The cost of campaigning

Posted on April 11, 2007
Filed Under Election |

Last weekend the Tories started asking why Gordon hasn’t declared any expenses for his forthcoming Leader election campaign.

These initial inquiries have been followed up with an article in today’s Times which not only suggests that the Labour party is trying to prevent the Electoral Commission from overseeing the election, but that Brown’s campaign is hidden within the “Treasury or third party organisations like the Smith Institute”.  Like we didn’t know.

As the article points out, Brown could argue that there is no campaign going on or that there is no campagin website, so he doesn’t need to declare anything.  Well, he’s appointed Jack Straw to manage it, so certainly there must be a team for him to manage.  And everyone knows, even at an early stage, running a campaign costs money.

There is certainly some activity on the web too.  As Dizzy has discovered the back end preparations for Gordon’s leadership website are well underway.  All the domains for gordonbrown4leader@ have been registered by silverfish TV, the political campaign company whose clients include the Treasury.

Of course the last thing Brown wants to do is declare his official campaign this early by announcing what’s been spent and who’s been funding it.  But if this pressure continues, he may have to.

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