Tories Braced for Charges Over South Thanet - Guido Fawkes
With this morning’s maximum fine and referral to police of the LibDems, which follows Labour’s maximum fine for expense irregularities, attention inevitably turns to the Tories’ spending. The focus will be South Thanet where the Tories ran a highly professional “Stop Farage” effort deploying some of their top operatives.
South Thanet misspending a not an Electoral Commission matter. It is a police matter and potentially a criminal offence under sections 81, 82 and 84 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. Back in June Craig Mackinlay, the Tory who beat Farage, failed to block police extending the time available for their investigation of his election expenses spending. The Tories – in a very rare move – tried to block the police from further investigating the campaign. Guido believes that the South Thanet campaign will prove to be the biggest overspend by any political party in any individual seat ever. Guido understands the Tories spent over £200,000 to stop Nigel Farage winning the seat…
He got the last laugh!
He's probably earned more than £200,000 in these last few months, plus all the money he creamed off the EU for being an MEP. He's not done badly for himself I guess. Still an odious toad though.
he's crying poverty in today's Telegraph exclusive and is happy about not having to have a pint withthe "low-grade people" of his party anymore
What a class act he is. Though I bet he drinks only the finest and most expensive whisky there is.
Looks like the poop is about to hit the fan -
Expenses mess: Pressure building on top Tories
There is apparently a lot more to this than the battle buses.
Tories fined £70k for expenses "mistakes" (covers 2014 byelections and the 2015 GE) -
Conservatives fined £70,000 over expenses by election watchdog
The EC would have fined the Tory Party more, but £70K is as far as they can go. 16 or 17 files have been passed to the CPS with more pending I believe. Claiming ignorance of the law won't wash here if it goes to court, as fraud laws will likely apply alongside the laws contained within the Representation Of The People Act. It also appears May's SPAD's have been caught up in the mess as well. Government about to implode or a scandal that won't live up to the hype. We shall soon find out.
I'm not far off it.
British politics really is at an all time low. We need the Brewsters Millions remake option at the next GE.
Well we need all of our Political Parties to stick to the rules when it comes to election spending.
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