I have a bit of question for the Tory Party’s Deputy Chairman, Lord Ashcroft, who ships up in today’s Torygraph with the following claim:
Two popular misconceptions have arisen about the Tory target seats operation…
…The second is that I give money directly to Conservative candidates or constituency associations in target seats. This is also untrue. All contributions, including my own, are given to the party’s central fund. Candidates are invited to submit campaign proposals to a committee at Conservative Campaign HQ which I chair in my capacity as the party’s deputy chairman with responsibility for field campaigning.
The committee – which also includes the party chairman, Caroline Spelman, professional party staff and senior volunteers – assesses each proposal and allocates funds to those we judge most likely to be successful. Candidates who receive funding provide regular updates to the team at CCHQ, which offers advice and expertise and ensures that the party receives the best possible return on its investment.
If that is true, then perhaps Lord Ashcroft would like to explain why, of the £565,374 donated to the Conservative Party by Bearwood Corporate Services Ltd over the last two years (Q2 2005- Q2 2007) – BCS is known to be Ashcroft’s main vehicle for padding Tory coffers – only £212,163.50 is actually recorded by the Electoral Commission as having gone to Conservative Central Office?
The balance of these funds – £353,210.50 – is recorded by the Electoral Commission as having found its way in Tory coffers by way of a total of 56 individual donations given directly to Conservative Associations (including one case of a donation to a Federated body, Milton Keynes, covering two constituencies).
Surely, if you have been following the process you describe, then all these small donations should be recorded as having gone directly to Conservative Central Office and not to the individual constituencies in question – shouldn’t they?
For the record, the list of Constituencies who have received funds directly from Bearwood Corporate Services Ltd over the last two year is as follows:
|
Constituency |
Held By |
Majority |
Amount |
|
Haltemprice & Howden |
Conservative |
5116 |
£30,000.00 |
|
Teignbridge |
Lib Dem |
6215 |
£25,000.00 |
|
South Dorset |
Labour |
1812 |
£21,982.96 |
|
Gravesham |
Conservative |
654 |
£18,426.83 |
|
Hereford |
Lib Dem |
962 |
£15,194.35 |
|
Welwyn Hatfield |
Conservative |
5946 |
£15,000.00 |
|
Keighley |
Labour |
4852 |
£14,842.57 |
|
Cheltenham |
Lib Dem |
2303 |
£14,832.49 |
|
Milton Keynes Federation (NW&SE) |
Labour Conservative |
4010 1665 |
£10,258.66 |
|
Clwyd West |
Conservative |
133 |
£10,000.00 |
|
Croydon Central |
Conservative |
75 |
£10,000.00 |
|
Maidenhead |
Conservative |
6231 |
£10,000.00 |
|
Enfield North |
Labour |
1920 |
£9,176.24 |
|
Braintree |
Conservative |
3893 |
£8,674.08 |
|
Cardiff North |
Labour |
1146 |
£8,000.00 |
|
Warwick & Leamington |
Labour |
266 |
£7,320.00 |
|
Ilford North |
Conservative |
1653 |
£6,746.87 |
|
Hornchurch |
Conservative |
480 |
£5,414.17 |
|
Torridge & West Devon |
Conservative |
3236 |
£5,313.35 |
|
Putney |
Conservative |
1766 |
£5,300.00 |
|
Tamworth |
Labour |
2569 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Brighton Kemptown |
Labour |
2737 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Cities of London & Westminster |
Conservative |
8095 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Harrow West |
Labour |
2028 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Redcar |
Labour |
12116 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Watford |
Labour |
1148 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Clwyd West |
Conservative |
5946 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Gedling |
Labour |
3811 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Dewsbury |
Labour |
4615 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Eastbourne |
Conservative |
1124 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Torbay |
Lib Dem |
2029 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Vale of Glamorgan |
Labour |
1808 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Warrington South |
Labour |
3515 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Faversham & Mid Kent |
Conservative |
8720 |
£5,000.00 |
|
Eastleigh |
Lib Dem |
568 |
£4,989.31 |
|
Colne Valley |
Labour |
1501 |
£4,599.00 |
|
Orpington |
Conservative |
4947 |
£3,904.45 |
|
Taunton |
Lib Dem |
573 |
£3,500.00 |
|
Mid Dorset & North Poole |
Lib Dem |
5482 |
£3,000.00 |
|
Gillingham |
Labour |
254 |
£2,500.00 |
|
Shipley |
Conservative |
422 |
£2,093.93 |
|
Kensington & Chelsea |
Conservative |
12418 |
£2,022.58 |
|
Medway |
Labour |
213 |
£1,500.00 |
|
Bedford |
Labour |
3383 |
£1,498.00 |
|
Peterborough |
Conservative |
2740 |
£1,100.00 |
|
Ilford South |
Labour |
9228 |
£1,020.97 |
Interesting post – but I don’t see the list of constituencies in either of my browsers. Any chance of a link?
If we had a list of the favoured Constituencies then local campaigning on the “buying Votes” lines might well be a fruitfull line of attack.
GW
Bugger, will sort the list out…
Sorry, it’s a glitch in the WordPress editor that sometimes screws up tables.
Fixed it – list now sorted out properly.
Well done Unity – thank you.
It occurs to me that it would be very useful indeed if there were a source of this kind of info that we could refer to. As GW says above we (by which I mean the Roughly Left) often want to counter-attack, in local papers, on the Web, up the pub etc, but need a source that a) we can trust and b) opponents will have to give a good reason for dissing. “One reads in the Grauniad” is to invite ridicule, “but on ministryoftruth it says” obviously carries greater weight, but even better would be “the Electoral Commission says … and if that aint true somebody’s in big bother”.
There must be lots of info on the Web, from non party-political sources, that could be used to support leftish-liberalish viewpoints on taxation, immigration, the Eu and so on that clever people like you guys no about and is freely available – but takes a long time to find.
Just a thought.
And thanks again for this bit.
Aaaaaaaaagh! No! No! Not that! Not the “no” for “know”. No!
… I know, I know … O.
Thank Unity – When I see what the “vermin” (Copyright Nye Bevan) are spending I think ther are grounds to be concerned, and equally grounds to consider legislation.
One person who should be very worried is Cameron, ‘Cos look where the biggest sums are going – David Davies for PM anybody ?
Pete:
The source of this info is the Electoral Commission – if you poke around their website in the regulatory section you’ll find an excel spreadsheet showing all donations to political parties from 2001 to, currently, Q2 2007.
All I’ve done is extract the relevant data from the spreadsheet.