According to their election expense returns for one constituency, Croydon Labour were paying a worker at a rate of just £26.89 per day during last year’s General Election campaign. And rival politicians reckon their numbers don’t add up, as WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, reports
Wrong sums: Labour’s Croydon South candidate Ben Taylor
Ben Taylor, Labour’s unsuccessful General Election candidate in Croydon South last year, could yet be subject to investigations by the Electoral Commission and complaints to the Met Police.
While Labour was enjoying a landslide victory last July, serial election loser Taylor still lost to Tory Chris Philp, although he did manage to reduce the MP’s majority by 10,000 votes compared to 2019.
But that result only came after months of dedicated campaigning, the likes of which Croydon South has never seen before from Labour. This included high-profile visits from senior party figures, as well as a carpet-bombing campaign of multiple leaflets.
Labour even rented a high-street advertising billboard and hired a shop in Coulsdon to act as Taylor’s “campaign headquarters”.
But now that all election accounts have been filed, as is required by law, some are suggesting that Taylor’s financial numbers just don’t add up.
Under the terms of the Representation of the People Act 1983, inaccurate declarations of election expenses are illegal and can attract a range of severe punishments.
Ian Parker is Croydon Conservatives’ full-time employee, as well as a councillor in Coulsdon, and he reckons that there is something not quite right about Labour’s election expenses for Croydon South in 2024.
Something’s not right: Tory agent Ian Parker
And Parker has considerable first-hand expertise in this respect: Tory parliamentary election candidates in Croydon in both 2010 and in 2015 had their spending put under the spotlight.
Parker, as the election agent, was responsible for keeping accounts and ensuring his candidates did not spend more than allowed.
In 2010, Parker was hauled before a High Court judge and admitted that he was “horrified” to discover that errors had been made in the election expenses accounts for Tricky Dicky Ottaway, the then MP for Croydon South, and Gaffe-prone Gavin Barwell, who became MP for Croydon Central that year.
In court, Parker admitted that the declarations for Barwell and Ottaway left off a “notional charge” for the use of office space during the campaigns and also under-estimated amounts spent on the printing of election leaflets.
Mr Justice Silber decided that, because neither Barwell nor Ottaway were aware of the errors – or at least, that’s what they said – he accepted that the mistakes were “inadvertent” and there had been “no want of good faith” on his part.
Fast-forward 15 years, and Parker’s not so inclined to give a similar benefit of the doubt to Ben Taylor or his election agent last year, Michael Collins, the Labour Party’s “local organiser”.
Parker wrote to Taylor last September, shortly after the returns were published. Taylor, nor anyone in Croydon Labour, has never replied.
“His failure to respond to questions is concerning,” Parker said, pointing to what he describes as “a vagueness and lack of transparency in his return of election expenses”.
The spending limit for the election period was £17,287.
Taylor’s expenses return shows that he spent just £15,348.
That includes paying Collins £672.30 during the campaign period from May 30 (the dissolution of Parliament) and General Election day on July 4.
Temporary fascia: Sarah Jones, Maddie ‘Mrs Anonyvoter’ Henson, Ben Taylor and Natasha Irons outside Labour’s ‘Nuts!’ office in Coulsdon
That figure works out to about £26.89 per day (assuming a five-day working week, although election campaigns usually include late hours and weekend working). In any case, it’s well below the London Living Wage.
Labour “launched” its campaign headquarters (in a shop previously trading as “Guitar Nuts”) at the beginning of April last year.
The Croydon South Labour campaign HQ in Coulsdon cost a similarly skinny amount: just £720. Who knew commercial rents in Croydon were such good value?
In his letter to Taylor, sent six months ago, Parker wrote: “As someone who has previously been before the High Court due to minor oversights in Returns of Election expenses…”, just a joker is Parker, “…I feel it right that I should give you the opportunity to answer a number of queries having looked at your Return for the 4th July 2024 election.”
