Westministenders: Another Thread, another Shit Show. Its Trump Week

[RedToothBrush]

That is all.

www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/farage-maintains-his-proud-record-of-never-winning-an-election-20190607186385

Did I read Farage snuck out before the end of the count.

(Rearrange the sentence above to make "cunt" and "snout" ...)

So Farages BXP is a mere limited company ?

What does that make any "donations" with respect to tax ? And if they are not donations, they are they purchases ? Deposits ? Investments ? All of which are covered by a raft of existing laws ?

Then you have the VAT dimension, naturally.

I'm sure Nigel will be keen to ensure everything is ship shape and Bristol fashion, and not slip up in anyway .....

I don't recall Farage grumbling about 14 people in one house not voting for him when it came to the Euro elections. I wonder why not?

Wasn't Farage gloating a few weeks back about how many supporters he'd got and how much money he'd raised? Now he's whining about how much money Labour has.

DGR So Farages BXP is a mere limited company?

Interesting. It’s a private company limited by shares. (Most non-profit organisations or charities are set up as limited by guarantee).

I think that BXP as a limited company would be subject to corporation tax - and that donations would be taxable if they are used as trading income?

This is where you need TiP!

According to my Brexit Party MEP they had over 1000 activists knocking on doors around Peterborough so it’s not like they didn’t try. From his Twitter feed they seemed confident of a win yesterday evening.

So if we are spiralling towards a November GE what do we think Nigel’s long term aim is ? Replace the Conservative party in which case he is going to need to attract voters from elsewhere. Think he only got an extra 2000 more votes than UKIP did in 2015 and that’s with Labour and Conservatives haemorrhaging votes. More people seem to be not voting at all than purely switching to BXP.

Or will he be happy to pick up a few seats and continue to ‘pressure’ from the sidelines ? Seek to determine outcome without having to deal with responsibilities?

Maybe some sort of hideous Tory/BXP colab whereby he won’t stand a candidate where there is a sitting brexiteer MP ? It doesn’t seem as simple as constituency that votes leave = BXP win.

So if we are spiralling towards a November GE what do we think Nigel’s long term aim is ? Replace the Conservative party

How ? Moderate Tories have already jumped to (put your Shirley Temple ears on ) the good ship LiberalDemocrat .They're hardly going to swing behind Farage.

Interesting. It’s a private company limited by shares. (Most non-profit organisations or charities are set up as limited by guarantee).

Yes, because they want the tax breaks that being a charity allows.

I'm no accountant, but if BXP is a mere limited company, then the money coming in is either a loan, a purchase or an investment. All three of which are covered by some pretty tight laws.

If it is ..

a loan - then under what terms, and what do the lenders get in return ?

a purchase - then what are people buying ?

an investment - then as with "load" under what terms, and what does the regulator say ?

Farage is and always has been a spiv (he fucking looks like one FGS). Could it be he has out spivved himself ? Reached too far ?

As a limited company, he will also have to demonstrate that he really is trading. So P&L accounts need to be filed.

And we return to the thorny issue of VAT. Particularly on income from outside the EU.

He is going to need pristine accounts.

DGR - Farage is quite good at just managing to stay on the right side of things. E.g. the £350 million a week for the NHS was the one concrete promise the official Leave campaign made and he distanced himself from this.

I felt a sense of real relief to see Labour get a slight increase in their majority last night.

DG I did say what would Nigel want not what is realistic!

Did any of the Polls correctly predict the result? Was there an exit poll?

DGR - Farage is quite good at just managing to stay on the right side of things

Let's hope so. Because unlike what seems to be the perpetually mist-shrouded domain of electoral law - cloaked in ambiguity; company law is anally prescriptive and very easy to fall foul of. Especially if you believe your own hype - as all fallen great men did.

Is he drawing a wage from the company ? Under what terms ? Has he complied with all the money laundering checks incumbent upon business owners - particularly in regard to sources of income ?

There needs to be a reason why the Conservative Party (for example) is a registered political party which makes sense. Why hasn't the wheeze of creating a company to field candidates been tried before ? I refuse to believe Farage is some sort of wunderkind who has managed to read all of UK company and constitutional law and discovered a mechanism that has eluded the minds of people far cleverer than him.

