Iain Dale: Tories Don't Obey Electoral Law Shocker

Iain Dale is shocked that Times Online should expose a Tory campaigning manual which recommends that local parties raise several times the official but scarcely enforced election expenses limit.

Actually Iain's right on one level. It is not much of a shock as it is completely legitimate - under current rules - for candidates to spend thousand upon thousand before the clock starts ticking on the election period, all parliamentary candidates get one free postage paid to everyone on the electoral register, and parties national adverts also aren't in the tally.

Tory candidates have been known to complain pretty robustly about the supposed £40,000 personal cost of competing as a Blue - win or lose - in a parliamentary campaign. This is ongoing and Dave/id is said to be considering some "grants" for means-tested poorer candidates.

Iain's piece somethingly conflates the limits for Westminster and for Local Govt Elections. For Westminster the limits were in the range between about £7,000 and about £11,000 I believe. But they should be more uniform after the boundary review. National spend and a certain amount of targeting of that - hoardings and so on - is not included in the constituency total. As the Times says the local limit for a council ward is around £1000.

My own belief is that all the major parties defending and attacking known marginals sometimes do overspend. And sometimes that overspending reaches massive levels.

In Manchester Withington the comrades were over confident and got beaten by Lib Dems thanks to their ferocious fibbing and to a further Tory collapse. But also thanks to a huge discrepancy in the amount of print produced and the amount of phone calls and targeted letters etc etc.

The Lib Dem expenses return showed a variety of different printers and some incredible items and non-items. Nothing for web. Next to nothing for post. Only £17 for 'phones. When they had three landlines in their HQ and loads of mobiles and they did a hell of a lot of phone work. They were deeply dishonest. But they are grafters. They were reported (not by me) but there has been no sign of any investigation or consequences.

Several members of the electorate went on record saying they had voted Lib Dem because they appeared to want it more because of the volume of different leaflets they produced. Labour spent to within £500 of the limit but were castigated by voters. The electorate seems to identify lots of leaflets with good campaigning rather than persistent illegality.

At Labour's Brighton Conference 2005, as well as having a bit part in Waltergate, I talked with the Electoral Commission. Did they monitor returns for patterns and follow up those which spent markedly different from the norm? The PR people said they would check and email me. But nothing came through. My idea was rather like analysis of MPs exes now being proposed.

My impression is that party managers from all three parties go easy on complaints against opponents as they ALL have skeletons in closets. I'd even go so far as to say that if the Labour folks in Withington had known how quickly their 8,000 majority was disappearing they might have spent a few pounds more.

The returns from the Tories in several constituencies up this way showed only the print cost. Nothing else at all. No stickers, labels, rosettes, posters, fuel, telephone, committee rooms, stationery, incidentals, just print. But obviously they lost and lost so badly that no-one much cared.