Thomas Hardy fans will be familiar with the "Skimmington ride". This was the old practice whereby, when someone had affronted communal morality, a mob would gather outside the culprit's house to make a loud noise by banging pots and pans together while shouting abuse. Such an unlovely spectacle was the Skimmington conducted by Thursday evening's Question Time, happily diverting attention from several rather more important issues of the day, such as the suicide of the Royal Mail. These might even have included the fact that, for the first time in history, a British political party, rather more popular and respectable than the BNP, may have to close down, following a court ruling which threatens it with bankruptcy. A neat summary of some of the illogicalities behind the Appeal Court's ruling that the UK Independence Party, with 13 MEPs, must hand over £750,000 for a trivial breach of electoral law, was provided on his blog by the BBC's diligent political reporter Michael Crick. As "Case A", he described how, in 2005, Ukip received donations amounting to £363,607 from a bookmaker, Alan Bown. Mr Bown had a legitimate business and had for years been on the electoral register where he lives in Kent. But, due to an oversight, his name had not been included on the register for the year when he gave the money. In 2007, when the Electoral Commission tracked this down, a district judge ruled that Ukip should pay £18,000 as a penalty for failing to check whether Mr Bown's name was on the register. This was not good enough for the Commission, which appealed, demanding that all Mr Bown's donations must be confiscated. When the Appeal Court last week supported the Commission, this left Ukip with a legal bill amounting to £750,000 which it hasn't got, thus facing it with bankruptcy. Mr Crick then presented "Case B", concerning Michael Brown, whose donation of £2.4 million was the largest ever enjoyed by the Liberal Democrats. Mr Brown made his gift through a highly dodgy company called 5th Avenue Partners. In 2008, before being found guilty on £10 million fraud charges, he changed his name, grew a beard, he skipped bail and moved to Spain. The Electoral Commission, having investigated this murky story, found that the Lib Dems had accepted the donation in "good faith" (even though it came from a company built on fraud), and seems unwilling to take further action. The Political Parties, Elections & Referendums Act 2000, which the Electoral Commission was enforcing, was based on a report by the eminent lawyer Lord Neill of Bladen, whose concern, over donations, was that they should come from legitimate sources, not be anonymous, and should not be from people living abroad. In the cases of Bown and Brown, one was an honest Englishman, running a legitimate business whose only mistake was a minor error of paperwork; the other is a very shady character who, having been caught out running a business built on fraud, now lives anonymously abroad. On which party, asked Mr Crick, do we think the Electoral Commission came down like a ton of bricks? Apart from the Lib Dems, of course, no one will have rejoiced more at last week's verdict than the Conservative Party. One of the Tories' biggest fears, since Ukip came second in this year's Euro-elections with 2.5 million votes, has been that many otherwise natural Tories might be tempted to vote for Ukip again in next year's general election – not just as Euro-sceptics frustrated by Mr Cameron's weaselly line on the EU, but in protest against the degradation of all our main parties by the allowances scandals. If Ukip is forced out of play, many such voters will stay at home. The only electoral beneficiaries of the court's ruling could thus be the BNP, who, however disreputable themselves, might well win rather more protest votes against the squalid antics of our "political class" than they would have received otherwise.Ukip faces bankruptcy after Electoral Commission appeal
There is a startling contrast between the treatment of Ukip and the Lib Dems in cases involving party donations, says Christopher Booker
Sunday, 25 October 2009
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