Tories Call for an Inquiry into Balls' Bung

The Tories are calling for a Civil Service inquiry into the circumstances surrounding a 2005 payment of nearly £100,000 to Ed Balls from the already under statutory investigation Smith Institute. The payment was allegedly for his work on two pamphlets published by the Institute. Ex-employees confirm that he was never seen at the Institute's offices during his 8 month tenure despite being paid an unheard of (for wonkland) monthly salary of over £10,000.

The Smith Institute was used as a slush fund for the Brownies. It functioned effectively as Gordon's policy and political secretariat in his long putsch for the premiership. Once Gordon Brown was installed in No. 10, Konrad Caulkett moved seamlessly from his executive position at the Smith Institute to become a Special Adviser in Downing Street. During Konrad's time at the supposedly non-political charity he assisted Ed Ball's 2005 election campaign in his Normanton constituency whilst still drawing a salary from the charity.

Who stumped up for Ed Balls' generous payments package? Could it have been wealthy property developer John Milligan? Pictured here with Brown, he is a trustee of Gordon's charity, the Smith Institute, has given tens of thousands to the Labour party and even made a personal donation of £25,000 to Gordon's leadership coffers.

For some strange reason Ed Balls failed to properly declare his income from the Smith Institute or get the necessary Treasury clearance required for a Special Adviser before taking the sinecure. The rules were designed to prevent conflicts of interest. It also turned out that the Treasury had made undeclared payments to the Smith Institute, by mistake of course, which were only discovered when Guido succeeded in pushing the Charity Commissioners to investigate. They were the result of a mix-up according to yet another Smith Institute trustee Paul Myners, one of Gordon's favourite businessman who only remembered (during the week the investigation was announced) that he was himself supposed to make good the payment, some two years later.

Of course the Smith Institute received free advice and polling data from another trustee, Deborah Mattinson, whose firm coincidentally won government contracts for which they charged the Treasury £3 million. Do you think there is a strong piscine smell here?

Brown : "I Don't Look at Polls"

Brown has just told Sky's Adam Boulton that he doesn't look at opinion polls. An absolutely blatant lie.

He even has a personal pollster - Deborah Mattinson - who must now dread telling him the bad news. After Mattinson told him he would lose the marginals, he bottled having an election. When he told the press pack that they weren't a factor they were incredulous. When he told Cameron the same at PMQs the Tory benches fell about laughing. He is like most politicians, poll obsessed.

Facts :

• Labour is polling at levels not seen since the nadir of Blair.
• The News of the World tomorrow will report that on "economic competence", Labour has finally lost the positive poll differential it has enjoyed over the Tories ever since the 1992 ERM debacle.
• The Mail on Sunday has a poll rating Brown as less competent than John Major and Darling as less competent than Lamont.
• If Blair were leading Labour they would be neck and neck with the Tories instead of 5% behind according to the same BPIX poll.
  

Maybe it would be better for his state-of-mind if he doesn't look at the papers tomorrow...

Northern Rock CEO Sold Millions in Shares Before Collapse

Adam Applegarth did pretty well out of Northern Rock shares in the year before it collapsed. He has trousered many millions over the years, allowing him to enjoy an Aston Martin with a Ferrari for his missus parked in the driveway of his mansion. His confidence in his bank's business model long term is demonstrated by his selling of £1.5 m of shares in two days. (25 Jan 2006 sold 52,253 at 957p for £500,061.21 and the next day he sold another 111,426 at 957p for £1,066,346.82).

His faith in the business was shown by his purchase last April of just 262 shares worth a little under £3,000. Not a lot of faith in the business from the boss was there?

Enron's crooks were massive financial supporters of the Republican party. Northern Rock gave half-a-million to Labour's favourite think-tank, the IPPR. It also employed Gordon's personal pollster, Deborah Mattinson, as an adviser. Of all the pollsters to seek advice from, why her? Why give money to that think-tank? Nowadays it is very rare for publicly quoted companies to make politically partisan donations.

OLR Win 90% of Government Contracts

OLR has become the Halliburton of British politics. Whereas Dick Cheney's old firm was suspiciously successful in winning war profiteering contracts, Gordon's crony pollster Deborah Mattinson's OLR wins focus group and citizen's juries contracts. Guido explained how this works in September. In May Guido revealed the £153,484.38 focus group. Why does Gordon like OLR so much? Well could it be that they get (free of charge) research results that give Gordon 92% approval ratings? Teasy May has now written to Gus O'Donnell, the head of the civil service, demanding an inquiry. She says "Citizens' juries are increasingly looking like a sham... Not only are these glorified focus groups wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money but he has the nerve to award the contracts to his personal polling crony." It is corrupt, plain and simple.

