Court of Appeal rules in favour of Electoral Commission

As reported in the media today, the Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the corrupt Electoral Commission and ordered Westminster Magistrates Court to change its ruling that UKIP only has to forfeit £18,481 of the £363,697 in impermissible donations received from Alan Bown.

The donations were found to be impermissible because Alan Bown was mysteriously removed from the electoral register without his knowledge and only put back on when he found that he wasn't on the register. Under a law designed to prevent foreigners from donating to UK political parties, donors who give more than £200 to a political party must be on the electoral register at the time of the donation to be legal.

The Electoral Commission insisted on a full forfeiture of the £363,697 but UKIP opted to go to court where the magistrate ruled that it was a genuine administrative oversight and ordered that only £18,481 be repayed. The Electoral Commission appealed and today the Court of Appeal ruled in their favour.

The Court of Appeal's judgement doesn't mean that Westminster Magistrates Court has to order a full forfeiture and there is always the option to appeal. There are certainly good grounds to appeal - the Lib Dims were found to have taken £2.4m in donations from someone not on the electoral register (who is currently in prison having been convicted of fraud) at around the same time but the Electoral Commission chose not to pursue them for the forfeiture of their impermissible donations.

UKIP is a relatively small party, punching above its weight and embarrassing the LibLabCon. The Electoral Commission is a corrupt quango and sockpuppet of the British government. Going after UKIP and ignoring the Lib Dims is contra bonos mores - so unfair that a reasonable man would never come to the same conclusion (see Wednesbury Unreasonableness).

The ironic thing is that the ultimate court of appeal is not the new "Supreme" Court (which isn't supreme at all) but an EU court and UKIP's continued existence as a party may lie in the hands of the corrupt, anti-democratic super-quango that it is trying to undermine.

In UKIP's 2008 accounts, no provision was put aside for the forfeiture because Alan Bown pledged to underwrite it as he accepted the blame for not being on the electoral register. If he still intends to cover the cost of the forfeiture - estimated to reach around £750k with costs - then there are going to be a lot of very disappointed UKIP hating politicians and civil servants looking for a new way to try and do away with the thorn in their side.