6 reasons you should detest Vince cable and the Lib-Dems

A lot of people, especially hardcore Remainers, don't seem to understand why the Lib-Dems are such a reviled and toxic brand.

Just about the briefest possible explanation is that they wilfully helped a radically right-wing Tory government absolutely trash the living standards of tens of millions of people which eventually resulted in the Brexit backlash, then demonstrated their total lack of contrition by elevating possibly the worst offender of all to lead their party.

After two years at the helm their beloved Saint Vince is on his way out, but that the two vying to replace him (Jo Swinson and Ed Davey) were both such enthusiastic austerity-wreckers that they were more loyal to the Tory whip than the current Tory leadership candidate Jeremy Hunt! 

Another extremely clear indication of the fact they're not even remotely sorry about what they did.

So in this article I'm going to run through six things that should make any remotely decent person recoil in disgust at Vince Cable's behaviour, and the Lib-Dems for not only keeping him on, but actually lifting him up to be their beloved leader.

1. The Royal Mail

You probably know that the Tory/Lib-Dem Austerity Coalition decided to outright defy the public will by flogging off Royal Mail in 2013.

As Business Secretary Vince Cable was personally responsible for the process, and he managed it in such a way that it essentially turned into a vast fraud against the British public that cost us hundreds of millions of pounds.

The first element of the fraud was Vince's decision to limit members of the public to a maximum of £749 worth of shares, whilst allowing city speculators to buy up unlimited amounts of shares. 

This meant that the vast majority of the profits from the privatisation scam he pulled would be gobbled up by city spivs.

The second element was deliberate under-valuation. The Royal Mail's extensive property portfolio was assigned a ludicrously low valuation in comparison to the the cost of buying a matching portfolio of thousands of acres of lucrative city centre land from scratch. 

Furthermore Cable ignored all the warnings that the initial share price was far too low, having chosen the lowest valuation of all supplied by a firm called Lazard.

The third element was the cash in.

When the share price immediately bounced upwards, and several of the city investors made instant £millions at the public expense by buying up millions of shares then flogging them when the price corrected like they knew it would. One of these corporate investors, which made themselves a staggering £8 million instant profit was Lazard, the very people who advised Cable to under-value the shares in the first place.

How Saint Vince decided not to bar them from the process is anyone's guess.

As for the property portfolio, the new private owners have raked in £hundreds of millions by flogging off chunks of Royal Mail land to property developers at the real market price and cashing in the enormous difference from Vince's extraordinary undervaluation in unearned profit.

2. Arming human rights abusers

One of Vince Cable's jobs as Business Secretary in the Austerity Coalition was to sign off on arms export contracts.

During his time in the job he signed off on weapons sales to loads of countries on Britain's own watchlist of human rights abusers, including the homophobic, misogynistic, head-chopping, terrorism-spreading, democracy-crushing, journalist-dismembering Saudi war criminals.

Getting confused between your own socially liberal views and the Liberal Democrats because they have the word "liberal" in their names is kind of understandable if you don't really think about any of the details.

But anyone who is actually genuine about their social liberalism would steer well away from a party that saw absolutely no problem in flogging weapons to despots, tyrant, human rights abusers, and war criminals ... unless of course you're only really socially liberal when it comes to white Europeans like yourself, and don't give a shit about the human rights of brown people in far away lands who end up being tortured, maimed, and massacred by the weapons Saint Vince sold them.

3. Vince's money laundering loophole

In 2011 Vince Cable made an extraordinary decision to abolish identity checks on the registration of British companies.

This may not sound like a big deal, but it set off an extraordinary wave of criminality and money laundering.

The ability to set up a company in a country with a reputation as strong as the UK, in the space of only a few minutes, with virtually no risk of having your identity checked was an open invitation for every fraudster in the world to consider routing their ill-gotten gains through British shell companies.

Pressure groups, other countries, and the EU have pleaded with the UK to close this loophole, and begin insisting that the owners of British companies properly identify themselves, but the only person who has ever been convicted for setting up a fake company in the entire time is campaigner called Kevin Brewer, who set up a fake company called John Vince Cable Services Ltd, in order to demonstrate how Cable's reform made it so easy to create fake companies and masquerade as other people!

