The Electoral Commission has published its party donation data for Q4 2025. Reform dominated at £5,456,000 entirely in private donations, largely thanks to crypto investor Christopher Harborne handing the party a massive £3 million in November. The Tories, by comparison, took a total of £4,016,181, but only £2,401,452 of that was private donations while £1,614,729 came from public funds. Over 40% of their total….
Labour received a total of £1,975,660. The LibDems actually beat them, taking in a grand total of £2,063,312, albeit with £749,173 coming from public cash…
Read the full data below:
Continue reading “Reform Rakes in £5.4 Million as Crypto Boost Leaves Tories Trailing”
The Electoral Commission has fired a warning shot at Labour after the government after it wrote to 63 councils asking them if they wanted to delay their local elections for another year. 9 million people without a vote…
The quango said today:
“We are disappointed by both the timing and substance of the statement. Scheduled elections should as a rule go ahead as planned, and only be postponed in exceptional circumstances. We are concerned by the possibility of some council elections in May being postponed, and even more by any further postponement to those which already had been deferred from 2025…
As a matter of principle, we do not think that capacity constraints are a legitimate reason for delaying long planned elections. Extending existing mandates risks affecting the legitimacy of local decision making and damaging public confidence. There is a clear conflict of interest in asking existing Councils to decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters.”
Again – imagine if a right-of-centre government tried to do this…
The Electoral Commission’s explanation for letting off McSweeney is as follows:
“Under schedule 19B, paragraph 13(3) PPERA, a person who knowingly or recklessly provides false information in purported compliance with a requirement imposed under or by virtue of this Schedule, commits an offence.
We encourage all regulated entities to engage with us in an open and transparent manner, including during our investigation processes. This offence only applies where we have used our investigatory powers under Schedule 19B PPERA. Our investigation was conducted on a voluntary basis. This means we did not make use of these powers to compel compliance with any requirement imposed under or by virtue of Schedule 19B PPERA, including the use of any type of disclosure or investigation notice to compel information and explanation.”
So because the Electoral Commission was performing an ad hoc review there was no possibility of an offence for providing false information knowingly. Wonder who decided to go that way…
UPDATE: Kevin Hollinrake MP, Conservative Party Chairman, said:
“The Electoral Commission’s decision not to investigate McSweeney is wrong. The Commission must now publish all of their Morgan McSweeney Files to ensure the public has full transparency. It is clear that Morgan McSweeney deceived the Electoral Commission, but has dodged a criminal offence on a technicality. This loophole won’t wash. This is not over, we will continue to reveal more evidence, and continue to push for a full investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner into Keir Starmer.”
Kemi Badenoch has written in ConHome today announcing a review into the local elections results ten days ago, which saw the Tories lose 674 seats. After saying she is “deeply sorry to all the excellent Conservative councillors” she said the review will examine:
“The activities undertaken by the Party at both local and national level, our performance in the various geographical areas of the country, the involvement of the different stakeholders that comprise the Conservative Party family, such as the Professional, Voluntary and Parliamentary elements, and the ‘Candidate Journey’ – from recruitment and selection to declaration of results.”
Co-chairman Nigel Huddleston, shadow communities secretary Kevin Hollinrake and shadow crime minister Matt Vickers will lead the review, set to be done by the end of June. Kemi goes on to promise that the Tories will “rise again”:
“But we’ve been here before, and we’ve always come back stronger. I still remember the bad set of local elections in May 2019, swiftly followed by the European elections later that month where we polled just under 9 per cent. It felt like our time in government was over. Yet Boris pulled out a historic majority that same year.”
Might be a lengthy post-mortem…
The Starmers say they moved into Lord Alli’s £18 million penthouse in Soho on 29th May and ceased to use it on 13th July this year. They valued this period of use at a bargain £20,437.28. Starmer said this week:
“I promised him we would move somewhere, get out of the house and go somewhere where he could be peacefully studying”… “if you are putting to me Beth that I should have stayed in my Kentish Town home and disrupted my son’s GCSEs… then I think you should put that to me.”
This suggests Starmer was actively living in the penthouse for the entirety of the period – using it as his primary residence. This would have started just before nominations opened for the General Election on June 4th….
When in 2017 UKIP’s Paul Nuttall claimed on his nomination papers he lived at a house he hadn’t yet moved into, it was made clear that the address had to be the place where he was actually resident at the moment of nomination. Peter Stanyon, deputy chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said: “The general provision will clearly be that it needs to be a factual statement made at the point the nomination was being submitted.” Starmer’s nomination paper claims he was living at an address in Holborn and St. Pancras on that day. But we now know he was at Alli’s penthouse is in the Cities of London and Westminster…
Nuttall was investigated by police. He managed to prove to them that he used his house regularly as a “base” in the campaign for the 2017 Stoke By-Election. Starmer has accidentally admitted that he lived in a different property to the one on his declaration – did he campaign from his Kentish Town house? Downing Street will have to say so…
In addition, Starmer’s stated explanation for his use of the donated penthouse is that he needed the accommodation for his son’s exams. In itself this would mean it is not subject to Labour’s national general election campaign expense. But it would be if he held any campaign meetings there, used the property for campaign purposes or did campaign work there…
It could also shift into the local expense in his capacity as an MP. There is no declaration of the donation during a regulated election period on Starmer’s Electoral Commission entries. Starmer’s period of residence at Lord Alli’s therefore may have breached electoral law. Twice…
Red Wall Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash told GB News that Starmer should resign:
“I’m completely fed up about it, and I think it’s got to the point now where I genuinely think that, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, it’s not a case of if, it’s when.”
