Mrs May should drain the swamp to win public’s trust
Without sound rules to ensure fairness, we cannot have a system of democratic elections in our country that commands respect. The whole object of establishing the Electoral Commission and tightening the rules on foreign donations in 2001 was to do exactly that.
The Commission has presided over the explosion of postal voting and the fraud and intimidation that go with it. I have been nothing but scathing about the Commission, until today.
Something very important has changed. For many years it has been a known fact that during elections, certain parties have overspent their limits but got round it by claiming large amounts of expenditure were part of the national campaign.
This first came to my attention during a by-election in Newark in [June] 2014. The sheer size of the Conservative campaign astonished me. But that was nothing compared to the moment when Mark Reckless stood down as Conservative MP for Rochester and Strood and called a by-election [in November 2014]. The Tory campaign was on an industrial scale. It included not just vast amounts of overspending but without doubt, push polling conducted from the United States.
The Conservative campaign was illegal in every way and whilst Ukip won the by-election, the Tories’ underhand tactics did such damage to Mark’s reputation that it hurt his re-election efforts seven months later.
When I put my hat in the ring for Thanet South, I had expected to be up against a big Tory machine. However, it was around a month before the vote when a big poll came out, putting Ukip in the lead. The Conservative campaign went into overdrive.
One evening, I was dining in a Ramsgate restaurant when it became apparent that half of Conservative Campaign Headquarters had been relocated to South Thanet.
The man who has exposed all of this is Michael Crick [of Channel 4 News]. He established that tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of hotel bills were run up in the campaign without being declared and it now seems that the Electoral Commission has decided that a serious wrong has been done.
Indeed, £45,000 of the £70,000 fine paid by the Conservative party relates to those very by-elections in Newark, Clacton [in October 2014] and Rochester and Strood. But this goes all the way to No 10. Nick Timothy, seen by many as being the most important and influential member of Theresa May’s staff, was in the Thanet South constituency for much of the campaign, whilst actually being paid by the national party.
His claim he was there to undergo “research” for Mrs May as Home Secretary, to find out attitudes towards immigration, simply doesn’t wash.
Stephen Parkinson, another current operative from within No 10, also spent large amounts of time in Thanet South. This was before taking a big position in the Vote Leave campaign. Is it any wonder that Vote Leave didn’t want anything to do with me in the referendum when it was the same people using every tool at their disposal to prevent me winning just 12 months before?
There is a very dark shadow cast over the behaviour of the Conservative party. I believe that David Cameron and George Osborne simply thought they were above the law and none of this would ever catch up with them.
We now face the prospect of a large number of by-elections this year. This would do nothing other than drag the reputation of British politics into the mud. There is one simple solution. To draw a line under what has happened under the previous Conservative regime, and restore public confidence in our politics, Mrs May should get rid of all who were involved in the South Thanet campaign and call a general election, with the promise that the time has come to clean the stables.
As Donald Trump attempted to drain the swamp in Washington, the same thing should now happen in Westminster.
‘I believe David Cameron and George Osborne simply thought they were above the law’