The guy who tried to blow the whistle on Saint Vince's tsunami of fraud got convicted in court for his efforts, while those responsible for the countless £billions in fraud that Cable unleashed get away scot free!

4. Austerity fanaticism

One of the worst things about Vince Cable was that in the wake of the global financial sector insolvency crisis he was one of the only UK politicians talking any kind of sense. He was capable of explaining how and why the collapse happened, and he also warned against excessive public spending cuts.

But as soon as the opportunity to become a government minister with the Tories presented itself, he completely changed his tune. From explaining the actual causes of the crisis, he flipped to joining in with the utterly dishonest and hyper-partisan Tory nonsense about "Labour bankrupting the economy".

But worse than this was his embrace of Tory austerity fanaticism. 

He knew that it was economically illiterate, he knew that it was bad for the economy, and he knew that repressing wages and stifling economic demand would smother the post-crisis economic recovery, but he joined in with it anyway in return for a six figure ministerial salary, a chauffeur driven car, and a temporary sense of self-importance.

And thus he wilfully helped the Tories to deliver the slowest economic recovery since reliable records began, despite knowing all along that the Tory austerity prescription was toxic economy-choking nonsense from the very beginning.

5. Brexit cynicism

Tory austerity policies like unprecedented wage repression, ruinous public service cuts, deliberate infrastructure under-investment, and wanton vandalism of the social safety net caused a massive collapse in UK living standards.

Then along came the Brexiteers to blame it all on immigrants and the EU.

Vince Cable could have come clean during the EU referendum and admitted that collapsing wages, failing public services, unaffordable housing, and the desperately failing social safety net had nothing to do with immigrants and the EU, and everything to do with the domestic UK government policy of austerity fanaticism.

But in order to say that he would have been admitting his own complicity in the living standards collapse, so instead he chose to say nothing, and allow the Brexiteers to use the living standards collapse he helped to engineer as a recruiting call for the Leave campaign.

And then after the Leave vote happened, Saint Vince has cynically positioned himself and his party as the wonderful saviours come to rescue the rest of us from the Brexit chaos he helped to create and unleash.

And to top it all off, what he's actually offering is the ridiculous strategically inept bollocks of another referendum with the Tories who created this Brexit mess still in charge and pushing for a no deal meltdown from the steps of Downing Street

At least a Labour government or Labour-based coalition would be firmly opposed to the insanity of no deal chaos, but Saint Vince wants the Tories running the ballot because if there's one thing he hates more than Brexit, it's the idea of a genuinely left-wing government ending ruinous austerity fanaticism, running the railways and water supply as not-for-profit public services, and making corporations and the mega-rich actually pay their taxes.

Saint Vince is like a mugger robbing your stuff and punching your teeth out, then expecting praise and gratitude for offering you a tissue to stem the flow of blood gushing from your gums!

But somehow people buy into it.

6. The rest of his voting record

I've detailed 5 things that Saint Vince has been directly involved with, but there's so much more to be found in his voting record.

Here's just some of the other stuff Saint Vince and the Lib-Dems "greatest hits" between 2010 and 2015:

• Relentlessly forcing the cost of the financial sector insolvency crisis onto poor and ordinary people, whilst simultaneously showering corporations and the mega-rich with one lavish tax cut and handout after another.

• Tripling university fees, despite pledging not to before the election, and rubbing salt into the wounds by tinkering with the repayment terms to introduce inflation+3% interest on the loans, meaning that a whopping 83% of graduates will never pay off their student debts despite entire working lifetimes of repayments!

• Bulldozing Charles Kennedy's legacy into a pit and burning it to ashes by voting to turn Libya into a vast lawless terrorism breeding ground just like the devastating chaos Kennedy so eloquently opposed in Iraq.

• Voting through Theresa May's Hostile Environment, which has been used to discriminate against and deport black British citizens from the Windrush generation.

