New rules covering election expenses come into force in January aimed at depriving smaller parties of publicity.
The new rules mean that any activity that would normally have to be declared as an election expense will be backdated six months from the date of an election, even if there was no reasonable expectation of an election in that six month period. Receipts must be provided and the spending limit for the election will be backdated for the six months.
This benefits the LibLabCon immensely because the only way smaller parties will ever effectively challenge the LibLabCon is with publicity. The media generally ignores smaller parties in favour of the LibLabCon so smaller parties have to rely on leaflets, newsletters and public meetings to get their name about. And because smaller parties have proportionately more activists willing to get off their backsides than the LibLabCon, you are much more likely to get a UKIP leaflet through your door than one for the LibLabCon.
The upshot of all this is that a party could go out and deliver 10,000 leaflets and hold a public meeting in January and find that they've spent more than they're allowed for an election campaign and can't stand a candidate. Without regular leafleting campaigns, smaller parties like UKIP will suffer at the ballot box in a way that the LibLabCon never will because they just don't need the publicity. The system is deliberately skewed in the favour of the LibLabCon and today's announcement that the BBC, Sky and ITV will hold a "leaders debate" for Comrade Brown, Comrade Camoron and that bloke who leads the Lib Dims* in the run-up to the general election gives the LibLabCon even more of an advantage.
Forcing parties to scale back their campaigning between elections will harm the prospects of everyone but the LibLabCon. It's a stitch-up.
* I know who it is
Monday, 21 December 2009
PPC's Beware: Another LibLabCon Stitch-up
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About the author:
Stuart Parr is a UKIP parish councillor for the Brookside ward in Telford & Wrekin and the founder and administrator of Bloggers4UKIP.
Stuart writes a personal blog Wonko's World and tweets as @wonkotsane.
Stuart Parr is a UKIP parish councillor for the Brookside ward in Telford & Wrekin and the founder and administrator of Bloggers4UKIP.Stuart writes a personal blog Wonko's World and tweets as @wonkotsane.
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5 comments:
Wonderful. They change the election rules to keep themselves in the running and we, the electorate, who might not want them, don't even get a say.
We'll all have to become more active and use our own resources, where possible.
Most importantly, we need to tell all supporters about this as quickly as possible so that they can mobilise others.
This is related to the feature below i think.
Meanwhile sitting MPs get a £10000communications allowance.
This is to allow them to communicate with their electorate.
It is not strictly allowed to be used for electioneering.
But it is an advantage that is not available to any UKIP candidates.
All the laws have been changed to keep UKIP out of parliament.
The Lib/Lab/Con are afraid of UKIP and will do anything to damage our electoral prospects.
The debates between the big three party leaders at the time of the next General Election is going to hurt UKIP, because we are being deliberately shut out.
This yet further proof that our Westminster Parliament is totally corrupt.
We might be able to turn this further evidence of corruption to our advantage.
The big three are too frightened of UKIP to let us join the debate even though we came second in the Euro Elections.
I believe that there may be grounds to challenge this in the courts, however, I would first wish the Government to state under what statutory authority they attempt to justify this change.
If this is a decision of the Electoral Commission, which has already proved itself to be biased, then it is possible that this could be subject to judicial review.
However, in any event we should try to publicise this as widely as possible, since the oppression of minority parties is always newsworthy and an embarrassment to the major parties.
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