Monday, November 19, 2007

Political Funding; Current Rules Favour Conservatives


Off-shore Dollar Billionaire Lord Ashcroft's claim that he is merely levelling the playing field with his slush funds has been rocked by an independent study. Carried out by Charles Pattie and Ron Johnston, geography professors at the universities of Sheffield and Bristol respectively, who found that donations outside the official election campaign period did "make a difference".

They also found that Tory incumbents were brokering substantial advantage from parliamentary allowances in the run up to elections, while Labour MPs were not.

Word Document: HERE. Hat tip: Peter Kenyon who continues attempts to Save the Labour Party.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting commentary by Charles Pattie and Rob Johnston ... if time permits I might even buy the book they are selling.

But; not sure that the more interesting thing about the report is not that the incumbent (usually Labour) doesn't appear to benefit from the similar expenditure in the marginal constituency.

Chris Paul said...

Buying the book should be a low-time activity in this day and age. Reading it and understanding it may however take longer.

I suspect that Lib Dems - like John Leech MP who is shameless in using tax payers money to boost candidates - are top of the tree on VFM from parliamentary reports etc.