• Introduction of unlawful Tribunal Fees designed to protect bad bosses by pricing low-income employees out of the justice system.

• Helping the Tories to annihilate police budgets, and totally gut funding for youth centres and early intervention schemes, which have led to a massive escalation in violent crime and gang culture.

• Forcing terminally ill people to go through discriminatory and degrading "fit for work" assessments for the crime of not dying quickly enough.

• Unprecedented cuts to NHS and social care budgets that have been associated with an estimated 130,000 people being driven into early graves.

• There's no remorse over the deliberate wage repression policies that led to the worst sustained decline in UK workers' wages on record, and set up an entire decade of lost wage growth.

• Voting through a massively wasteful top-down Tory reorganisation of the NHS that appeared in neither parties' manifestos) aimed at carving up as many NHS services as possible for distribution to private profiteers. 

• The establishment of a disgusting disability denial regime that has been condemned by the United Nations for "grave and systematic violations of disabled people's rights".

• Supporting all kinds of other deeply illiberal and hard right malice like Secret Courts, Bedroom Tax, enhanced snooping powers, the gagging law, hostile environment, Theresa May's family separation rules, privatised prisons, unlawful forced unpaid labour schemes, the draconian sanctions regime, instructing private contractors to deliberately discriminate against people with mental health conditions ...

Conclusion

The fact that the Lib-Dems picked Saint Vince as their beloved leader after all of this dreadful stuff just goes to show that they're not even remotely sorry.

And the fact that the two Lib-Dems vying to replace him come from the exact same "capital before people" mould show that they simply don't care about the damage they've done.

All they care about is finding another demographic to con into voting for them, just like they conned and betrayed the student vote, the electoral reformers, the anyone-but-Tory vote, and the anti-war demographic the last time they sneaked their way into power.

Don't be a dupe, and don't believe their deceptions, because you know exactly how much they're wiling to betray and exploit the people who stand with them, and you know exactly how unrepentant they are about the all of the disgusting things that nobody can deny that they did.

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Theresa May and the Tories are plotting to deny Windrush Brits the right to vote

The vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation that Theresa May introduced in 2014 has been used to deny employment, housing, social security, pensions, NHS care and even UK residency to Windrush Brits without the documentation to prove their citizenship.

After her initial attempts to just ignore the Windrush scandal became totally untenable Theresa May was cornered into apologising. She reluctantly told a gathering of Commonwealth leaders how "genuinely sorry" she was for the Windrush scandal in the hope that apologising through gritted teeth would make coverage of her despicable treatment of Windrush Brits go away.

But despite her apology Theresa May and the Tories are still working away behind the scenes to deny Windrush Brits even more rights, through through new voter ID laws that are being trialled in five local authority areas at the local elections, meaning those without photo ID will be denied the right to vote.

The excuse behind the voter ID laws is that it's intended to prevent voter fraud, but there is no evidence base at all to suggest that voter fraud is a serious enough issue to justify denying citizens without ID the right to vote.

In fact there has only been one solitary conviction for the crime of personation at the polling booth relating to the 2017 General Election, meanwhile an astounding 49% of all complaints of electoral fraud were made against the political campaigners themselves [source for both stats: Electoral Fraud Analysis by the Electoral Commission].

If the Tories were actually serious about cracking down on electoral fraud, they'd deal with the enormous mountain of fraud committed by political campaigners, rather than the tiny molehill of people impersonating others at the polling station.

Of course it's wrong that a tiny tiny minority of people try to commit voter fraud by impersonating others at the polling booth, but if your solution to that problem involves denying the right to vote to a significantly larger number of innocent people (or even one innocent person) then your claims to be acting in the interests of democracy are clearly a total farce.

The true motivation for these new voter ID laws is obvious. Poor people and elderly commonwealth citizens are far more likely to have no photographic ID, and they're also much more likely to vote against the Tory party than in favour of them (especially in light of the disgraceful Windrush scandal).

