Backhander: it seems the Tories gave big Covid-related contracts to their friends, possibly in order to have their friends give the money back to boost their expanded election chest.

Voter ID – the new law that means you must bring a recognised form of identification to a polling station before you can vote – is not the only way the Conservatives are planning to rig the next election in their favour.

Besides disenfranchising people who don’t have the recognised forms of ID, the Tories are also planning to spend their way back into power, after increasing the amount political parties are able to spend by 80 per cent – from £19.5 million to around £35 million.

In 2019, the Tories came closest to the then-limit by spending £16.5m. Labour spent £12m and the Liberal Democrats £14.5m.

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You can expect the Tories to spend a lot more at this year’s election – especially as they have increased the threshold for publicly declaring the names behind individual donations from £7,500 to £11,180.

This means Tory donors can donate £11,180 anonymously.

Labour’s Brent MP Dawn Butler reckons this is so money given to Tory friends in bloated contracts during the Covid-19 crisis can come back into party hands, to be used in the election campaign – especially as the changes were pushed through by statutory instrument, with no debate or vote in Parliament.

One of the most important questions we must ask is, where are they getting the money from? It is hard to see how this won’t result in more unaccountable dark money being funnelled into our political system, including through loopholes from foreign entities as we have seen in the past.

So, when the Government raise the election cap by 80%, I am suspicious. Will there be more shady deals? Will Tory donors be calling in favours? And how many government contracts will be handed to their mates before the general election?

There is no doubt in my mind that they will try to outspend everyone else again at the next election – as they have historically done – to communicate their message on all fronts. Perhaps it’s no coincidence these changes have been made while the Tories lag behind in several opinion polls.

This Writer’s question is more to the point: how will the money be spent?

I reckon we’ll see more targeting of online advertising – especially to those who might be described as the most impressionable of voters.

These people need to be reminded that in 2019, 88 per cent of the Conservatives’ most widely-promoted ads featured claims which had been flagged by independent fact-checking organisations … as not correct or not entirely correct.

This Writer expects that proportion to increase this year.

So next time you see a Tory election advert, remember that it most probably won’t be true, and may have been bought with money that originally belonged to the public purse but was given away by the Tories, just so they could take it back in donations and use it to win the election.

Source: You probably didn’t notice the Tories’ latest ploy to steal the election

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