Playing Russian roulette in the Last Chance Saloon

The following was published on the web site of the Electoral Commission earlier today. As I correctly predicted during the recent leadership election campaign, the British National Party has, as usual, failed to submit its annual accounts on time. It was obvious that this was going to be the case, otherwise the good news would have been plastered all over the party main web site, with you-know-who doing his usual credit-grabbing act. Instead of which there was no mention of the 2010 accounts at all.

This also accounts for our Chairman's bringing the election timetable forward, so that the election would be over just before the bad news of the non-submission of the 2010 accounts by the statutory dead-line was published on the web site of the Electoral Commission.

Just how dumb do Messrs Griffin, Harrington and Jefferson think BNP members are?

This failed leadership is now running the risk of the Electoral Commission de-registering the party, preventing us from contesting elections, because of the leadership's persistent flouting of the party's statutory obligations.

It is not difficult to control and to account for an income and expenditure of barely more than a million pounds per annum. If such control and such accounting is chronically inadequate, as it has been, it suggests that it may be by design, rather than by accident. Why? Well, such apparent chaos makes any possible fraud very much more difficult to detect and investigate than would otherwise be the case.

It may be that the contents of the 2010 statement of accounts are so shocking, are such a damning indictment of Griffin's dereliction, that for them to be published so near to the leadership election would cause a revulsion of sentiment against Griffin and in favour of Andrew Brons.

As reported in an earlier article on this blog:

"Mr Dickens also found out that the reason the 2009 Central accounts were submitted late was that the Auditors Silver & Co were not paid for the work they did auditing the 2008 accounts, which amounted to £5,000, they were eventually paid. He told the packed hall today that the 2010 BNP Central accounts will also be late this year."

Have the party's auditors not yet been paid for their work on the 2009 accounts? Is this the reason the 2010 accounts (both central and regional) are overdue? Or is this merely a convenient "cover-story", which will be glibly trotted out when the 2010 accounts are eventually submitted to the Electoral Commission and published, some months from now?

Regulatory action

The following two parties failed to submit their accounts to the Commission

British National Party

Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship”

The British National Party’s Regional Accounting Unit also failed to submit its accounts to the Commission.

The Commission is now reviewing the circumstances of these cases. Late submission of accounts without reasonable excuse is a breach of party funding rules.

The Commission has a range of sanctions enabling it to deal with those who do not comply with the rules. These include issuing substantial fines and serving compliance notices requiring parties to take specific steps by a required date to ensure compliance with their obligations in future; where a party does not comply within the timescale set, they may face additional fines.

When deciding what sanction is appropriate the Commission considers a range of factors including whether parties have failed to comply with their obligations in the past. Repeated non-compliance is an aggravating factor which can significantly increase the penalties issued.

Peter Wardle, Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission said:

“The rules on party funding are intended to ensure that voters can see where political parties get their funding from, and how they spend it. The 2010 statements of accounts which we have published today help to provide transparency about the finances of the larger parties and their organisations, covering the period during which the campaigns for the 2010 UK general and local elections took place.”

“The majority of parties and accounting units have complied with the law by submitting their accounts on time. However, despite the guidance and advice we offer to help parties comply with the law, two parties have yet again failed to provide accounts on time. This is not acceptable. We have commenced formal case reviews into the circumstances; if we are satisfied that the rules have been broken and the parties concerned do not have a reasonable excuse, we will use our new powers to impose sanctions in accordance with our published enforcement policy, to ensure future compliance with the law.”

The Commission published the financial accounts of 343 political parties and 616 accounting units whose gross income and total expenditure were £250,000 or less on 26 May 2010. They can be found on the Electoral Commission’s website.

The Commission also publishes trends in parties' income, expenditure and net assets. The figures from 2003 to 2010 are available on our website.