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Spain is taking political prisoners while allowing convicted fraudsters to walk free

A lot of people tend to get very angry when you point out that the Spanish political establishment is rapidly descending towards right-wing tyranny.

"But the vote was illegal" they say to excuse the shocking wave of brutal police repression against non-violent Catalan citizens that the whole world witnessed on October 1st. "But they don't represent all Spanish nationalists" they say about the Franco-worshipping fascist-saluting Falangists thugs who are gleefully celebrating the violent repression of Catalonia. "But everyone knows he's a nasty piece of work" they say about the Spanish government minister who wasn't even sacked for issuing a veiled death threat against the Catalan President Carles Puigdemont ...

And now they have something else to make excuses for. The Spanish establishment has resorted to taking Catalan civic leaders as political prisoners.

Jordi Sanchez, the leader of the ANC movement, and Jordi Cuixart, who heads the Ómnium Cultural association have been arrested and are being held without bail on possible charges of sedition because of their involvement in a spontaneous political protest on September 20th.

Jailing non-violent citizens without trial is obviously bad enough in its own right, but then if you look at some of the criminals from the Spanish political establishment who have been let off for massive corruption and fraud scandals, the shocking bias of the Spanish legal establishment becomes absolutely clear.

Rodrigo Rato (a former finance minister for the ruling Partido Popular) was found guilty of embezzlement from the Spanish bank Bankia, but was released on a technicality instead of serving a single day of his four year jail sentence.

Iñaki Urdangarín (the Spanish king's brother-in-law) was found guilty of tax fraud and corruption in Mallorca, but was released on a technicality instead of serving any of his six year jail sentence.

The Spanish nationalist establishment have got a proven track record of refusing to jail their own, even when they've actually been found guilty of incredible levels of corruption, fraud, and embezzlement. But when it comes to Catalan secessionists, they lock them up and throw away the key before there's even been a proper investigation, let alone a trial!

The crazy thing is that supporters of Spanish nationalism will immediately begin making excuses for the taking of political prisoners. They'll claim "it's for the good of Spain", and spread Orwellian propaganda about what a wonderful liberal place Spain is (while they're simultaneously excusing imprisonment without trial!). They'll turn a blind eye to the double standard that allows the convicted fraudsters Rato and Urdangarín to walk free, while Catalan civic leaders who haven't been found guilty of anything are locked up.

The big problem with this Spanish nationalist attitude is that it's massively counter-productive.

Their refusal to condemn the images we all saw of Spanish police brutalising pensioners, stealing ballot boxes, wading into unarmed and non-violent crowds with batons, and dragging women around by their hair; their blind acceptance of the belligerent escalations by the Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the king of Spain; their excuse-making over the taking of political prisoners ...

These people don't even seem to realise that all of this violence,oppression and Spanish nationalist rhetoric has the appearance of a Francoist resurgence, and their blind support for it terrifies people who remember the same kind of blind support that millions of Spanish nationalists gave to the savage Franco dictatorship until his death in 1975.

If people are unwilling to condemn the wave of police brutality against non-violent citizens, Spanish government ministers making death threats (and not even getting sacked for it), and the taking of political prisoners, how far will they actually go in their appeasement? 

Would anything actually be too much for them? 

Would they still be making excuses and attempting to glorify Spain as a wonderful "liberal democracy" if the government in Madrid scrapped the democratically elected Catalan parliament? If the Spanish political establishment abolished free speech to make talking of Catalan independence a crime? If they sent the army in to occupy Barcelona? If they reintroduced Francoist concentration camps to punish political thought crime?

As far as I'm concerned, they've already gone way too far if they're making excuses for the state violence and political repression that's already happening.

If they can watch a video clip of a Spanish police officer violently dragging a woman around by her hair and believe that "she deserved it" because she was trying to vote in a referendum they didn't want to happen ... or if they're prepared to actively celebrate imprisonment without trial for Catalan civic leaders while establishment fraudsters like Rato and Urdangarín still walk free, then they'll likely find an excuse for pretty much anything the Spanish ruling elite do.

