The caring face of the Labour Party

The Labour Party showed its caring side this morning by evicting disabled conference delegates from the front row so they could get more camera friendly "bright young things" to shake hands with Ed Miliband as he came in for his Blairite hand shaking with the peasants.

The Morning Star reports that stewards at the venue had allocated 15 seats for disabled delegates but were overruled by "party suits" and ordered to move disabled members of the outer party out of their seats. One disabled lady who walks with a crutch fell on the stairs and was left "upset and shaken". She has been graciously granted an audience with the shadow minister for disabled people to complain after telling Morning Star that disabled people are treated "like pariahs" in the party.

Labour suspends four members over Rotherham child abuse

The Labour Party have suspended four members in Rotherham over their part they played in the cover-up of the systematic abuse of 1,400 children over a 16 year period.

Three councillors - Roger Stone, Gwendoline Ann Russell and Shaukat Ali - have been suspended along with former councillor Jahangir Akhtar. The Labour Party says that the four will be investigated for the part they played in letting down the abused children. They have also said that the Police & Crime Commissioner, Shaun Wright, will have to apply to their NEC before he will be allowed to rejoin the Labour Party.

Jahangir Akhtar was investigated by the police last year over allegations that he knew about a relationship between a 14 year old girl in care and a known child abuser. He denied the allegations and the police cleared him of them. Does that case feature in the independent report into child abuse?

Roger Stone resigned as leader of Rotherham Borough Council when the damning report into child abuse came out. When Rotherham Social Services hit the headlines last year for taking two children off their foster parents because they were UKIP members, Roger Stone said "If the professionals give advice, we take it. We are going to investigate — we always would if somebody complains". Except the independent report into child abuse in Rotherham clearly shows that they don't take the advice and they don't investigate when someone complains. Quite the opposite in fact - they discredit the victims and cover up the abuse because they don't want to tell people that almost every child abuse allegation is against Pakistani and Kashmiri men.

Gwendoline Russel and Shaukat Ali were present at a meeting of Rotherham Borough Council in 2008 when sexual exploitation of children was discussed. The report (page 33) said that the council had been contacted 118 times in 2007/08 expressing concerns about child sexual exploitation. The action plan shows that the council was well aware of sexual exploitation of children.

There is more to this Rotherham case than meets the eye. The scale of the abuse, the minutes of council meetings showing they were aware of the abuse happening, the botched police investigations. It all points to more than incompetence and fear of accusations of racism. I think that in time we will find that some people at Rotherham Borough Council - councillors or officers or both - have done more than turn a blind eye.

Perverted Labour Party official skips bail

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a Labour Party secretary and former council candidate convicted of videoing men taking a leak in the toilets of a Croydon shopping centre.

David Christison, who is secretary of West Thornton Labour and a member of West Thornton Community First panel, admitted two charges of observing a person doing a private act at least 30 times for sexual gratification.

Christison was bailed on the condition he didn't return to the shopping centre where he carried out his perverted hobby and was due to be sentenced at Croydon Magistrates Court on March 20th. He missed that hearing because he was recovering from a heart attack, a further hearing was adjourned and he was finally due to be sentenced on Thursday but decided to go on holiday to Turkey instead.

Give your postal vote to the Post Office not the Labour Party

In response to the discovery that the Trade Unions and Labour Party Liaison Organisation is collecting postal vote applications and passing the details on to the Labour Party, UKIP has taken out this newspaper advert:

Left wing extremists assault Nigel Farage in Kent

Nigel Farage was attacked by left wing extremists in Kent yesterday, culminating in a physical assault using a placard which the police are investigating.

The "Nasty Little Nigel" protest was organised by Bunny La Roche who recently resigned from a full time rent-a-mob job with the Socialist Workers Party where it appears she was thoroughly detested by her comrades to form a militant group called Kent International Socialists. Comrade La Roche is the Kent branch of the fascist UAF and has links to other extreme left wing groups. Her Facebook profile lists her "inspirational people" including the mass murderers Lenin, Trotsky and Marx. She attracted criticism even from her own comrades when she shouted "when are you going to die" at a 75 year old BNP councillor.

Comrade La Roche was helped in organising yesterday's violent protest by communist Green Party councillor Ian Driver, perhaps inspired by his party's MP, Caroline Lucas, who was arrested for her involvement with a violent protest against a fracking company last year by left wing extremists. The violent protest also attracted support from the fascist UAF, SWP and Labour activists.

Nigel was left shaken but unhurt after being hit on the head with a placard - an attack that could have had serious consequences as he is still recovering from an operation on his back for injuries sustained from his plane crash in 2010.

