According to the Guardian, today, the Tories have beem borrowing heavily in order to fund their election campaign and could hjave to put up their former head office in Smith Square as collateral if some walthy supporters are not prepared to turn their loans into donations after the election.

There is something rather ironic about the possibility that the ‘party of business’ could conceivably go under not through its current moral and electoral bankrupcy but through good old fashioned simple insolvency.

Could that really happen? Who knows but you’d have to guess that even the patience of the Tory’s financial backers will wear thin eventually in the face of repeated electoral failures and an inability to put together anything that remotely resembles a credible challenge for government. The nightmare scenario would surely be if the Lib Dems were to overhaul the Tories into second place in the Commons and as the main opposition party, something which, if it did occur, would almost certainly leave the Tories in an impossible financial position.

One thing is certain, however. If it did happen and the Tory’s were to go bankrupt then John Hemming would still blame the DTI.

Despite Michael Howard’s incessant attacks on immigration - ‘tough on foreigers, tough on the causes of foreigners - his whole policy is rapidly beginning to unravel around him.

Howard wants to take only UN-approved refugees from UNHCR - UNHCR have refused to point blank to cooperate with such a policy, especially as it would result in Britain walking away from the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and Asylum Seekers and put us, globally, in the same category as Saudi Arabia, Libya and Noth Korea.

Howard wants limits on economic migration - the CBI, no less, doesn’t.

Howard says that Parliament would decide on the exact numbers of migrants to be allowed under his policy of immigration quotas, which as should be obvious is a completely disingenous statement worthy only of the most mendicant of ambulance-chasing lawyers - Parliament would have its say, but only by voting on quotas put to it by a Tory government and backed up by a full three line whip and guillotined debate to force the proposals through.

So, to ask a question I would have liked Paxo to ask last night, if Howard is so keen for Parliament to decide on quotas for immigration will he back up that statement by giving a commitment that should he come to power, the decision on quotas would be put to free vote in the Commons?

No, I don’t think he’ll buy that at all.

Footnote:

One of my all-time favourite films is the 1950’s version of Tenessee William’s classic play ‘Cat on Hot Tin Roof’ which features, amongst many other delights and excellent performances not least of which was Elizabeth Taylor in her prime, a bravura performance from Burl Ives int he role of ‘Big Daddy’.

I mention this because, of late, seeing Michael Howard at work’ invariably calls to mind the sight of Ives waxing loud and lyrical on the subject of ‘the smell of mendacity’ - the stench of which is perhaps the defining characteristic of the Tory’s entire campaign.

Day 6 and still no answer from John Hemming or any other Birmingham Lib Dem as to whether they’ve followed the party line and have been processing postal vote applications through their Birmingham Office.

So, today, we’ll try appealing to a wider consitutency in the hope of answer to this question.

According to John’s own testimony to the recent election court in Birmingham, the envelopes in which these applications are issued and returned are easily identified - so if anyone’s been in and around the Lib Dems office at 1772 Coventry Road, Birmingham, B26 1PD and has noticed whether they seem, suddenly to be getting rather a lot of post or, better still, has recognised application forms being delivered to this address, the hit the comments button and let us all know.

PoliticalHack, in the meantime, has nicely outed Annil Chandra - the Rover Project manager who’s being making noises in the press about forming both a worker’s cooperative at Rover and suing the DTI for negligence over the closure of Longbridge - as being the same Annil Chandra who stood as a Lib Dem candidate in the Birmingham City Council elections last year, in Bournville, a fact confirmed by a search of last year’s Birmingham electoral register which shows him to be, in true Little Britain style, then only Annil Chandra in the City.

By a complete coincidence (yeah, right!) the only other person talking publically about either a worker’s coop at Rover or trying to blame the DTI for its downfall happens to be…

… Birmingham Lib Dem Leader and Candidate for Birmingham Yardley, John Hemming, who, incidentally, has a fair of previous form for shameless political opportunism on display over at the usually excellent, but currently rather quiet, Lib Dem Watch.

Adding a little fisson of intrigue to the whole business, in the last few days the IcBirmingham website - how of the Birmingham Post and Evening Mail - has carried both Chandra’s allegations regarding the DTI and an allegation by Labour’s Perry Barr Candidate, Kahlid Mahmood, that Hemming and another Lib Dem candidate have been using an office at Birmingham City Council for campaign activities - which, if true, would be a breach of the Code Of Conduct which governs the actions and behaviour of councillors - and have, therefore been reported to the Standards Board - it should also be noted that John is, himself, no stranger to the Standard Board.

Strangely, both reports now appear to have been removed from the site as has a report regarding another Lib Dem parliamentary candidate in Birmingham who, it was alleged, was entertaining his ‘friends’ at the Council House at the taxpayer’s expense.