Dave Attacks Gordon's Borrowed Slogans

Dave touched on something today that (surprisingly) he hasn't used before. Brown's borrowing of an old NF/BNP slogan to blow a dog-whistle to Dagenham voters -

"Take the slogan the Prime Minister wheels out every week – 'British jobs for British workers.' If he could only see how embarrassed Labour MPs are, how they shudder whenever he says those words. Well, I’ve done of a bit of work on this slogan of the Prime Minister’s. First, let’s be clear what they want us to think. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has told us that there should be no doubt. It is – and I quote – 'explicitly a British jobs for British people campaign…'... I did a bit more research to find out where he got his slogans from. Here’s one he borrowed off the Nation Here’s one he borrowed off the National Front. Here’s another one he borrowed off the British National Party. Where was his moral compass when he was doing that?"

Knuckle-dragging barrel scraping politics aimed at winning back Dagenham council estate votes for Labour from the BNP. Labour activists are embarrassed by the slogan, Nick Griffin is flattered by it. In reality it is meaningless, favouring Britons for British jobs is illegal. It is just a Deborah Mattinson focus-group tested dog-whistle slogan.

UPDATE : Ben Brogan has just updated his blog with something Guido hadn't noticed, Dave "waved a copy of the BNP's May 2006 newsletter at Gordon Brown during their Commons exchanges earlier" the document was headlined "Keep British jobs for British workers".

Sith's Deborah Mattinson is Advisor to Northern rock

Gordon Brown's personal pollster, Deborah Mattinson, advises Northern Rock on corporate responsibility programmes. Presumably it was she who advised giving circa half-a-million quid to New Labour's IPPR think-tank. How many more of Gordon's circle have their hand in the Northern Rock till?

Green Groups Accuse OLR of PR Stitch-Up

According to the front page of the Guardian Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and the Green Alliance are claiming that the government is using Deborah Mattinson's Opinion Leader Research to distort the evidence and get the required result on nuclear power from bogus public consultations.

Duh! Of course - that is why Gordon hires and re-hires his personal pollster's firm to the tune of £3 million. She tells him what he wants to hear.

Greenpeace says that they along "with other NGOs, trade unions, renewable energy companies and representatives of the nuclear industry met with OLR and the government in July to discuss this stakeholder briefing pack. This document was full of pro-nuclear opinion masquerading as fact ... This document is fundamentally flawed and cannot form the basis for a full public consultation." So it is not just Guido who thinks OLR's work is another form of push-polling.

Citizen's Consultants

Organising "Citizen's Juries" has made Gordon's pollster, Deborah Mattinson, a lot of money over the years. Amazingly they have now become a key Gordon Brown government policy. Who, Guido wonders, will get paid all those fat fees for organising what are jumped up focus groups?

All this talk of Gordon's Citizen's Juries and Dave's National Citizenship Service is confusing Guido. The U.N. lists the British form of government not as a democracy, but as a constitutional monarchy. So you are Her Majesty's subjects not citizens. Whereas Guido is a citizen of a free republic...

Coincidence or Corruption?

Gordon's pollster Deborah Mattinson sits on the board of Gordon's think-tank, the Smith Institute. Her relationship with Gordon has been very profitable for her firm, OLR. According to today's Sunday Telegraph, government contracts totalling some £3 milllion have come her way.

By coincidence OLR does a bit of polling for the Smith Institute for no charge. In February Guido queried who paid for their latest "92% favour Gordon" poll. OLR came back and said they had no paying client for the research. Nor did they have an identifiable paying client for their "What it means to be British" research in 2005. Shortly afterwards Gordon began loudly banging his Britishness drum. Opinion Leader Research has helped Gordon on "Britishness" issues before, their research was also used extensively in “New Britain” a 1999 publication produced by the Smith Institute. The pamphlet was itself singled out and explicitly criticised by the Charity Commission as being party political in the first 2001 investigation into the Sith.When the taxpayer is paying OLR £153,484.38 for one-day seminars it can't be hard for OLR to do a bit of off-the-books work for the Smith Institute. The taxpayer is subsidising Gordon's private polling, just as it subsidised the event hosting of Gordon's Smith Institute at Downing Street.

