Saturday, June 28, 2008

Iain Dale: Not Crowing Over Wendy Alexander



Iain Dale says he isn't going to crow at Wendy Alexander stepping down as Scottish Labour leader. This was of course a position she won in an uncontested internal party election, "helped" by ten donations of more than £520, perhaps £10,000 in all, which were, following advice from officials, not declared everywhere they should have been. And then, following different advice from different officials, were of course duly declared.

But The Daily Mail of all organs probably has the real explanation for Iain's reticence. Not to put too fine a point on it the Tories have at least unlucky 13 current sleaze stories to contend with. Every single one of them far worse than any error or carelessness from the mighty WA.

Similar mistakes have been made in a contested Tory Party leadership election by David Davis and Liam Fox at very least. With the former aided and abetted in that campaign by the positively saintly Derek Conway and very famously by, the paragon of funding declarations, Iain Dale himself. Someone who has been very fond of saying how exceedingly careful and 100% correct all that stuff was under his personal stewardship. Whoops! As Iain says ignorance is no excuse.

And of course more of the same and worse in the general run of political donations and undeclared interests by Alan Duncan, George Osborne, Phillip Hammond and at least eight other Tory front benchers.

Thanks to the greatest of these: Hammond, Osborne and Duncan; the average quantum of these folk's discrepancies is some 30 times as great as in Alexander's case. And their political interest far, far greater in most if not all cases.

In GOOey Osborne's case with some hilarious-if-it-wasn't-so-serious disingenuous cover up story concocted to explain how the Tory's would be Chancellor was funded to the tune of £500,000 by various high falluting city interests, without feeling that this was in any way a declarable interest. And we have some of Iain's commentators quibbling about exactly what advice was sought and given. Check Osborne's cock and bull story won't you?

And Oily Duncan is still making chuckling denials of accepting £158,000 to run his office from the boss of the rather sleazy oil business Vitol, never mind accepting an alleged remunerated Directorship of Arawak energy which the Vitol Group own some 40% of.

UPDATE 15:33: It is noticeable that The Mail are saying that Vitol ITSELF, based in the Netherlands, has given significant funding to Duncan. rather than mentioning the group CEO Alan Taylor who appears in the Tory CCHQ declarations for the £158,000.

Each of these thirteen Tories has a vestigial red ribbon on their coat hook in the members cloakroom on which to hang their swords. Let's hope they all bring them in at the next opportunity and fall on them in a collective act of hari kari on College Green.

Caroline Spelman MP could officiate before necklacing a string of outstandingly greedy Tory MEPs and ducking a tribe of Conways into the Thames to see if they drown as they should, being complete innocents and all.

She can then be handed a length of stout rope, a 'useful knots' chart from Scouting for Boys, and a step ladder ... and pointed at a stout Oak Tree.

FOOTNOTE: How the BBC exclusively broke the story, including video of resignation announcement live on BBC. Amazingly Guido had not commented at all until 2:11 when he posted this guff here. As LOL Graphics were finally pulling their finger out.

Of course all the Tory Boy Bloggers missed the rather good "No More Donations" story of the time. LOL gave it to one outpost of the MSM. And will be pleased to receive credits of both kinds if others now pick it up.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a great pity that you're such a useless leftie.

That queer icon of politics, Iain Dale, has done this sanctimonious piece of drivel on Wendy Alexander.

But when he's challenged on the position of Caroline Spelman - whose fraud is more heinous than that of WM - he pleads "it's a girl's prerogative".

Politics shouldn't have the morality of a elderly queen's knocking shop, especially if the individual has served time working for David Davies and doesn't think he's a complete prat.

The Labour Party has been handed a dildo to beat the fuck out of Cameron.

Get to it.

Chris Paul said...

I rather think that's what I'm doing anon. It is not just Spelman. There's loads of them.

Anonymous said...

Chris. I could have sworn the Mail was running an Oborne article re the Tories, sleaze and Cameron this morning. It's disappeared now, and I can't find it. Am I mistaken? If not, have you got it to share?

Anonymous said...

Chris. My inquiry re Oborne's article in the Mail? Just read a comment on ConHome that Duncan threatened to sue Oborne this morning! Oooops.

Anonymous said...

Mohammed Sarwar
Wendy Alexander
Peter Hain
Roger Liddle
David Abrahams
Paul Drayson
Ed Balls
Yvette Cooper
Richard Desmond
Bernie Ecclestone
Simon Danczuk
Peter Watt
Jon Mendelsohn
David Marshall
Henry McLeish
John Prescott
Miranda Grell
Bob Wareing
Keith Vaz
Ann Keen
Phil Hope
Alan Keen
Michael Levy

Chris Paul said...

Thanks anonymous 13:08 ... though it must be siad that this is a rather curious list of yours. Simon Danczuk? You are going to explain that one aren't you? Preferably using your own name for once. As I do when I make my point.