But what is worse, from a pragmatic perspective, is the sheer self-defeating idiocy of it. Every step the Spanish political establishment takes towards the resurrection of the Franco dictatorship is another step towards the eventual secession of Catalonia.

When the king of Spain refuses to condemn the violent oppression of his own people, when the Prime Minister of Spain refuses to discipline his own government minister for making death threats against the elected Catalan President, and when the corrupt Spanish establishment turn Catalan civic leaders into high-profile political prisoners while allowing convicted fraudsters from their own class to walk free, they're not dampening Catalan secessionism, they're wilfully pouring fuel on the fire.

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The whistleblowers who admit that they unwittingly helped the Tories commit electoral fraud

Two whistleblowers have come forward to expose the lies the Tory party are telling about the 2015 General Election fraud in which they stand accused of cheating their way to electoral victory by unlawfully breaching election spending rules in 29 marginal constituencies.

The Tories openly Twitter bragging about the electoral
fraud they were engaged in.

The Tories have been claiming that they didn't need to declare the cost of bussing dozens of volunteers into marginal constituencies (transport, catering, hotels ...) because the volunteers never campaigned on behalf of the local candidates, but stuck firmly to just talking about national issues.

We already know that this is an outright lie. Even the Tory battlebus Twitter account openly named the local candidates they were supporting. They were so complacent about getting away with their financial doping electoral fraud that they openly bragged about what they were doing on Twitter.

Given their brazen Twitter bragging about the electoral fraud they were committing it would take extraordinary levels of credulity to believe that the dozens of bussed-in Tory activists never mentioned the local candidates or local issues when they were trying to influence the outcome of the election.

Now two Tory whistleblowers (Gregg and Louise Kinsell) have come forward to expose the Tory party lies by admitting that they "duped people on the doors". 

Louise Kinsell said that the Tory party claim that battlebus activists were only pushing the central government message are "rubbish, absolute rubbish". 

"We worked for the local candidates and MPs to ensure that they won their seat and we were sent wherever they thought we would help". "We had leaflets with their name on and rosettes with their name on" she said, "we were definitely canvassing for the local candidate".

Providing more details on what helping the Tories cheat their way to electoral victory entailed she explained that "in each area you were speaking about the local candidate and what he wants to do for you, not the big government in London, but what this man who lives here, what he wants to do for you, what he wants to change".

Gregg Kinsell said that "If people are saying, and the MPs concerned in these areas are saying it was part of a greater expense nationally for the Conservatives, that is a lie and an obvious falsehood. In that case I feel especially motivated to go to the police and go to the Electoral Commission".

The Kinsells also claim that there is a "code of silence" amongst other Tory party activists who were involved in carrying out the Tory electoral fraud.

Although it is possible to criticise the Kinsell's for their inexplicable devotion to a slimy and brazenly dishonest second rate PR man like David Cameron, they deserve a lot of credit for seeing the error of their ways and publicly admitting the truth that the Tory party are working so hard to suppress.

20 criminal investigations into the Tory electoral fraud are ongoing. The deadline for prosecution is May 9th 2017.

Given the Tories' open Twitter bragging about the electoral fraud they were committing, and now the testimony of these two Tory activist whistleblowers, it's increasingly obvious that the only way that the Tories can possibly get away with it is if the police decide to whitewash the whole thing.

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Note: Huge credit is due to Michael Crick and the Channel 4 News team for their investigative work on the Tory election fraud. I often criticise the mainstream press for their laziness, complicity and outright bias, so it's very important to point out when they have actually done a really good job of holding the powerful to account, as Channel 4 News have in this case.

The utterly hypocritical Tory attitude to electoral fraud

The absolute brass neck of Tories like Eric Pickles never ceases to astound.

The latest Tory wheeze is to massively exaggerate the scale of voter fraud in order to introduce new American style voter ID rules that would end up disbarring hundreds of thousands of poor voters (who are very much less likely to vote Tory than wealthier demographics).

Pickles' own report admits that there were only 130 allegations of voter fraud in the General Election year 2015, which means that the allegations of electoral fraud to votes cast ratio was 0.00025%, or one allegation of voter fraud for every 395,384 votes cast!

