Bingham & Levitt trading blows on Ashcroft

You may have noticed that not long after our last post appeared, the High Peak MP Tom Levitt issued his own press release* about the Ashcroft funding issue. Levitt waded in with his political size-nines accusing Ashcroft of funding High Peak Conservative Association (HPCA) to the tune of £110,000, and published a letter he had written to Andrew Bingham regarding the issue.

Levitt was relying on an article in the Independent Newspaper (not published online), but in his reply Andrew Bingham was quick to point out that £110,000 was the total income received by HPCA for 2 years, and not the amount received from Tory Central Office. That'll be Tom Levitt finding his size nines have had the laces tied together.

Other than that, there's little point in regurgitating the tit-for-tat, party political guff. But what is misleading is when Bingham states that HPCA has not received money directly from either Ashcroft or his companies, and that certain funding comes directly from central office - this is disingenuous because it's well known that Ashcroft's money lands in target constituencies in this way, as we outlined in our original post about this issue.

*when Levitt's website disappears, you can view a screen grab of this page here

Vote Bingham - get Ashcroft

With yesterday's news that Tory Deputy Chairman Michael Ashcroft is a 'non-dom', there's been a certain amount of attention paid to the money he's pouring into local parliamentary campaigns. In areas such as Pendle, the local Conservative Association has been publishing and paying for the delivery of thousands of newsletters and leaflets to the electorate, with funds provided by Ashcroft to Tory Central Office. Even the local MP is struggling to compete with such publicity that Ashcroft's resources can bring.

The Guardian yesterday conducted a 'crowd-sourcing' experiment to find out exactly what was being delivered in the constituencies that had been identified by Ashcroft as key battlegrounds* in a report he prepared after the last election. High Peak was amongst them (though not amongst the report resulting from this experiment).

Now we know that High Peak Conservative Association (HPCA) delivered some very glossy publicity materials in the local elections last year, and also that their newsletter 'High Peak Matters' has been delivered too (Bingham even tried to use the fact that it had been paid for using the Post Office as a weapon against Tom Levitt during the row over his expenses and communications allowance last year).

Having done some sniffing around today, we've managed to find copies of the annual financial reports for HPCA for the following years: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2008. The last two years show grants from Tory HQ to a total of £27,599. In 2007, the grant was £10,811, and HPCA spent £11,536 on printing and stationery, and £8,227 on postage in the same period (by way of contrast, in the previous year, they spent £3,273 on these items). In 2008, the grant was £16,788 and a new category 'Target Seat Campaign Funding' was added to the accounts, soaking up £15,968 of expenditure.

The accounts for 2009 are yet to be published, but it's clear that ultimately, if you vote for Bingham you're actually getting Ashcroft, and your vote has been bought by him.

* - opens PDF, see page 51.