Craig Mackinlay MP in court over election fraud allegations

South Thanet MP, Craig Mackinlay, is due in court today alongside his agent and a Conservative Party activist to answer charges of electoral fraud relating to the 2015 general election.

Mackinlay was found by a Channel 4 investigation to have declared a considerable amount of election expenditure as belonging to his party's national campaign when it should allegedly have been declared as local spending. Adding this expenditure to his expenses return would have put him a long way over the legal spending limit.

During the election campaign Nigel Farage and his team warned that Mackinlay was spending more money than he was allowed and we will soon find out if a judge agrees. Many other Conservative MPs were found in the Channel 4 investigation to have done the same thing but the CPS only brought a case again Mackinlay which suggests either a show trial given the importance of that election or that Mackinlay and his team were doing more than just following advice from the party.

Even if he is found to have cheated the 2015 election a judge would have no power to remove Mackinlay from his post as there has been another election unless he is sentenced to more than 3 months in prison.

Tories offer DUP £1bn bribe for Northern Ireland

Theresa May has caved in to demands from the DUP for yet more English money to subsidise their spending in return for supporting the Tories at Westminster.

Labour politicians up in arms about the £1bn bribe have short memories since it was a Labour government that introduced the Barnett Formula which guarantees extra spending per head of population in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compared to England and successive Labour governments have used the Barnett Formula to buy Scottish and Welsh votes.

The Barnett Formula currently gives a subsidy of £1,623 per head to Scotland, £1,180 per head to Wales and £2,347 per head to Northern Ireland. This comes to £4.25bn for Northern Ireland with the Tories now promising to add another £1bn on top to secure the DUP's 10 votes.

A Labour government introduced the Barnett Formula in 1979 which was conceived by Labour MP Joel Barnett (who now campaigns against the use of his own formula). Successive Labour governments have abused the Barnett Formula to buy votes in their former Scottish and Welsh strongholds. The Labour government led by Tony Blair introduced devolution for Scotland and Wales, deliberately leaving out England and successive Labour (and Tory) governments have blocked access to the minutes of the Cabinet meetings where that decision was made. Labour courted the DUP in both 2010 and 2015 with the offer of more money for Northern Ireland. Whilst still a Labour MP, Jack Straw said "the English as a race are not worth saving". Former (Scottish) Labour Lord Chancellor for England, Charlie Falconer, said that there would never be an English Parliament. Labour have consistently fought any attempts to give financial or political equality to England.

The Labour Party never has and never will be the party that represents English interests. The same goes for the British nationalist Conservative Party. UKIP is the only mainstream party that is calling for an English Parliament, the abolition of the Barnett Formula and an end to the institutional discrimination against England. We are the only party that represents English interests and the hypocrites in the Labour Party complaining that the Tories are copying their ideas should hang their heads in shame for their past and present actions.

Reasons to vote Conservative #5: More than 30 Tory MPs are under investigation by 14 police forces for expenses fraud

Reasons to vote Conservative #4: Philip Hammond plans to break their manifesto pledge not to raise taxes

Reasons to vote Conservative #3: Theresa May refuses to commit to keeping the triple lock on pensions

Reasons to vote Conservative #2: 51,000 disabled people lose their mobility cars after being forced off DLA and onto PIP

Reasons to vote Conservative #1: £12bn foreign aid budget "will remain" while more than a million Brits rely on food banks

Theresa May will allow alleged election fraud MPs to stand again

Veteran Labour MP, Dennis Skinner, asks Theresa May if she will give assurances that the current Tory MPs who are being considered for prosecution for expenses fraud from the 2015 election will not be allowed to stand in June. She said she stands behind them all.

Craig Mackinley MP interviewed under caution for 6 hours over election fraud allegations

Conservative MP, Craig Mackinlay, has been interviewed by Kent Police under caution for 6 hours as part of their investigation into alleged overspending in the last election.

Mackinlay is believed to be one of six Conservative MPs who face possible criminal charges and having their election result declared void for alleged fraudulent expenditure after Channel 4 found what it believed to be significant amounts of missing expenditure and expenditure wrongly declared against national campaigns rather than local.

The upshot of this is that several MPs are believed to have overspent by a considerable amount, breaking electoral law and giving themselves an unfair advantage. The South Thanet seat won by Mackinley was contested by Nigel Farage and the Conservatives threw the kitchen sink at it to stop him winning but in doing so it is alleged they overspent by as much as double the legal limit and hid the illegal expenses by claiming that people bussed in to the constituency or sent to work there full time on the campaign were actually working on their national campaign.

Dudley UKIP councillors defeat Labour and Conservative budgets

Dudley's UKIP councillors successfully challenged both a Labour and Conservative budget last night despite having just eight of the 72 seats on the council.

Labour councillors wanted to put up council tax by 4.99% and the Conservatives 3.99% with a guaranteed rise in council tax next year. UKIP put forward an amendment to the Conservative budget which would ringfence 3% of the 3.99% for social care and bring in an outside company to handle the procurement who would be paid a percentage of the cost savings they make.

UKIP is generally committed to freezing or cutting council tax but you can't win every fight and clearly eight UKIP councillors are massively outnumbered so this compromise is a good one in the circumstances. There's a risk of an ATOS-style shambles without proper scrutiny so the success of the arrangement will come down to whether council officers manage their supplier effectively or not but this is the best outcome the group could have hoped for.

Commenting on the meeting, Cllr Dean Perks said:

We voted against both but had to set a budget legally or the government would step in and we'd be stripped to basics. In the end UKIP put an amendment to the Tory option so we got 3% adult social care ring fenced increase and 0.99% general increase, total 3.99%.

