One rule for the eurofederalists ...

In August 2007 UKIP was told to repay £18,481 of £367,697 in illegal donations by a judge after the Electoral Commission brought charges.

It was obvious at the time that UKIP was being unfairly targeted - the Electoral Commission used UKIP to test the law on donations that had been brought in following the fraud and corruption of the LibLabCon coalition even though the Tories and Lib Dems had been investigated for much larger and more dubious illegal donations around the same time. In other words, UKIP was made a scapegoat, most likely because they thought the party could be bankrupted by the legal action.

For those of you that don't remember the case in question, I wrote about it at the time on my own blog - click here, here and here.

The Electoral Commission said that it would appeal the decision and it has finally got permission from the High Court to appeal the case back to Westminster Magistrates Court. UKIP has no debts, increasing membership, a number of wealthy supporters and a projected vote-share in the upcoming EU elections that will give the LibLabCon coalition a run for its money. You'd have to be a real cynic to draw any conclusions about the timing ...