There are a good number of other incongruous names on your list also. Every one of mine is either a parliamentarian or an ex-, barring Iain Dale who is not guilty of anything except falling in with derek Conway and David Davis.

Chris Paul said...

Re the Mail story. This was not taken down until at least late afternoon as I kept checking it was there. My update about it was posted at 15:33 at which point it had probably been up for 15 hours or so.

It has no Google cache as the cleaners have been in. I wouldn't be sharing a cache of it myself on here as I don't have any evidence to support Oborne's allegation that vitol itself rather than their President and chief executive supported his office costs via CCHQ.

As seen in the blog post.

Presumably Vitol Group do trade in the UK and would not in any case be an ineligible donor for non travel costs.

I suspect that Oborne and The Mail have done this entirely on purpose, do have some evidence, would welcome legal proceedings.

But that is pure speculation on my part.

The words used by Oborne stuck out like a sore thumb to any careful person following this story.

I hope I've caught any early carelessness on my own blog from early doors over Vitol vs Taylor.

The only evidence we have is that Taylor gave £158,000 to the Tories that he insists was passported through to Oily Duncan. And that Vitol own 40% of arawak and that Duncan appears to have a currently undeclared directorship with the latter.

Anonymous said...

You just want the 'A' list then?

Alan Johnson
Alan Milburn
Baron Sainsbury of Turville
David Blunkett
David Marshall
Geoffrey Robinson
Harriet Harman
Henry McLeish
Jack Cunningham
John Prescott
John Prescott (again)
John Prescott (again again)
John Reid
Keith Vaz
Lord Bhattacharyya
Lord Foolkes
Lord Goldsmith
Lord Hamlyn
Lord Irvine
Lord Levy
Lord Paul
Lord Watson
Michael Martin
Paul Drayson
Peter Hain
Peter Mandelson
Peter Mandelson (again)
Stephen Byers
Tessa Jowell
Tony Blair
Wendy Alexander


Of course, if you were to extend the list to include all those that had either paid or been asked to pay to become parliamentarians ....

Chris Paul said...

Can you not read anon? I asked you for two things.

1. And explanation for inclusion of the Labour PPC in Rochdale. Rather gives the game away wouldn't you say?

2. For you to use you own name if you are going to make allegations.

You have scored 0%. And neither of the lists you provide are comparable with the majority of the Tory sleazesters on my little list.

Have people just come to accept Tory sleaze so much that Hammond (£2.7M undeclared); Osborne (£500,000 undeclared); Duncan (£158,000 and a big job undeclared) can just shrug and say "We're Tories, what do you expect"?

Anonymous said...

Exactly what allegations have been made?

You seem to have drawn sinister conclusions from a simple random list.

tory boys never grow up said...

This is the one I'm expecting to see a lot more of soon.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/30/cchedge230.xml

There have been quite a lot of hedge fund managers giving donation to the Conservatives - many of whom are close to Cameron. Today's article by Will Hutton in the Observer demonstrates amply how hedge funds are currently supoorting our economic interests.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/29/investmentfunds.creditcrunch

Anonymous said...

Dr Sushil Wadhwani
Jon Aisbitt
Stefanos Stefanou
Gilad Hayeem
Sir Ronald Cohen
Sir Trevor Chinn

Chris Paul said...

PS: Pentagon and Lewis Chester certainly are likely to form a splendid story any time soon. I have a little dossier building up since your last mention a couple of weeks ago TBNGU.

Chris Paul said...

Anon 18:00: A random list?

Do behave. Keep them "random lists" coming anyway. Always exciting to have a mystery pen pal, albeit mr anon eunochio.

These two comments have managed to appear in reverse order which is a good trick.

Anonymous said...

Imran Khand
David Abrahams
Willie Nagel
The Progressive Policy Forum
Willie Haughley
Wasseem Siddiqui
Paul Green
David Mills
Bernie Ecclestone
Un David
Moir Lockhead

Anonymous said...

Miranda Grell
Alan Prescott
Brian Day
Charlie Preston
David Jobes
David Spooner
Denis Jones
Derek Hughes
Garvin Reed
Gordon Jones
Jack Meredith
Mohammed Choudhary
Len Dyson
Jean Elwick
John Walker
John Winstanley
Ken Brookman
Jack Riley
Martin Locklyn
Muhammed Hussain
Louise Downham
Malcolm Glover
Maqbool Hussein
Mark Tann
Mick Collins
Tony Page
Edward McEvilly
Michael Farrington
Terry Sellars
Michael McAteer
Tariq Mahmood
Peter Tuffley
Mike Watson
Simon Harris
Nicholas Green
Norman Fisher
Pat Mullaney
Peter Welsh
Raymond Stockhill
Roland Cox
Mazhar Raja
Steve Judge
Doug Haw

Well, you did ask!

Anonymous said...

Brian Wilson
Jack MacConnell
Stephen Byers
Ken MacIntosh
Alan Meale
Nigel Griffiths
Lord Ali
Derek Conway