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Cameron's Witney Conservatives: Blanket Coverage?
Hopi Sen has kindly re-worked a Tory statement on the Wendy Alexander donations to reflect the case of Dave Cameron who took four times as much from impermissible donors and having been caught out before the Labour story was broken by Tory researchers kept schtum in his two-faced condemnations of Alexander and others.
8 comments:
It's a right cock-up and a bit embarassing and the Witney Conservative Association deserve the flak. However, there are some very important differences between the Witney case and Wendy Alexander:
1. The impermissable donation to Wendy Alexander was to her personal campaign. David Cameron is not an officer of Witney Conservative Association and this story reflects on him only by association.
2. The real reason that the Alexander story had legs was not because she accepted an impermissible donation, but because she then lied about it afterwards. Not the crime, but the cover-up.
Now I'm sure it won't stop you jumping up and down on this gleefully, but whilst the Witney situation is embarassing and wrong, if you think it is in the same league as Labour's woes then you really are deluding yourself.
I'm afraid Ian Lindley's responses are comical - so Dave cannot even take responsibility for his own Constituency Party - oh well we better not trust him with the country. And what about the stinking hypocrisy of banging on about your opponents "mistakes" while knowing that similar mistakes had taken place in your own backyard.
Questions for Dave
- when did you know about the "mistakes" by your Constituency Association?
- why didn't you tell the Press about them straight away?
- what other "mistakes" by the Conservative Party are you aware of which are not yet in the public domain?
Good points TBNGU, and I think there is a chance that DC has lied about his impermisible donors by saying that his lot went and owned up, I have heard elsewhere that in fact the EC found the problem rather than Witney having done so ...
Also I'm not sure WA lied as such, just took er, a few months to cotton on ... like Dave's lot.
She said she'd never heard of the chap, despite having written him a personal thank-you letter...
That seems quite possible to me. The thank you letter was a form letter, not a personal letter. Scenario here.
Has Cameron stated whether or not he knew these Witney donors? The big one actually from Jersey too.
And has he changed his tune since remarks reported in today's Guardian suggesting his people did something proactively honourable rather than simply overdue compliance with an EC decision?
The exhaustive checking Tories have said is 100% standard clearly did not take place. So that was a fib too was it not?
People want parties, people want a government, well people are going to have to discuss party funding.
Indeed.
I've joined the fray! See here http://evanprice.blogspot.com/2007/12/witney-and-donations.html
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