Friday, March 31, 2006

Tory Lenders: Big Deal About Nothing

These are the people who have lent the Conservative Party money. Big deal. To my knowledge not a single one of these has been nominated for an honour since they loaned the money. And that's the difference between this list and Labour's.

Henry Angest £550,000
Lord Ashcroft £3.6m
Dame Vivien Duffield £250,000
Johan Eliasch £2.6m
Alan Lewis £100,000
Cringle Corporation Ltd £450,000
Graham Facks-Martin £50,000
Michael Hintze £2.5m
Lord Laidlaw £3.5m
Victoria, Lady de Rothschild £1m
Raymond Richards (deceased) £1m
Lord Steinberg £250,000
Charles Wigoder £100,000

I hope that the media will now understand that there are differences between these loans and those made to Labour. I list the reasons in an earlier post today.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cameron has blown it by not publishing the full list - ie refusing to disclose who leant money before the election and has subsequently been paid off. Not good.

Anonymous said...

Surely this is the worst thing for the Tories to do?
The fact that the indentities of those individuals who lent money but who have since been repaid are being kept secret just adds fuel to the fire.

Who are the people who have been repaid?
When were they repaid? Yesterday to keep them off today's list?
Are any of them foreign doners?
Have any of them been nominated for an honour since they loaned the money?

This is going to run and run and kill Cameron.

My huge respect for Cameron as a strategic & tactical thinker has taken a knock. An A-Level politics student could tell you this was a stupid move.

Presumably he's going to Downing St. on Monday to do a deal to kill the story. I hope Blair sticks the knife in.

Anonymous said...

Is the Lord Steinburg the same one who gave money to the Labour Party? Talk about hedging your bets...

Anonymous said...

Iain - but surely the point is that the loaners get the odd bauble after an election victory. Twas ever thus.

I have long thought Blair is another Lloyd George - a political freeloader, he splits party when in a dominant position and has a fued with his main rival - look what happened to his party next.

And he has a peerages business

Anonymous said...

I see Alistair Campbell has been reborn as John Mills

Anonymous said...

"One assumes that those who have been repaid didn't wish to have their names made public."

Or alternatively that they were repaid because Cameron did not wish their names to be made public. Equally possible.

For me the real story is tax not secrecy. I suspect that there is a tax dodge in making a loan which you have no intention of having repaid rather than a gift.

Anonymous said...

It's an interesting point of view that repaying a loan, thus proving it to have been a loan rather than a way of accepting a donation you'd rather not have to declare (or is possibly not legally acceptable as a donation under PPERA 2000), makes you corrupt.

Anonymous said...

There is always some reason behind these donations - political or self gain.

Michael Hintze donation has to be questioned? What political interest can he have as an Austrailian?

Is this a diversionary tactic for tax avoidance for all the millions he makes each year and that goes offshore without paying UK tax?