I could believe that he thinks he's come up with a cunning plan, and is so far up his own image that he either didn't take, or ignored expert advice.

Either way, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of HRMC. They should already be on him, if the amounts of money mentioned are correct. It's not like they'd have to stop chasing Google or Amazon to look into The Brexit Party.

Thanks, woman That's important to remember:
the 3 year anniversary of Jo Cox's assassination by a fascist terrorist

Farage has often been reported as wanting to destroy the Tory party

Maybe partly because of his grudge that they refused to select him many years ago as a Tory MP candidate

However, probably because of a very cold practical calculation that it is his only way to power at Westminster:

He would also need to attract many of the 30% of Labour who are Leavers / blood & soil nationalists,
since some Tories will never vote for him

Some Tory moderates / Remainers would vote LDem, but not so many if they think it would let in someone like Corbyn

Corbyn really is the gift that keeps giving to the right & far right

Brexit Party is a registered as a political party with the Electoral Commission.

I think most political parties are set up as companies to deal with the financial side - looks like the Tories are The Conservative Party Foundation Ltd.

Meanwhile ...

Alberto Nardellii@AlbertoNardelli*

A Brexit update: There is no Brexit update.

• deputy chief negotiator has a new job

• chief negotiator is on the campaign trail

• EU27 ambassadors haven't met in ages

• and leaders are focussed on other issues

Brexit party is indeed different in structure & financing

all other UK political parties allow membership and
- at least to some extent - votes for delegates to indicate what policies they want

Farage only allows supporters, who can only donate;
they cannot get in his way by having different opinions to him
The Brexit party has NO members - except maybe Farage

his use of Paypal for donations reduces the ability to trace who is paying for it all
and whether foreign donors are breaking the £500 limit, maybe with automatically generated multiple smaller sums

Farage's fundraising for Brexit Party allows foreign donors to 'break rules', warns elections watchdog

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-party-donations-farage-electoral-commission-paypal-eu-elections-a8925276.html

Nigel Farage’s use of PayPall* to raise huge numbers of small donations for his Brexit Partyy* allows foreign donors to “evade the rules” a watchdog has warned.

The Electoral Commission said its investigation of the party’s fundraising methods is “ongoing”, after visiting its headquarters
.....
“This risk is that it increases the potential for individuals or organisations to evade the permissibility rules,
which primarily seek to prevent significant sums entering UK politics from overseas,”
it explained.

The commission stressed that it was the Brexit Party’s “responsibility” to “ensure it has the systems in place to maintain its compliance with the law”.

“Our review of the systems in operation by the Brexit Party is ongoing,”
....
the Brexit Party’s chairman admitted he did not know whether its PayPal account was taking foreign cash, saying:
“I don’t know what currencies people are paying in.”
< or obviously where they live / their nationality >
...
The PayPal method seeks sums of less than £500 because they are not recognised as official donations – which means the giver does not need to be identified.

Only gifts of £500 or more must be given by a “permissible donor”, who should either be somebody listed on the UK electoral roll or a UK-operating business registered at Companies Housee^.

However, parties are expected to use methods that guard against foreign donors making multiple small donations that, in total, exceed the £500 limit.

I'm not sure I heard this right, but I think Faragit has today sent a letter to the current PM, demanding a place at the negotiating table? (which obvs doesnt exist, given that there is no further negotiation to be had).

yolofish it's being reported on the BBC website.
How he has the gall I don't know.

If one MEP gets involved then surely all of them should, and I mean all.

I'm relaxed about the Brexit Party swerving political party regulations if it means he has to submit to UK company law instead.

If it turns out that companies can avoid corporate law by suddenly becoming "a party" then before the close of trading today we'll see a Google Party, a Starbucks party, and an Amazon party ...

They are registered as a political party, so they have to follow the laws for political parties.

They also have to follow the laws for companies

Farage's party - as in my earlier link - is an exact copy of the Italian 5-star model

It will be interesting to see whether this Italian model works as well under British law & enforcement

Boris wins court case!

Court challenge sorry