£7000, £90,000 - hardly a level playing field, Zac
The Surrey Comet has the story about Zac Goldsmith's 'illegal' donation to the Richmond Park Conservative Association. Goldsmith is their parliamentary candidate, and the Electoral Commission is investigating the allegation that he gave them £7000 when he was not on the electoral register, which is not allowed under electoral law.
So the Richmond Park Tories will probably lose the £7000.
But what intrigues me more about this story is the news that multi-millionaire Zac Goldsmith has (allegedly - we know about his father's run-ins with Private Eye) ploughed £90,000 of his own money into his campaign to win the seat from Susan Kramer MP. It seems he has set up an office with two staff.
This is way beyond the resources available to the vast majority of candidates, who have to rely on small personal donations and fundraising social events to cover their costs.
Now I have always believed that we are fortunate in the UK in the way we run elections with a strict cap on the amount of money that can be spent by candidates. In the States, of course, election campaigning is all about raising millions of dollars for the White House race, or even hundreds of thousands to stand a chance of being elected as a State Representative. And if you get elected then you immediately start raising the huge sums needed to get re-elected in four years time.
The one catch in the UK is that the limit on expenditure only applies during the short period after an election is formally called. There are no restrictions on what can be spent between elections.
So, the question is quite simple. Is it fair that one candidate can spend very large sums from their personal wealth outside the election period?
Comments: 3
...and now the question is are you going to comment on Susan kramer's son making an illegal donation (or three!) Or do you not comment if a Lib Dem inadvertently makes an illegal donation?
Comment modified)
I did not claim that Zac Goldsmith made an illegal donation. I was asking whether the rules were right in this case, as they allow a very wealthy candidate to gain advantages before the election rules come into play. Our current electoral system was supposed to be designed so that power does not simply fall to the wealthy, but the rules are too weak.
On the case you refer to: I've not said much about party donations to any party. From what I've read it appears to have been a genuine mistake, because he didn't realise he had fallen off the electoral role, rather than an attempt to push the boundaries. Susan repaid it as soon as she realised what had happened. I don't make an issue about anyone, from any party, who makes a mistake and then corrects it.
But you used that as the springboard for your other comments about him. At the time there was an awful lot said from the Lib Dems about how he had made an illegal payment and almost a lot of glee that he had done this. The difference in attitude from the Conservatives has been quite marked. His was also a genuine mistake.
Looking at the advice on Lib Dem Voice, it says that all payments must be checked within 30 days. To allow that to continue for four months shows an incredible level of incompetence - did it really take them four months to check something that should have been checked in one?
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