The police are apparently looking to identify the person who carried out the assault. The YouTube video below showing the assault being committed in slow motion should help, particularly as the two policemen who saw it happen will be easily identifiable by their colleagues (their numbers had been taken off which seems to be a worrying but common practice just lately).

It's time something was done about these dangerous, lawless left wing extremists who think that violence and vandalism is an acceptable way to make a point.

Coalition with Labour? Not a chance!

There has been some disquiet amongst UKIP supporters today following Nigel Farage's comments in the press about the possibility of UKIP forming a coalition with Labour after the next election.

Farage didn't actually say that UKIP was open to forming a coalition with Labour or anybody following the election in 2015 but the papers ran with the story anyway.  What he said was that following the election, "UKIP may well be needed in a coalition" and said that there is no way he could work with David Cameron.

The views of the membership on a coalition have been made pretty clear over the past year or so as the prospect of UKIP gaining representation in the House of Commons has come tantalisingly close.  The Lib Dems have shown what happens when you abandon your principals for a sniff at power and there is no desire amongst the membership or the leadership of the party to do the same.  UKIP MPs may support a minority government in exchange for some key concessions but a coalition would be political suicide.

Peter Mandelson, who isn't allowed to criticise the EU otherwise he'll lose his very generous pension, said:

Beginning 2013 by placing this large and indefinite question mark over our membership of the EU, and all the trade and investment privileges it brings us, can only be described as economically insane

With people like the disgraced communist Peter Mandelson - and there are many, many disgraceful communists in the Labour Party - they are no more likely to hold an in/out referendum on membership of the EU than the Tories are and any mention of electoral deals in exchange for one is just Farage spreading dissent in their ranks.

The Morally & Financially Bankrupt Labour Party

The Labour Party haemorrhaged 60% of its membership between 1997 and 2007 according to their own figures published by the Electoral Commission.

Labour's membership stood at just under 177k at the end of 2007 after losing 6,000 members that year.  UKIP's membership, by comparison, is about 10% of that figure and rising.  The Labour Party is supposed to be the second largest party in the UK and Her Majesty's Loyal (stop sniggering) Opposition.

Labour has also managed to reduce some of its crippling debt that it racked up with the same financial mismanagement that it employed to destroy the economy.  They reduced their £25m debts to £17.9m last year but still have £11m of loans due to be repaid this year.

The breakdown of Labour's outstanding debts by donor type for the 2001/12 financial year is as follows:

Lender Type	Amount	Percent
Person	£9,517,350	63.6%
Company	£697,500	4.7%
Union	£10,500	0.1%
Union Bank	£916,583	6.1%
Real Bank	£3,823,239	25.5%

Almost £1m of Labour's debts are owed to the unions, partly from the unions directly but mostly from the Unity Trust Bank which is owned by the unions and used to finance the Labour Party whilst keeping the level of donations down.

So what about donations?  Who paid the Labour Party's bills in the 2011/12 financial year?

Donor Type	Amount	Percent
Union	£10,108,187	53.2%
Taxpayer	£6,283,289	33.0%
Person	£971,731	5.1%
Branch	£473,690	2.5%
Company	£458,165	2.4%
Lobbyist	£208,884	1.1%
Co-operative Party	£111,805	0.6%
Questionable *	£28,295	0.1%
Trust	£16,800	0.1%

Unsurprisingly, the Labour Party was rescued from bankruptcy once again this year by the "generosity" of the unions passing on the millions of pounds of taxpayers' money they get every year accounting for 53% of Labour's income.  The second biggest donor to the Labour party was the taxpayer, contributing a further third of their income bringing the taxpayer funding of the Labour Party to 86.2%.

Personal donations to the Labour Party came to almost £972k whilst donations from Labour Party branches  around the country was just shy of £474k.  Identifying where the branch donations originated from is a mammoth task and not one I intend to undertake but donating money via branches is a common way for big donors to conceal the extent of their party funding - it is likely to consist of high value personal donations, locally-based big business and unions.

Companies donated just over £438k to the Labour Party and lobbyists donated nearly £209k.  The NOtoAV campaign donated £192k to the Labour Party, £114k of which was taxpayers money from the Electoral Commission.  GovNet, a litigious company that appears to be in the same vein as Common Purpose that allegedly made inappropriate donations to MPs, has given almost £11k to Labour and an industry group set up by Labour to lobby itself gave them £6k.

