Well, of course, it *is* an argument, just not a very good one.

Notwithstanding landing Mike Smithson in the shit, it’s not at all clear that everyone *is* doing it. Most of the election agents I know live in mortal fear of being picked up on this sort of thing, and go out of their way to avoid ambiguities in what is and what is not an election expense.

Everybody’s doing it, eh? I remember that argument working SO well for Nadine Dorries last year.

Presumably Zac’s next step will involve accusing C4 of torturing him, then calling for an end to the ‘witch hunt’ lest someone commit suicide.

BTW, browsing through the election expenses for Anne Milton, it appears that she used the same figure-halving dodge described here http://j.mp/d7Fln6

One invoice for posters mainly featuring Anne Milton’s face and name actually reads “to be used in 2 campaigns – 50% of cost allocated to this election”; they only declare half of the cost because of a plan to use the posters again in the future, apparently (according to Zac’s testimony) this refers to an upcoming local election in which the candidate whose name/face dominates the poster is not running.

Zac Goldsmith’s defence for his use of this dodge is that these posters also say ‘vote Conservative’ along the bottom.

Perhaps this 50:50 spilt could be better adjusted to take into acount that the second election involves use of only 10% of the surface area )

Looking closer at Zac Goldsmith’s statement, it appears that he (and possibly Anne Milton and many other Tory MPs as well) was referring to an ‘other’ election that took place on the same day…

“Before having the posters designed, which were centrally designed, we checked – we didn’t want to have to do two posters – local election and national election because people aren’t going to have two posters in their garden. It says my name, my picture and Vote Conservative. This is absolutulely standard across the country.”
source: http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/page/display/grZTPwV8t/1

… making my initially facetious point all the more contentious. The vast majority of the poster’s surface area is given over to (and likely to mostly benefit) the candidate running for MP, not the party or any other candidates running under their umbrella. How is it fair that the cost is split 50:50 (if we are to accept this dodge at all)?

What an arrogant shit. He comes across like much of his class – and political party – as a vile bully with a nasty threatening streak. I do hope the voters of Richmond can kick the cloaca out.

I doubt whatever technical transgressions of election law he may or may not have perpetrated are going to create a fraction of the impression that his extraordinary on-air display of petulance will. Aren’t they all supposed to get media training nowadays or is that just for the oiks?

Yes, but even though those of us with, you know, eyes could tell that he made a frightful arse of himself, over at ConHome they are almost all astonishingly pro-Zac. (Apparently all non-news media is inherently left wing or something.) There are a couple of voices of sanity there, but not many.

I think this kind of bluster is what passes for “argument” in right wing circles – but as usual (and I can be a bore on this subject, I know) Bob Altemeyer covers that brief much better than I could hope to.

Sorry, make that non-print media.

#1 You are totally right, most agents I know are very very careful to avoid even the appearance of impropietry (sp?)

I’ve been an agent on many occasions and I’m sure there are plenty of people on this site who have been too. If I’m not sure, I over-declare spending rather than under-declare it.

It’s not wrong to split some costs between local candidates and national candidates, in a proportionate way, where they have benefited both campaigns. What is wrong is when you are clearly taking the piss and splitting it in a way that is purely designed to reduce a parliamentary candidate’s returns, at the same time as spending up to the limit. I’d also be interested to see if the splitting was a one-way process, or he split materials primarily aimed at benefiting local candidates with his own campaign too. In local election candidates’ materials which had a short passage urging people to vote for our parliamentary candidate, we actually included 15% of the costs of that leaflet in the parliamentary candidate’s costs, which would’ve been splitting it the wrong way had we simply wanted to reduce the costs in the campaign we spent the most on. (We didn’t spend anywhere near the limit in any campaigns.)

I’d like to know re: the jackets – if he declared the stickers, fair enough. But surely if he is arguing the jackets will be used over successive elections, he should be saying they will be used for a specific number of elections, then dividing the cost between those elections and including a portion of it in THIS year’s returns. His answer on C4 News seemed to suggest he hadn’t done that.

If CCHQ have been offering advice like Zac Goldsmith suggests, they must’ve been walking a very thin line.

Tim @2/3, yes, that’s very contentious, and I’ll be looking up my MP soon as well, because when we did our apportioning for that sort of shared poster, it was roughly 80/20 split.

It is legit to share allotment of costs between council and national campaign (I was a local election agent this time, had to work very closely with the GE agent), but not 50/50 if the whole poster is about the GE campaign.

Those I’ve spoken to that know electoral law think some of his defence is correct, some of it is obviously false, and a lot of it is unclear, so a test case is needed. I’d like to congratulate one of the wealthiest inheritees in the House to volunteer his services in the defence of such a test case.

The law really is an unclear mess. Our party guidance is to play safe and not get in trouble, it appears the Tories have the opposite approach if Goldsmith’s right when he says it was all cleared by Conservative central office.

