CAMERON’S DODGY DONATION EXPOSED

18-12-2007

Fresh from lambasting Labour over the David Abrahams fiasco, Tory leader David Cameron has got a couple of dodgy donations of his own to deal with today. His local party in Oxfordshire broke electoral rules by taking cash from non-UK voters.

The donations were made to Witney Conservatives in August by Roger Fletcher (£5,900) and Geoffrey Dobbs (a £1,500 auction prize) but as neither is eligible to vote in this country, they have been ruled inadmissibl and have had to be returned.

The question is why is the Tories didn’t check the source of these gifts in the first place, instead of waiting for the Electoral Commission to point out the problem? And why did it take three months to hand over the cash?

It’s not the only time recently that the Conservatives have been caught in a “don’t do as I do, do as I say” scenario.

At the weekend, The Stirrer Message Board had the strange story of the photo-shopped MP’s (see link here) caught committing the kind of fakery for which they had previously criticised Labour Culture Secretary James Purnell.

Then there was the curious issue of flights provided for Cameron, Sutton Coldfield MP Andrew Mitchell and other senior Tories – the true cost of which don’t seem to have been declared to parliament in their respective donation lists (see link here).

For some reason, the words "pot", "kettle" and "black" come to mind.