UKIP Uncovered

UKIP Uncovered
What motivates the leaders of the United Kingdom Independence Party?

Sunday, October 19, 2003

Interleaved Response to Lott!

Subject: Response to David Lott’s Email on Daily Mail Advert
Date: Sunday, October 19, 2003

To: David Lott
CC: NEC

David,

Given your statement declaring you have no intention of pursuing a dialogue, I assume your last email is your final word on the subject. However, I shall not “get off your back”, as you diplomatically ask. You have only managed to strengthen my resolve to climb on your back, and cling on for dear life!

I shall deal with your comments in turn below. Your comments are in 'quotations'; my comments are below them (in italics):

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“I will reply for the last time and certainly not to threats or 'charges'
that you could not bring yourself to make in public.”

David, if you had read my last email properly, I stated that I did not have the information at the time of the conference. Anyhow, if you wish to challenge me in a public meeting of branch chairmen, please feel free to set it up. I will gladly air my views in public. In preparation, please furnish me with the paperwork surrounding the advert, including the documentation I specify in my letter. We can then engage in a meaningful, data-driven discussion.

“The people dealing with the advertisements and their analysis, which will be more thorough and detailed than you can possibly imagine, know what they are doing and do not need your advice.”

David, as an experienced management consultant, where I literally spend hours devising rigorous analysis of data and infer strategic implications for multinational clients and governments worldwide, I can imagine quite a lot. I doubt the depth of analysis will surprise me, even if it has the potential to astonish you.

“We have the experts in PR and the experience.”

David, I am glad to hear it. But do PR experts have expertise in financial controls and governance? Not to my knowledge. Your point is largely irrelevant to the problem I raised.

"But that aside this exercise is costing the UKIP nothing I say again nothing nil nix zero 0 zilch got it? So your hard earned money is not being risked spent used wasted invested wisely or any thing else it is simply not being used for this exercise.”

David, you comment above betrays a degree of ignorance that must call into question your suitability for the chairmanship of UKIP and to sit on the NEC. How can you in all honesty stand there and state that this advert costs UKIP nothing??? Let me explain the flaw in your logic:

UKIP receives most of its income from donations. All donations are central Party funds, unless made to a local or regional accounting unit for use in local or regional activities.
Therefore, when you obtained a donation to pay for a national advert, you had in fact added money to central Party funds. Your decision to spend it on a national advert is therefore a use of Central party funds. This process is as below:

By suggesting that money donated for the advert is not a cost to the Party suggests that steps 2 and 3 do not exist. If this was indeed true, the logical conclusion is that all donations to the Party are not central Party funds, and so can be freely spent by the leadership as they see fit. Unfortunately, this would bankrupt the Party, which will still need to service the costs of memberships.

“You heard @@@@ tell the conference how well spent the money was in Wales which is what I think you are on about.”

David, I am sure @@@@ thinks the money is well spent. He is head of Wales. But have you asked @@@@ and others in Wales whether the money was spent as effectively as it could, or whether the amount spent was strictly necessary for the result?

“It was a cheap election less than half the cost of fighting seats per candidate in the General election and a massive amount more successful than the GE which it dwarfed in its results. I was not at the helm for the GE!”

What kind of metric is “cost of fighting seats per candidate”? How about other metrics like:
(a) Cost per vote won
(b) Cost per member gained
(c) Cost per column inch in national papers
(d) Cost per Party list (where a normal parliamentary seat is equal to 1 list)
(e) The opportunity cost of using the extra, unauthorised £60k, for the WA and SP elections. I.e., could we have used that money to greater effect in other activities?

Your metric is useless for comparing to a General Election, where each candidate is fighting a separate campaign - there is no Party list in a GE.

Do you realist that in the Welsh election, we spent almost as much as Plaid Cymru!!!! Is that in proportion to the opportunity we had there?

“At the last NEC I took the lead with initially some opposition because telesales in London was draining money from the party. I urged the NEC to vote to close it down. They agreed and it is now closed. I shall recommend that all telesales operations in future are stand alone and that the party is indemnified against loss. Ashford is currently at worst cash neutral but is getting a good return from the advert and with the research being done will produce much more. Much of the return will go to national coffers which will improve the cash flow.”

David, I have not mentioned the telesales operation. I do not know much about it at all. Thanks for the heads-up. I shall investigate this matter further.

Again, what internal financial controls do you have to ensure that monies and data from the advert are accurate, fully accounted for, and that the full money due central party funds will be given.

“I helped raise money to get us out of an immediate short term difficulty and am engaged in an exercise with an a properly qualified accountant working with %%%% to reach a fuller understanding of the head office financial operation. The figures that we had to work on in the past did not reveal at all clearly where we stood financially. Once that analysis is done the appropriate action will be taken according to well defined priorities.”

Good. When do we see the outcome of this review. Also, I detect a subtle question mark over %%%%s accounting qualifications and competence. Do you have questions about his competence?

“As I wrote all is under control and in addition being thoroughly analysed but I cannot spell out all the ins and outs of every single aspect of my job which is truly massive and conducted by me with no secretarial support whatsoever. You will be able to see in June 2004 whether we achieve our aim until then do please show some trust in the way we handle things rather than
looking for problems that do not exist. I have just spent the afternoon leafleting for a major meeting on the IOW and by the way three days after a five hour deep operation I too was back at work for UKIP.”

The fact that you do not have the ability to describe the most rudimentary system of financial controls and proper documentation of activities undertaken in the name of the Party, and you cannot see a problem with this, is absurd beyond belief. If you cannot make the time to deal with such matters, like avoiding fraud and breaches to the Constitution, then I strongly suggest you make someone responsible NOW!

Well done for your commitment. But as I have said, the most well-intentioned individuals can also be mistaken and seriously misguided.

“I shall not respond to any more queries on this subject as I simply do not have the time and you will hear about the plans for advertising and the alterations with head office in due course. Would you now please be so good as to get off my back..”

David, what alterations with head office? No, I will not get off your back!

posted by Martin |10:36 AM