Compare and contrast

The Electoral Commission on the Lib Dems and that £2.4m donation from Michael Brown:

“The Electoral Commission has previously made clear its view that it was reasonable for the Liberal Democrats - based on the information available to them at the time - to regard the donations they received from 5th Avenue Partners Ltd in 2005, totalling just over £2.4m, as permissible.

“It remains the Commission’s view that the Liberal Democrats acted in good faith at that time, and the Commission is not re-opening the question of whether the party or its officers failed to carry out sufficient checks into the permissibility of the donations.”

The House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges on David Cameron’s use of his taxpayer-funded Commons office for Tory Party fundraising:

33. The lack of a specific rule saying that Members' offices, provided at public expense for Parliamentary purposes, cannot be used for party political fundraising needs to be seen in the context of the overarching principle that offices and facilities on the Parliamentary estate are provided to enable Members to carry out their Parliamentary duties, that is, to facilitate the discharge by them of the duties and functions of the office of Member of Parliament. This principle is, I submit, clear…

39. […] The fundraising purpose of [David Cameron’s] Leader's Group is clear from the promotional literature circulated at the Conservative City Circle, and the incentives offered to prospective members specifically include the opportunity to meet the Leader "in his office after Prime Minister's Questions". Furthermore, it is clear that this benefit has been taken up by Group members on a number of occasions. In my submission the Parliamentary estate is not provided out of the public purse to be used as part of a device to attract party fundraising and the suggestion that it is so being used is not one likely to enhance the public reputation of the House.

42. While there is no reason in principle, I submit, why Mr Cameron cannot meet, in his office or elsewhere in the Parliamentary estate, those who donate to his party, what neither he nor his Party (nor indeed any other Member or party) can properly do is employ their Parliamentary office as part of a party fundraising stratagem. In my view, that is, on the facts, precisely what happened in this case. I therefore recommend that [Lib Dem MP] Mr Baker's complaint be upheld.

It’s only fair to point these things out…

Give it a rest, guys

The determination of The Times to stick one on the Lib Dems for accepting that donation from Michael Brown knows no bounds.

Despite repeated smear and innuendo - craftily spun to try and make the Lib Dems look as guilty as the debt-ridden, peerage-touting Labour and Tory parties - no one has yet been able to gainsay the Electoral Commission’s findings that the party followed proper procedures and acted in good faith.

Maybe we were naïve, maybe even a bit stupid, to accept his largesse. That’s a long, long way from being corrupt.

But, bless ‘em, The Times isn’t going to let it lie - to which end their journalists, in this case their chief political correspondent Anthony Browne, are quite happy to stoop to white lies. Here’s the opening paragraph of his piece in today’s Times:

The Liberal Democrats are facing a new threat of financial meltdown after the Government’s Asset Recovery Agency was called on to investigate the £2.4 million donated by the jailed millionaire Michael Brown.

To which my reaction on first reading was: gulp. It looks like I and others should get ready to write the party a cheque to make good the shortfall.

But then I read on to the final paragraph:

Sources at the agency suggest that it is unlikely to begin an immediate investigation. It would try to recover the money itself only if the police fail to secure a prosecution. Even if the agency does act to confiscate the money, it would try to reclaim the gift from Mr Brown himself.

So there you have it… The Tories have complained about the Lib Dems to a government agency, and their complaint has been swatted aside as irrelevant.

A total non-story.

Just a Tory party press release that found house-room in a sensationalist Daily Mail-style rag which once dared to call itself a paper of record.