Conservatives taken to court over campaign spending details | Politics | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... commission

good ...

They'll get a slapped wrist and a nominal fine.

If they get found guilty the officials in question can end up in jail, and it wouldn't surprise me if one or two people got scapegoated, which will suck as I'm sure some constituency official didn't cook this scheme up on their own. The party as a whole could get a fine which they won't care about but they'll be much more bothered about the possibility of deselection of MPs.

Either way, it makes Cameron banging on about corruption in other places sound even more hypocritical than it already was.

The problem is that the rules are probably rather woolly

So you cant spend more than £100K on a local election

BUT

The National Party can spend what it likes. If I am having a NATIONAL recruitment drive and it just happens that the 100 strong team lead by a number of senior party figures (with a nicely emblazoned “Battle Bus” ) just happens to be in the constituency during the local election – well that’s just the way it is. After all we are not campaigning for the local election – ‘cos that bwould be illegal – we are just trying to recruit extra memebers so naturally we have to knock on lots of doors and tell the public what our policies are


Very hard to police

except that the money paid for the accommodation was paid via a private credit card and then claimed back after the fact from central office bypassing any accounting for that election area and then not declared on any party funding accounts for that or any party election area ...

How the party runs its expenses is up to them
They would say it does not need to be declared as it was nothing to do with the local election - it's pure coincidence that they were in them area during a local election

What is the Tory election expenses story and why isn't it bigger news? | Politics | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... n-expenses

No. Absolutely no. There are rules, designed to ensure a relatively fair campaign in any given seat. Every party must stick to those rules. The other parties apparently did stick to those rules. It is not up to them how they spend their money or how much money they spend. That is entirely the point.


They could probably say that if it was one or two constituencies. Over 20 is stretching the 'coincidence' line possibly beyond silliness.

In any case, they'll probably end up in court and they can then make an argument they want to to justify their actions and we'll see if the judge believes them.