This minuscule figure contrasts sharply with the ratio of electoral fraud allegations aimed at Tory MPs. In all 29 Tory MPs have been accused of fraudulently rigging the 2015 General Election by faking their accounts. The Tory party orchestrated a deliberate policy overspending in marginal constituencies by falsely declaring local spending in their national campaign budget.

With 29 of the 330 Tory MPs elected in 2015 accused of electoral fraud, the ratio of fraud allegations to Tory MPs is 8.8%, or one allegation of electoral fraud for every 11 Tory MPs.

This means that in 2015 the ratio of electoral fraud allegations levelled against Tory MPs was 32,500 times higher than the ratio of electoral fraud allegations against members of the public!

Instead of addressing the incredibly serious allegations against his fellow Tory MPs, Eric Pickles is determined to distract attention away from the Tory electoral fraud scandal by pointing the finger of blame at us, the general public.

Pickles' report contains hundreds of recommendation points, but not a single one of them relates to the 29 Tory MPs who stand accused of cheating their way into parliament!

Sadly there are an awful lot of Tory tribalists out there who will celebrate this latest cynical effort to rig the electoral system even further in favour of the Tories by disenfranchising innocent voters who have done nothing wrong.

The irony is that if the opposition parties put up a fight against this latest Tory vote-rigging scam, the 29 Tory MPs who stand accused of cheating their way into parliament will end up holding the balance of power on whether to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

As Eric Pickles report says in the introduction: "a group of people who cheat their way to power are unlikely to hold a higher moral standard when handing out public contracts, or making [other decisions]".

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Another fraud scandal at a Tory flagship free school

In March 2016, just days after the (now departed) Tory education secretary Nicky Morgan announced her plan to force privatise every single school in England it was revealed that one of the flagship Tory academy chains was riddled with financial mismanagement and outright fraud. 

The outrageous scamming at the Perry Beeches academy chain in Birmingham should have served as a dire warning about the future of the English education system under Tory rule. In their haste to carve up the education system and distribute it (for free) to their private sector mates, the Tories have created an unaccountable free-for-all for some of the most greedy and unscrupulous people in society (including several millionaire Tory donors) to pilfer taxpayer funded education budgets to line their own pockets.

In August 2016 the former head of another Tory flagship school and two other staff members were found guilty of fraudulently siphoning public money into their own personal bank accounts. Sajid Hussain Raza, Shabana Hussain and Daud Khan were found guilty on all charges of pilfering money from Department of Education grants to the King Science Academy in Bradford.

Before this fraudulent pilfering of public funds even came to light the Kings Science Academy school was already mired in controversy for a rip-off deal to rent the land it was built on at a cost of almost £6 million over 20 years when the Local Authority used Compulsory Purchase Orders to buy a plot of land for another school (the Appleton Academy in Wyke) at a tiny fraction of the cost (£362,000 in total). 

It should come as no surprise at all that the landlord soaking up £296,000 per year in rent is a company operated by a millionaire Tory donor and former vice-chairman of the party Alan Lewis.

In a way it's astonishing that the staff at the school will likely go to jail for fraudulently pilfering a few tens of thousands of pounds of public money into their own bank accounts, while the Tory party bigwig who will continue siphoning almost £300,000 per year out of kids' education budgets for the next 15 years will get away with it scot free.

The scandals at the Perry Beeches academy chain and the Kings Science Academy are clearly just the tip of the iceberg in an unaccountable and increasingly fragmented education system.

Just a quick look into the scamming techniques used by multiple academy chains in order to top-slice education budgets is proof that the Tory reforms have turned our taxpayer funded schools into lucrative cash cows to be milked by some of the most unscrupulous people in society.

Of course all of these people who are busy raiding six figure salaries, plus expenses, plus gold plated pension contributions out of our childrens' education budgets will have some internal justification monologue for what they're doing. They'll sleep like babies at night without the faintest concern for the fact that the Bentley in the drive of their new mansion and their luxury holiday at the Taj Lake Palace have come as a direct consequence of raiding the taxpayer funded education budgets intended to provide a decent level of education to thousands of kids.

