Thursday 29 July 2010

Sour Grapes Of The Week

From El Comm's press release on the judgment handed down today by the House of Lords Supreme Court:

Lisa Klein, Director of Party and Election Finance at the Electoral Commission, commented "Throughout this process, we have made clear that what we wanted to achieve was clarity about the way the law should be applied. Today’s Supreme Court judgement sets out how the rules on forfeiture apply to impermissible donations. The law on what an impermissible donation is has not changed."

From that, you'd never guess that the court found - very narrowly - in favour of the smaller political party which El Comm have been hounding mercilessly for the past four years or so. El Comm are acting as if they were no malice involved whatsoever and it was genuinely unclear to them what the law meant.

And, via UKIP Forum, The Judgment (pdf) and the Summary (pdf).

BBC write up here.

4 comments:

Umbongo said...

Is there no way to get the Electoral Commission (and Lisa Klein in particular) in front of a court for the blatant disregard of the same law where the LibDems accepted (and have still not paid back) a sum in excess of £2 million from a fraudster?

Mark Wadsworth said...

U, that was our first thought here at UKIP Head Office :-)

Bayard said...

U, the short answer is no, not now the Lib Dems are in government. The men in grey suits will make sure it doesn't happen.

Mark Wadsworth said...

U, B, I wonder how they will brush Zac Goldsmith's colossal overspend under the carpet - it's already bulging with the 5th Avenue Partners/Lib Dem crap that was brushed under it.