! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.
Following yesterday’s revelation in the press that Liebour is on the brink of bankruptcy, I did some digging of my own.
According to the list of loans at the Electoral Commission’s website, Liebour has almost £13m of loans due for repayment this year.
It also transpires that in quarter 4 of last year, even the Illiberal Dumbocrats took more in donations than Liebour did. The Conswervatives, meanwhile, took around four times as much in donations than Liebour.
I’m currently waiting on someone from the Elecoral Commission to tell me what happens when the party in government is declared insolvent …
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If their figures were transferred to any other private company then the bloody lot of them would be in jail right now for running a company while insolvent.
The Labour Party – The British Leyland of politics….
“what happens when the party in government is declared insolvent” is “nothing, because there’s no such thing as ‘the party in government'”.
MPs are elected as the individual representing a particular constituency; the PM is selected by the monarch, who picks the person they believe will be able to command the support of Parliament; and other ministers are selected by the PM.
So even if the Labour party were dissolved tomorrow, Gordon Brown’s government would remain in power either until 3 June 2010 or until Mr Brown’s government lost a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, whichever happened sooner.
What the MP’s who are part of the Labour party would lose if Labour was dissolved would be funding from Parliament:
1. “Policy Development Grants”. Labour got £457,997 of public money to develop policies in 2006-2007
In opposition they would lose:
2. “Short money”. This money paid to keep the Shadow Cabinet happy. The Conservatives got £4,343,069 in 2006-2007
3. “House of Lords – Cranborne Money”. Funding of the opposition in the house of Lords. The Conservatives got £436,584 in 2006-2007 and the salaries of the Leader of the Opposition and Opposition Chief Whip in
the Lords, which for 2005-06 were £69,138 and £63,933 respectively, are also paid from public funds.
4. A right to Party Political Broadcasts. The cost of this indirect subsidy to political parties has been estimated to be in the region of £68m in an election year and £16m in a non-election year. This is on the assumption that parties bought the equivalent advertising time at commercial rates
5. “Trade Union affiliation fees.” Professor Keith Ewing…has calculated that, of the £82 million
donated to the Labour party between 2001-2006, £51.9m was by way of affiliation fees
or other donations from trade unions, accounting for 63.3 per cent of donation income.
All that info is in here:
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2007/rp07-034.pdf
I suspect that if the Labour party went under they would just start up a new party to gain access to Parliamentary funding and Union funding but the new party would start of with no assets at all.
Ever get anything back from the Electoral Commission on this one?
I’m glad you asked, I’ve literally just got off the phone to someone returning my call.
Apparently it doesn’t matter. They have to meet certain criteria to get registered and as long as they continue to submit annual accounts they stay on the register. I did ask if “Liebour Limited” had registered the party and therefore if “Liebour Limited” is wound up it ceases to exist as a legal entity (roughly equivalent to a person dying) then what happens to the registration but he didn’t know.
What happens if they go bust?
I crack open a large bottle of expensive champagne, that’s what happens!