The greedy topslicing of education budgets and the numerous cases of outright fraud demonstrate that the Tory ideological agenda of privatising the state education system is an absolute disaster for all but the lucky few who get to milk the cash cow, but somehow only a small minority of people seem even remotely concerned about it.

I guess most people are just so complacent and apathetic that they think it's perfectly fine and natural that the Tories have been allowing some of the most unscrupulous people in society (including millionaire Tory donors and outright criminals) to raid taxpayer funded education budgets for their own personal enrichment. Perhaps most people just think that outrageous scamming like this is just the natural order of things and just shrug their shoulders about it before going off to rote learn tropes like "Theresa May is a safe pair of hands" from their favourite tax-dodging billionaire sociopath owned propaganda rag.

Theresa May has made her intentions towards the education system perfectly clear by appointing Justine Greening as her new education secretary. If May wanted to stop the outrageous scamming that went on under David Cameron's watch, the last thing she would have done is appoint a woman who as a governor of a local school oversaw the sale of school sports facilities to property developers and then supported the give-away of the school to ARK academies which was being run at the time by yet another millionaire Tory donor called Stanley Fink.

If we continue to allow a load of Tory donors and outright criminals to pilfer education budgets to line their own pockets then our kids are obviously going to get worse levels of education than they would have otherwise, and the UK is going to continue slipping further and further behind the more advanced societies where teachers are treated with the respect they deserve and their education systems are considered a vital component of society and the economy, rather than just an opportunity for a bunch of politically connected scammers to siphon as much taxpayers' cash into their own pockets as possible.

What we can do

The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn opposes the ongoing Tory privatisation of the English education system and proposes to undo the damage by introducing a National Education Service to oversee the education system.

You can follow the work of the Anti-Academies Alliance and the education campaigner Michael Rosen.

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What are the likely consequences of Tory electoral fraud?

Despite efforts by swathes of the mainstream media and the political establishment to starve the Tory electoral fraud allegations of coverage, it keeps on getting bigger. 


The Electoral Commission had to take the unprecedented step of resorting to the courts to demand documentation that the Tory party had been trying to hide from their investigation, more than a dozen police forces have initiated enquiries into fraudulent Tory campaign spending, leaked emails show that senior Tory figures (Lynton Crosby, Andrew Feldman, and Stephen Gilbert) approved the decision to pass off local campaign spending as national expenditure, and more questions are being asked about other local Tory election expenses in marginal constituencies that the party failed to declare as constituency spending.

Despite concerted efforts by many in the media and the political establishment to downplay, dismiss or ignore the electoral fraud story, it looks like it is definitely not going to go away. However there is still absolutely no guarantee that action will be taken to punish the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the electoral fraud.

In this article I'm going to consider some of the most likely, and most unlikely consequences are.

Legal consequences

It is a criminal offence to commit electoral fraud and if found guilty the punishment can be up to a year in jail or unlimited fines.

There's plentiful evidence that the Battle Bus teams were campaigning for particular candidates in their local areas (see image), so short of a complete whitewash, there's little chance that the Tories are going to get away scot free.

The Tory approach to the electoral fraud scandal seems to be to claim that it's all just some innocent administrative mix up. This kind of excuse looks an awful lot like they are preparing the ground to throw some lowly administrator under the (battle) bus.

The problem with this age old strategy of pinning the whole scandal on some lowly minion within the organisation is that the leaked email about the Battle Bus clearly implicates the Tory party treasurer Andrew Feldman, the deputy treasurer Stephen Gilbert and the recently knighted Tory party election strategist Lynton Crosby, because they all signed off on the plan to miscategorise the Battle Bus spending as national party spending rather than candidate spending.

The emails make it absolutely clear that they signed off the plan to avoid declaring the Tory Battle Bus expenses (running the bus, catering, hotel bills ...) as local spending, even though the entire purpose of the Battle Bus campaign was to tip specific marginal constituencies in their favour.