But in addition UKIP moved to bring in an outside professional company to deal with procurement which will save £millions securing front line services and avoiding an increase in general fund next year through prudent management of purchasing. In a nut shell we will save 5% from the £385million annual spend.

Police send Tory election fraud file to CPS

Police investigating allegations of dodgy election spending in the 2015 general election have sent a file to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider criminal prosecutions.

The 24 elections that were initially under investigation have reportedly been whittled down to 12 with Thanet South in the list of cases to be considered for charges. The investigations all relate to alleged overspending in elections, primarily as a result of claiming local spending as national and failing to declare expenditure.

The Tories are now faced with the prospect of having to contest several by-elections without cheating.

Tory MPs's chief of staff charged with rape

Conservative Craig Mackinlay MP's chief of staff, Samuel Armstrong, has been charged with raping a woman in the MP's office in the Houses of Parliament.

Armstrong allegedly raped the woman in October last year and has been charged with two counts of rape and one of sexual assault by penetration.

He will face Westminster magistrates on 31st March.

David Cameron's former SpAd convicted of making indecent photographs of children

One of David Cameron's former special advisors has escaped punishment after being convicted of child sex offences.

Patrick Robert John Rock de Bescombes faced 20 charges of possession of indecent images of underage girls which he downloaded at a golf club in America. It was investigated in the US but no charges were brought there as they didn't consider them pornographic. However, a jury here in England convicted him on 5 counts of making an indecent photograph of children, acquitted him on 3 counts and couldn't agree on the remaining 12.

The judge sentenced Rock to 2 years conditional discharge and 2 years on the sex offenders register, saying that his punishment was losing his reputation rather than prison.

Another Conservative councillor defects to UKIP in Spelthorne

A fifth Spelthorne Borough Councillor has defected to UKIP following Thursday's defection of four other councillors.

Cllr Kevin Flurry joined UKIP yesterday after the Conservative group leader kicked him out of their group. He becomes the fifth member of the new official opposition UKIP group on Spelthorne Borough Council.

Four Spelthorne Borough Councillors defect to UKIP

Four councillors publicly defected to UKIP at a meeting of Spelthorne Borough Council on Thursday.

Conservative councillors Denise Saliagopoulos and Joanne Sexton and independent councillors Quentin Edginton and Penny Forbes-Forsyth used Thursday's council meeting to make their announcements and laid the blame squarely at the feet of the Conservatives.

We cannot tolerate the way in which Spelthorne Borough Council is now being governed by the Conservatives, which we consider to be undemocratic, lacking in transparency and against the interests of our residents.

Back in 2014 a Spelthorne Conservative councillor was convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend and a few months later the Conservative leader of Spelthorne Borough Council hit the deadlines for laughing during a speech by the father of a 7 year old boy killed in floods. Then in 2015 the Conservative administration voted to allow a Conservative councillor living in India to keep his seat even though he should have been barred for not attending meetings for 6 months. It's a wonder that only two of their councillors have defected!

The Spelthorne UKIP group will now replace the Lib Dems as the official opposition on Spelthorne Borough Council.

Colwyn Bay Conservative councillors defect to UKIP

Two Colwyn Bay Conservative councillors have defected to UKIP.

Cllrs David and Lindsay Griffiths currently represent the Llandrillo yn Rhos and Eirias wards on Colwyn Bay Town Council but defected to UKIP this week. They said they were impressed by the determination and ambition of UKIP and how members are more involved in the local party.

Both councillors will contest Conwy County Borough Council seats in May for UKIP.

Tories have given up on Stoke and expect a UKIP win

Far left rag, the Huffington Post, is reporting Tory sources saying that they have conceded Stoke Central and are putting all their resources into Copeland instead.

Apparently, the Tories believe that it is "inconceivable" that they could take Stoke Central from Labour and "UKIP will win Stoke". They are reportedly concerned about "the embarrassment factor" of putting the effort in in Stoke and losing the seat to UKIP.

Labour's tax dodging trade union-funded hate campaign, Hate not Hope, has been distributing leaflets in Stoke making false claims about UKIP. They're scared that they're going to lose the election so they're using some of the money they got from the memorial fund for murdered MP, Jo Cox that was intended to promote community cohesion and fight fascism to produce political material for the Labour Party.

The bookies still have Labour as odds on favourite to win Stoke Central but well over half the bets placed through the Odds Checker website have been for UKIP. The longest odds you're going to get for a UKIP win is 8/5 at the moment which is good news for the election campaign but not so good if you were hoping to make a killing at the bookies!

Manchester Tory councillor arrested for child porn offences

A Conservative councillor and PPC in Manchester has been arrested for child pornography offences.

Cllr Matthew Sephton was Conservative PPC for Manchester Central in the last election and a former chairman of LGBTory. He has been suspended from his job as a primary school teacher and from the Conservative Party.

Despite being arrested yesterday there has been very little mention of it in the press.and certainly none of the rolling 24 hours news and front page headlines you'd expect if he was a UKIPper.

Shropshire Conservative councillor under investigation for planning irregularities

The wife of the disgraced former Conservative leader of Shropshire Council is to appear before the council's standards committee over alleged planning irregularities.

It is believed that two complaints have been made about Cllr Joyce Barrow's conduct but the council says it is unable to comment. Her husband, Keith Barrow, was last year forced to resign after a former UKIP councillor reported him for misconduct in public office and the police opened an investigation.

Tory MP Ben Howlett questioned over sex offence allegations

The Conservative MP for Bath, Ben Howlett, has been questioned by police over sex offence allegations.

Howlett has denied any wrongdoing and won't be making further comment. Avon & Somerset Police have confirmed that he wasn't arrested and attended a police station voluntarily to answer questions.

The allegations relate to a Eurovision results party he hosted in his constituency in May.