Debate Magazine

Let's Hope the Electoral Commission Has a Closer Look at This...

Posted on the 18 March 2014 by Markwadsworth @Mark_Wadsworth
From The Daily Mail  A powerful new lobbying group containing dozens of the country’s super-rich – and backed by a Tory MP – has been set up to thwart moves to introduce a mansion tax.  The secretive outfit hopes to overturn public support for the proposed levy on multi-million-pound homes by arguing that it is ‘economically illiterate’ and would trigger a devastating crash in property prices...  Not many Poor Widows In Mansions were present, of course, but Boris Johnson has invented a new human shield: "Labour and the Lib Dems would have you believe that the people they want to hit are oligarchs and international bankers.  "But the overwhelming majority of victims would be Britons who find themselves living in a house that has nudged over the threshold... ‘It is hard to think of a tax that is more viciously unfair. It hits families who have worked hard and traded up the property ladder only to find themselves walloped for their success."  Not many of those present either... The new lobbying group, organised by a property mogul who operates in some of the capital’s most exclusive areas, was discreetly launched last November at a meeting in a West End restaurant attended by 65 of the richest people in the UK – including Russian oligarchs and multi-millionaires from the Middle East.  They were addressed by Tory MP Richard Harrington, who urged them to ‘donate to the Conservatives’ if they wanted to stop the levy. Of course, as we well know from when UKIP got turned over by the Electoral Commission a few years ago (quite unreasonably and unfairly as it happens) political parties are only allowed to accept donations from people who are on the UK electoral register, which is British citizens and EU citizens resident in this country (plus a handful of Commonwealth citizens).*  So let's hope these kleptocrats donate generously and then El Comm claws all the money back again. * The Lib Dems circumvented this by accepting donations from the UK front company of an overseas resident, who happened to be a convicted fraudster, but El Comm turned a blind eye for some strange reason.

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