And Parker added, with more than a hint of threat: “I have been in touch with the Electoral Commission who have given me advice and raised a possible course of action involving the police should I not be satisfied with answers to my questions.”
Among Parker’s question, he asked: “You have declared all your payments as ‘notional’ as payments have been made for your campaign by the ‘Croydon South Labour Party’, ‘London Labour’ and the ‘Labour Party – Campaigns’.
“On request, are each of these organisations in a position to provide the invoices/evidence of payments made to provide the transparency we’re looking for?”
Parker also asked whether Collins was “paid at or above the legal minimum?”
Starmer surge: even Labour’s landslide election win last July was not enough to win a parliamentary seat in Croydon South for Ben Taylor
“I have made enquiries about the cost of hiring the billboard you used in Coulsdon during the regulated period. I’m sure you’re aware the full commercial cost should be declared. Can you evidence please that the £210 declared fully represents the commercial cost?
“Please indicate whether the cost of the poster itself is included and, if not, is that cost declared elsewhere in the return?”
Sources within Croydon Labour are unimpressed by Parker’s sudden desire for transparency and accountability. “Given the way Ian and his colleagues at the Town Hall, including Mayor Perry, have to have even the most basic details dragged out of them, this apparent shift and desire for accountability seems more than a bit hypocritical – and desperate.
“With the Mayoral elections little over a year away, I can only assume they are in full panic mode and are looking to embarrass Labour at every opportunity.
“People have been getting their Council Tax bills in the past fortnight, with Council Tax up 27% under Mayor Perry. The Tories have been getting extremely poor feedback on the doorstep.
“But the top and bottom of it is that Ben Taylor and Labour are not accountable to the Conservatives.
“By not replying to the Tories, Croydon Labour could, for once, be playing a strategic blinder. If the return is accurate, then any complaint to the police would backfire spectacularly by enabling Labour to accuse the Croydon Tories of a vexatious complaint and wasting police time.
“And as Ian Parker knows only too well, the police and the courts are usually reluctant to act in cases such as these – even when they have clear and compelling evidence.”
Read more: Labour polling shows MP Reed more unpopular than Starmer
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Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
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Are we surprised? Croydon Labours dark arts continue! this is the worse Labour Group I have ever experienced and I’ve seen the days of Liverpool’s Derek Hatton.
That is why after over 50 years of supporting Labour I resigned noting I have been a Croydon resident for over 30 years. No experience policies and will not challenge the Labour leadership on nonsocialist policies that are persecuting the vulnerable.
Ben Taylor and Labour might not be accountable to the Conservatives, but they are accountable to the law and the electorate. By not replying to the Tories, Croydon Labour will be making a strategic blunder.
If they don’t clear this matter up now, they’ll spend the next 58 weeks with a stench of suspicion and mistrust hanging over them, a throwback to the bad old days of the Gang of Four and Brick by Brick. Not the brightest way to prepare for the elections next May, and hardly the actions of a party and candidate with nothing to hide.
If we can’t trust them over the small matter of election expenses of someone who can’t get elected, we can’t have any faith in them taking over the council again
Labour’s answer to the Tories on this seems to be “We’re no worse than you”. Which might be true but is not particularly convincing to the average voter.
Limits to election spending are important, to go some way towards creating a level playing field for all candidates. It would be disastrous if we moved towards the American system where money can buy elections and even choose who are to be the candidates.
If we have limits they need to be enforced. It looks to me as though the questions raised by Croydon Tories are pertinent ones.
Parker should know. He is as dodgy as they come with his track record and seems all so keen to become the gamekeeper after a long time as a poacher. No doubt Labour will just use the same old never knowingly knew twaddle which is deployed as a get out card and already used by Parker. These pair of parties are as dire and mediocre as one another. It has got to the point that in reality there is nothing but the wind they make that is the difference between them in practical policy implementation. They are both rotten in plain sight.