UKIP Uncovered

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

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

UKIP's Brush with Bankruptcy

Further review of the overspend by David Lott, Party Chairman, on the Welsh and Scottish elections is underway. Two conflicting views are coming forward.

The first is that the overspend decision could largely have been David Lott just being David Lott. We are told he rather prides himself on being a bit of a maverick - throwing off the petty constraints of committee decisions; unafraid to take risks; touch of the fighter pilot sort of thing. As self styled 'campaign manager' he badly needed an electoral success, having failed dismally in the Romsey by-election which he'd regarded as UKIP's springboard to general election success, but where UKIP actually got less than half the vote Alan Sked won there in '97; had a poor general election in 01;
and local election results in 2002 which even then party leader Jeffrey Titford described as 'disappointing'. Also,
at about the same stage in the run up to the last Euros UKIP had a very good result in the South Yorks Euro by-election (May 98), when Peter Davies won 11.7% of the vote under FPTP. We are told that yet another former UKIP leader, Michael Holmes, had initially been against fighting this, but the NEC voted to go ahead while he was away on holiday, Lott took personal charge of the campaign and rumour has it then exceeded his budget. It paid off, however, and the result was heralded as forerunner for success in the Euros. Lott dined out on this for ages, claiming when he stood for the NEC in 2000, "At the 1998 South Yorkshire European By-election, I implemented a simple campaign that was pitched just ahead of what I judged to be the public mood in this predominantly socialist constituency. The plan was to unlock the cross Party vote. It proved to be stunningly successful. The result in percentage terms - yet to be exceeded - transformed the UKIP's prospects for 1999 and attracted sorely needed new talent".

Given that history it is possible that last year Lott possibly saw the Welsh elections under PR as a chance to replicate the success of South Yorks, and it would seem to have been entirely in character for him to have thrown every penny at it that he could then lay his hands on. His determination to handle the printing orders himself, in spite of lacking any experience in that field has earlier been offered as explanation for part of the cost overrun.

Against this theory is the fact that Nigel Farage MEP, the true power behind UKIP, was already well into his Euro fund raising and given his absolute determination to be re-elected it would seem inconceivable that he would have agreed to all the party's reserves being ploughed into Welsh and Scottish campaigns which would be of no direct benefit to him.

The suspicion that clearly arises therefore, is that the overspend may not all have gone into the elections, but been diverted into something else. As is now somewhat notoriously well known, in May 2003 one member of the NEC is reported to have asked the Party Treasurer for information on the overspend in Scotland and Wales. We believe what then happened was that upon hearing that the Treasurer had quite properly provided that information the leadership cabal made moves to have the Treasurer dismissed. As was later evident such a move was proved both unlawful and unconstitutional and his re-instatement followed. Whether the pertinent questions that should have been investigated then became lost in the resulting furore seems to me a possibility, so we raise a few of them again here.

How were the bills settled? Was it on the basis of Lott's signature alone or was another NEC member the co-signatory. If so, who was that other member. Looking at the e-mail on this subject of the 20th September, linked yesterday, which gives the treasurer's report on costs at 28 April (only three days before the election), and comparing that with the returns made to the Electoral Commission, several questions arise:

1) the treasurer's report shows total election costs of LS107,500; the EC return (adding Wales and Scotland
together) of LS117,682. How is the extra LS10,182 accounted for?
2) the treasurer reports LS8000 in dispute re leaflets, the EC return says LS24,349. That's quite a difference. Lott says the printers made errors and increased their charges, which was being dealt with by UKIP's lawyers. What was the outcome of this action?
3) the treasurer says LS14,000 was spent on broadcasts, Lott says ?15,000, and the EC was apparently told LS12,593. Why the discrepancy?
4) Lott says the Scottish elections were fought as a 'paper exercise', yet overall costs were only LS20,000 less than in Wales, and leaflets cost ?8,000 more.
The NEC voted to give ?5,000 to the Scottish campaign, yet Lott spent LS48,809. On a paper campaign . . .
why?

If answers are forthcoming on any of these points we will put them forward in a later blog. Meantime we must leave it to our readers to draw their own conclusions as to the motives behind the actions of the different cabal members during last April and May. We have earlier blogged theories that some of the money may have been diverted to meet legal costs in the Nikki Sinclair court case, or indeed have gone towards paying Dick Morris which source of funds still remains a mystery.

Finally, we have had another theory offered regarding the meeting with the Lord Mayor of Swansea and signing of the visitors book in the presence of an official photographer, which David Lott set such store by. Interestingly, the Deputy Lord Mayor, Cllr Richard Lewis, just happens to be a UKIP member who had stood for the party as candidate in South Wales West. Could this have been the reason for the invitation, rather than the 'success' of UKIP's campaign in Swansea?

posted by Martin |10:50 AM