* There are three donations that are questionable.  Firstly, S.S.R. (Scotland) Ltd donated £2,250 to the Labour Party in cash on 12th July 2011 but the company hasn't filed accounts since 2010 and Companies House has published its intention to strike the company off the register in the London Gazette.  Crow Craylor and Partners, listed as an unincorporated association, is Crowe Caylor and Partners Limited and has been a limited company since 2008.  It is not clear how the Australian Labor Party fits the criteria of being based and carrying out business in the UK but they have donated almost £23.4k to the UK Labour Party.  Hopefully the Electoral Commission can shed some light on whether these donations are permissible and reported correctly.

The final set of donations of note come from the Co-operative Party, a shell political party used to funnel over £1m of funding from the Co-operative Group - owner of the Co-op supermarkets, Co-op Insurance, etc. - to the Labour Party both in direct donations (£111k in the 2011/12 financial year) and by sponsoring branches and MPs.

Because the Labour Party is so good at hiding the true source of its income, it is impossible to tell how much of its income comes from the taxpayer but I would estimate that at least 90% of its income in 2011/12 ultimately came from the taxpayer.  Without direct and indirect public funding, the Labour Party would be financially insolvent (having been declared morally and intellectually bankrupt years ago) and would have been wound up by its creditors by now.

For analysis of the Conservative Party's donations and loans, click here.

The Crumbling Pillars of the Political Class

Our good friend Dan Hannan is at it yet again, exhorting some kind of pact or merger between UKIP and the Tories.

The obvious unworldliness of it hardly bears examination:  exactly how, after slandering UKIP in the most offensive terms as 'fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists', would Cameron explain away a pact without it being depicted as a totally humiliating climbdown? And wouldn't such a pact risk - horror of horrors - 'contaminating' the Tory brand amongst Dave's  achingly fashionable friends? More to the point, why would UKIP want to risk being contaminated by the taint of Toryism?

Be that as it may, Hannan's thinking is based on a flawed analysis, namely that the emerging split in the Right of British politics (essentially the de-merging of the classical Liberal and Tory traditions) would give the Left a more or less permanent monopoly on power.

This analysis wholly ignores the likely effect the eclipse of Toryism would have on the Left of British politics, namely the collapse of the anti-Tory tribal Labour vote.

The Right like to rant and rail that the Tories have betrayed their core constituency - and so they have - but that is nothing to the betrayal that the Labour Party has enacted on the indigenous working class. It was once famously said of the  Labour Party that it  'owed more to Methodism than it did to Marx', representing as it did socially conservative working class voters who believed in a measure of economic redistribution. Dominated as it now is by decidedly non-Methodist middle-class Guardianistas,  the Labour Party has followed a social agenda in recent years which could hardly be more inimical to working class interests, fuelling mass immigration, family breakdown and the destruction of national identity. Consequently a large section of what were once Labour's natural supporters simply support the party out of tribal hatred of the Tories, or fail to vote at all.

The journalist Peter Hitchens, no friend of UKIP, nevertheless came up with an outstanding metaphor to describe the current party political situation: he likened the Labour and Tory parties to a pair of crumbling pillars, each holding each other up by virtue of the hatred each set of core supporters had for the other.  Of the two pillars, the Labour Party is perhaps in the stronger position, having as a backstop the powerful vested interests of the public sector unions. Nonetheless, collapse of one pillar would inevitably lead to collapse of the other.

It is now possible to see the circumstances for such a collapse coming into view: if UKIP continue to chip away at Tory support to the extent that the Conservative Party loses the next general election badly, the perception may gain ground amongst working class supporters that a Tory majority government is no longer to be feared, with the result that a vote for the Labour Party is no longer essential.

Waiting in the wings to capitalise is the newly formed alliance between the sectarian English Defence League and British Freedom Party, standing on an unashamedly politically-incorrect, anti-Islamic, patriotic, pro-Christian platform which includes withdrawal from the European Union. Whatever one thinks of the EDL and BFP, they are not as heavily tarred with the charge of racism as the BNP is, and are thus more likely to make significant inroads into Labour's bedrock support.

As the situation in Europe deteriorates by the hour and it becomes clear that our rotten Political Class lack the inclination, the courage or the foresight to deal with what could rapidly spiral down into a truly catastrophic situation, we could be on the verge of the greatest re-alignment of British politics since the 'Strange Death of Liberal England' in the early 20th Century.

So, Dan, thank you all the same, but please don't ask again, as refusal often offends. In the not too distant future, marriage with you Tories would likely prove, in the words of Marshall Petain, "fusion with a corpse".