I gather this is just a part of the financial chaos Ukip is in with a number of its people claiming not to have been paid since June as the EU is demanding back money that was perloined from the tax payers, even Annabelle Fuller is bleating on Twitter, whether in her own name or one of her various aliases I didn’t bother checking as Ukip is becoming more of an irrelevance daily.
Ukip’s only allegedly consequential backer Arron Banks is reported in the media as lacking in income with sources drying up, it seems and Farage’s contacts who funded him seem to have left him dependent on his ureliable income as an entertainer on LBC.
Although I will post details of consequence regarding Ukip they have become something of an irrelevance, hence the slowdown of postings. It does rather look as if it is likely that having lost so many sources of income an article shortly may well announce that Ukip is in that legally parlous state of trading when knowingly bankrupt!
The UK Independence party and its anti-EU allies in Brussels have lost access to their biggest source of European campaign funding following a series of scandals over alleged misuse and misappropriation of funds.
After becoming insolvent in April, the Ukip-dominated pan-European Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE) has now missed a deadline to register for EU funding, losing access to as much as €1.5m in 2018 alone, according to officials involved in the process.
The apparent demise of the ADDE and the loss of the funding will add to Ukip’s woes and will be a headache for the party’s new leader, Henry Bolton, its fourth in a year.
Ukip is wrestling with a weaker financial position at home as well as demands from Brussels for the ADDE to repay €172,655 allegedly misspent on national electioneering. U
kip and its European allies have denied any wrongdoing. European political parties, made up of coalitions of national parties and parliamentarians, have since 2004 been able to draw on an annual €30m pot of EU grants that can cover up to 85 per cent of party expenditure, including campaign costs for European elections.
This helped bankroll Ukip electioneering, and in past years the ADDE has used this route to receive more than €1m annually.
Roger Helmer, a former Ukip MEP, described drawing on the fund as “liberating” money from the EU. But since November, the ADDE has been embroiled in probes over how its EU support was used.
A European Parliament-appointed auditor found that almost €500,000 was inappropriately spent on national opinion polling and election campaigns in the UK and Belgium. The parliament demanded the ADDE repay €172,655. The auditor also found that almost €34,000 of funding had been wrongly claimed by the Initiative for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE), the ADDE’s political foundation. The ADDE has denied any wrongdoing.
The IDDE no longer has an obvious online presence and couldn’t be reached for comment.
Tighter funding rules are squeezing the support available to fringe parties in Europe.
Last year the European Parliament imposed conditions requiring applicants to have guarantees from a bank with an A1 credit rating, something the ADDE has been unable to secure. In March of this year, the party’s executive director Yasmine Dehaene resigned.
Other ADDE members include the Belgian People’s party, the Czech Party of Free Citizens, France’s Debout la France, Lithuania’s Order and Justice party, and the Swedish Democrats. All members will be cut off from EU funds.
Mischael Modrikamen, head of the Belgian People’s party, said the ADDE’s decline was a result of a politically motivated campaign against Eurosceptic groups. “There is a trend in the EU right now with a clear aim to defund all the parties that are opposed to the European project,” he said. “Since most of the ADDE’s funding comes from the EU budget, we were forced to put an end to activities. We decided we had no other choice than to appoint a liquidator.”
He said that some of the ADDE’s member parties may attempt to form a new party next year to regain access to funds. Eleven European political parties have successfully registered for the 2018 funding year, down from 16 in 2017.
It suggests the series of changes during the past three years have halted the proliferation of parties eligible for EU funding over the past decade, and have even started to reverse the trend.
The continuing controversy around party funding has highlighted wider questions about whether a top-down EU attempt to support and fund pan-European politics is realistic or desirable.
Pieter Cleppe, head of the Brussels office of think-tank Open Europe, said the rules were “opaque” and invited abuse. “Not only do people set up obscure schemes to obtain funds, it also enables the European Parliament to pick and choose who to go after, based on ideological preferences,” he said.
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
Ukip-vs-EUkip 