Sarah Olney committed a criminal offence over election spending.
• R is for Rennard: the Lib Dems’ answer to Harvey Weinstein.
• R is also for Rinka the dog. Killed as a result of Jeremy Thorpe’s lovers tiff.
• S is for Steel. Former leader David Steel was forced to retire from public life over his cover-up of Cyril Smith’s paedophilia.
• T is for Tuition fees. No explanation needed.
• U is for Undeclared spending.
• V is for Vicky Pryce, wife of Chris Huhne. In 2013 both were sentenced to jail for perverting the court of justice, after she took speeding points for the former Lib Dem Energy Secretary.
• W is for Welsh Wizard. Like all Liberals, David Lloyd-George wasn’t without his scandals. The Liberal Prime Minister awarded cash for honours and was implicated in the Marconi scandal.
• X is for X-rated antisemite. In 2022, Guido revealed a Lib Dem candidate was a porn star. She was then suspended for antisemitism.
• Y is for Young Lib Dem’s Wetherspoons Meltdown. In 2018, activists clashed after some young liberals compared visiting Spoons to supporting apartheid.
• Z is for Zoot. On the campaign trail in 2019, Jo Swinson admitted: I inhaled, and I liked it.

There is enough scandal material over the years to do the alphabet twice over…

Unlike Elon’s Twitter, Facebook has no such love of free speech. Today the Spectator attempted its usual practice of running their latest front cover as an advert. This week’s cover takes a light-hearted pop at Joe Biden; captioned “Six more years” it has an elderly President holding up five fingers. Pretty mild by The Speccie’s standards…

Facebook has, however, decided to block the advert. Even on an appeal, on the basis they’re a political magazine, the social media site rejected the advert.

As editor Fraser Nelson points out, it appears that splashes aimed at Trump, Boris and Truss – to name just a few – are fine. Biden appears to be a protected character. Unfortunately for the Spectator, the recent Steerpike article entitled ‘The tragic embarrassment of Sir Nick Clegg’ won’t help their cause…

Following his successful mission from 2010-17 to remove politics from his own day-to-day life, Nick Clegg is now promising to depoliticise Facebook. US conservatives are convinced that Facebook has a liberal bias and it is invariably their content which is suppressed. Speaking on US media yesterday morning, Clegg promised that the social media site’s content will be reformed so users see “more friends, less politics” in order to “reduce the presence of politics on people’s Facebook experiences”.  Given he has little interaction with either these days, Clegg’s home feed is set to become quite barren…

Labour is today using the racist social media abuse being targeted at England players to push their proposed social media free speech clampdown. Today shadow culture secretary Jo Stevens told Times Radio Labour wants to put an end to self-regulation and instead have the state dictate social media platforms’ content rules. Stevens also calls for “criminal sanctions for senior executives” for repeated offences “because that’s the only way we will get them to change their behaviour about how they run their companies”. A long way from the days of “I agree with Nick”…

Labour’s proposals go much further than even the government’s extreme anti-free speech Online Harms Bill proposal, which at the moment only has criminal sanction provisions for if a tech executive fails to comply with an Ofcom request for information. The social media abuse against the likes of Rashford, Sancho and Saka is unforgivable, however calls to censor the entire internet as a response are absurdly disproportionate…

If there were ever a sign of the LibDems’ increasing irrelevance, figures released by the electoral commission today revealed Laurence Fox single-handedly raised almost as much as the entire LibDems in the first quarter one of 2021. Total returns revealed Fox’s Reclaim party brought in £1.53 million, versus the LibDems’ £1.28 million. Fox’s incoming was exclusively from 18 individual donations by Jeremy Hosking…

Unsurprisingly, even Nick Clegg couldn’t turn the LibDems’ fundraising efforts around. The former deputy prime minister resumed donating to his former party, for the first time since the 2019 general election. Electoral Commission records show their former leader gave £5,000 to his old branch in Sheffield, and £10,000 to the Scottish LibDem branch. Guido would have thought his Facebook wage would allow him to be more generous…