Weirdly, the jackets might be completely legit, if they’re for reuse, you ‘rent’ stuff from the actual purchaser (normally the constituency party) and allot a percentage, the guidelines for that in the electoral commission form put me off doing that with too many items, but our constituence campaign did do it, we have a lot of big board posters that get used every year.

not just for committing crimes but simply because they have lost the trust and respect of their constituents

I’d like to say #IagreewithZac, but despite the circumstances, I still don’t.

Recall is something I’ve very cautious about, but recall at this level would be insanely unworkable.

He’s crap at poker too and you could see why.

In this interview he went all in on a bluff and Snow called him.

Lovely.

Oeuf sur le visage of Zac Goldsmith.

Everything about him points to a fella who has had everything go his way in life and is not used to being contradicted.

His attempt to shout down someone disagreeing with him show he really is Daddy’s boy.

And best of all is his the bit about being turned down for his interview the day before.

The idea that he can pick which interviewer he is willing to talk to is an absolute joke. Political figures have been trying that for decades and no respectable news station (so Sky not included) has ever let that happen.

It was always understood that to get an interview about a big issue with a top figure, you have to play the game a bit and put up an interviewer of particular status.

But Zac’s a backbench nobody who’se in the middle of a scandal. Trying to fix the terms of his own interview is ridiculous. How did he think that was ever going to come off?

I seem to remember the dumb ass stating that if he didn’t get his way with some abstract bit of policy detail that he’d resign and force a byelection.

He’s thick, woefully inexperienced, nieve, arrogant, unpricipled, aloof and a bloody liability. Just because he either has well connected mates or has undue influence because of his cash does not a useful MP make. Ridiculous.

The idea that he can pick which interviewer he is willing to talk to is an absolute joke. Political figures have been trying that for decades and no respectable news station (so Sky not included) has ever let that happen.

Really?

“Gordon Brown has refused to be interviewed by me for five years.” – Andrew Neil, BBC

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6819353.ece

How many times was he interviewed by Andrew Marr during that time?

#14 There’s a difference between saying which programme you’re willing to go on and which interviewer within a programme you’re willing to be interviewed by. This Week is beneath a sitting PM imo. Also, Marr is higher up the pecking order than Neil, whereas Goldsmith wanted to be interviewed by someone lower down the pecking order! Not comparable.

flowerpower

The response to that is in the post you quoted from.

1 – brown was a big figure
2 – you have to play the status game to get big figures
3 – he wasn’t hit by a scandal

When Dianne Abbott hypocritically sent her son to one of the most expensive schools around – she didn’t get to choose whhich interviewers questioned her about it. And that was a less explosive scandal.

Thanks Tim

you sum that up better than I could.

If this were a trial and he were in the witness box, I think he would have certainly made the prosecution’s case.

He forgets that we’re all just a great big jury pool.

#14 Flowerpower

Oh please, Andrew Neil is hardly primetime tv. His journalistic achievements are in the past (were there any, I only remember him being the story?) and it obviously stings that he’s never mentioned in the context of the BBC ‘big beasts’.

What a tosser Zac is. Just like his father.

I have always been deeply suspicious of his so called environmental beliefs. It seemed a good way to bash the Labour govt when conservatives were just out of office and very unpopular. It gave him a name, and good publicity for when the tide changed and he could get into parliament. Just another tory wanker who has never had to do an honest days work in his life. And so like his father threatening people with legal action.

So glad to see Con Home once again showing that expense scandals are ok if you are a tory.

Sally @ 20

I have always been deeply suspicious of his so called environmental beliefs.

The man thinks of himself as an ‘environmentalist Conservative’ or vice versa, I am never quite sure, but no matter in what order you put the words, the resulting term is an oxymoron.

The modern Conservative Party’s ethos is one of ostentatious use of finite resources without a single regard to the wider consequences. A principle completely incompatible with environmentalism. You can easily confirm this by looking at any Tory blog/website you care to mention. He claims to be a believer in AGW, if so, why stay in a Party where most of its members/supporters do not? What is he getting out of associating with obvious Tory halfwits? Is he attempting to ‘convert’ these scum to the cause? If so, then he must have an astounding level of naivety that even Matt Munro would shudder at.

The fact is that Goldsmith is a member of the greedy, selfish and anti science party means he supports the ‘destroy, destroy, destroy’ ideology more than the ‘environmental’ movement and be counted as an enemy of the latter, no matter how well meaning.

Fans of the Goldsmith gene pool will have particularly enjoyed his brave decision to break with British political custom and practice by issuing threats against the media.

Eh? Because politicians have never taken issue with the media? Were you asleep for the whole of the last forty years? Crossman, Bevan and Phillips ring any bells? Bad Al Campbell’s entire career?

tim f is right.

‘Everybody’s doing it’ is not TRUE.
The posters thing is the killer. NO agent I know would do anything so mad as to pretend that posters with YOUR name on them are for use in ANOTHER election (the local election).

This guy should go down. This election should be re-run.