It doesn't matter if these senior Tories try to plead ignorance about UK electoral law becuase "I didn't know it was a crime" has never been an acceptable defence in any court of law. Ignorance of the law does not magically render unlawful actions lawful, especially if it is the actual job of the accused (two party treasurers and an election strategist) to ensure that the party complies with electoral law.

"I didn't know it was a crime" is clearly not a defence, but alongside a guilty plea it could certainly be used in mitigation. If the Tories pull off their attempt to dismiss the whole thing as an "administrative error" it's highly unlikely that anyone will ever end up going to jail for it, because an establishment whitewash of the whole affair is still a possible outcome.

Even if the allegations are proven, it's unlikely anyone would go to jail for it unless they are found guilty in court after trying to contest the charges, rather than pleading guilty and accepting a few fines and suspended sentences.

Electoral consequences

Several people have tried to argue that the Tory electoral spending fraud should trigger a re-run of the General Election, but in my view this would be an unfair consequence. The Daily Mirror investigation revealed that the hidden Tory campaign spending would have pushed some two dozen constituencies over their campaign spending limits. Even if another ten or twenty additional constituencies get dragged into the scandal over other issues (like undeclared spending on adverts in the local press, undeclared spending on campaign leaflets, or undeclared expenditure on flying in of Republican Party activists activists from the US) a re-run of the General Election would clearly be extremely unfair on the 600 odd MPs who complied with electoral law when they won their seats. For example, why on earth should the 56 SNP MPs in Scotland have to re-contest their seats as a consequence of a spate of Tory electoral fraud in England?

In my view a full re-run of the General Election would constitute punishment of the majority of innocent MPs for the crimes of a small minority of guilty MPs who gained unlawful advantage from undeclared campaign spending.

A fairer course of action would be to hold By-elections in any constituencies where the sitting Tory MP benefited from electoral fraud. If the allegations of Tory electoral fraud are proven, this could result in By-elections in 20 or more constituencies, which would be more than sufficient to end the Tory majority in the House of Commons assuming enough people were to vote against the Tory candidates who cheated their way into the House of Commons.

Legislative consequences
If it turns out that twenty or more Conservative MPs benefited from electoral fraud in winning their seats, there could be some very interesting legislative consequences. If these politicians entered the House of Commons by fraudulent means, any legislation that was passed as a result of their votes could clearly be seen as having been fraudulently imposed on the public.

The situation is clearly unprecedented, so I'm not exactly sure of the legal grounds for overturning legislation that could have been passed as a result of Tory electoral fraud, but if the Tories are found guilty of electoral fraud, I can't see any reason why legal efforts couldn't be made to overturn legislation that made its way through the legislative process as a result of votes by people who cheated their way into parliament.

Conclusion

The Tories would like nothing more than to have the whole electoral fraud scandal brushed under the carpet as some kind of innocent administrative error, while possibly pinning the blame on some lowly minion. Until the leaked email detailing how the Battle Bus plans had been signed off by senior Tory figures came to light, an establishment whitewash and sacrifice of a lowly scapegoat seemed to be the most likely outcome. Now that senior Tory figures are clearly implicated, it might be a lot more difficult for them to whitewash the whole affair or pin the whole fraud on some lowly admin worker.

If the complaints are upheld it seems likely that By-elections would have to be held in any constituency where campaign spending limits were broken. It would be extraordinary if people who cheated their way into power were allowed to continue reaping the benefits of their fraudulent activities. Whether the constituencies would reject the Tory candidates who cheated their way into office is another matter. It would only take the loss of seven or so Tory seats to put an end to the Tory majority in the House of Commons, however it's likely that they would still be able to cling onto power by seeking the backing of the likes of the DUP, UUP (who are already affiliated to the Tory party) and the UKIP MP Douglas Carswell.

Whether it would be possible to overturn legislation that was passed with the backing of MPs who cheated their way into the House of Commons is an interesting legal question, and one that will definitely need to be asked if the allegations of Tory electoral fraud are proven.

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