Chris Grayling has written to the Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, asking him to investigate how OLR comes to win so many government contracts. Many market research industry competitors agree with Guido:- it is cronyism plain and simple.

Harman Was Backed by the Sith

Guido has only just found out that Harman was advised by Deborah Mattinson, the high-priestess of the Sith, Gordon's personal pollster, Smith Institute board member and recipient of many juicy government contracts though her firm OLR.

It was her, Guido believes, that commissioned the YouGov poll showing that Harman had much needed appeal in the South East. That poll result featured heavily in Harman's propaganda...

How Much Does Gordon's Pollster Charge for a 1-Day Seminar?

Guido has said it before and he'll say it again, the way Gordon Brown's pollster, Deborah Mattinson at Opinion Leader Research, gets contracts is not right.

Hidden away in an announcement made quietly on May 4, when all our attention was on the local election results, was the news that OLR had won another government contract to organise a one-day seminar.

£153,484.38 was the price the taxpayer paid OLR for a one-day seminar on the “The Skills Challenge: A Public Debate” in February. That should subsidise a hell of a lot of free polling for Gordon.

Sith Pollster Believed UnderProfessional Standards Investigation

As if Gordon's Sith allies didn't have enough problems with the Charity Commission investigation, it appears that the Market Research Standards Board is to investigate Opinion Leader Research, Gordon Brown's pollster. Guido called the Standards Board to get confirmation, but they said they could not comment on individual cases. When Guido asked them to confirm they weren't investigating OLR, they declined.

Guido has previously noted the cosy closeness of the relationship between OLR, HM Treasury, the Smith Institute, Deborah Mattinson and Gordon Brown. Whenever more objective polls are gloomy for Gordon, OLR can be relied on to produce "Gordon more popular than sliced bread" stories.Other pollsters are very sniffy about OLR's methodology and the fact that despite not even having a field team they still manage to win juicy government contracts, most recently for the polling for the London Olympics. It obviously helps to have contacts at the highest levels of government when bidding for those contracts...

Hat-tip: Pendennis

Slippery as a Silverfish

Dizzy got a nice scoop* yesterday. Basically Silverfish TV have bought up gordonbrown4leader.com and similar sites. So what? Well Gordon doesn't officially have a campaign and when he does he will be expected to list cash donations and donations in kind. The Electoral Commission is taking a tough line on this sort of stuff. Silverfish rushed out an explanation that they had bought the domain merely as a speculative punt to make money (something - as Dizzy points out this morning - is prohibited by the internet authorities). Guido frankly finds it unbelieveable that Silverfish really were going to try and make a quick profit out of Gordon Brown.

Silverfish.TV are Labour's preferred new media / video producers, doing most recently Scottish and Welsh Labour's Party Political Broadcasts. They also did the "Dave the Chameleon" video for Labour, for free. Obviously it costs quite a lot to do an expensive CGI animation, but they didn't charge the Labour party a penny. They do however have a number of juicy contracts awarded by Labour cronies and paid for by the taxpayer.

Do you see a pattern here? The Smith Institute is paid thousands of pounds to organise seminars for HM Treasury at the taxpayers expense. The Smith Institute gets to use No. 11 Downing Street for seminars for free. Opinion Leader Research is paid huge amounts to do polling for HM Treasury. Opinion Leader Research does polling for the Smith Institute for free. Silverfish are paid by Downing Street at fat rates, subsidising them to do "Dave the Chameleon" attack videos and coincidentally buy campaign websites on Gordon's behalf for free.

It is a corrupt practice, Gordon's campaign bills are being picked up by the taxpayer indirectly. In a secretive, behind closed doors, third-world style, "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours way". He is running an undeclared campaign, it is funded, and no declarations are being made to the Electoral Commission because the funding is covert. Donors get tax relief from HM Treasury on donations to the Smith Institute, which is a charity of which Gordon is the only identifiable beneficiary. His pollster gets HM Treasury contracts and produces positive push polling for him. Labour's friendly new media production outfit similarly wins Whitehall contracts and does work for Labour and Gordon for free. It has come to something when Nigerian newspapers are running stories about political corruption in Britain which feature the Smith Institute.

*Notice how despite Channel 4 News and the Times running with it, no credit was given to Dizzy. They say bloggers are parasitical leeches on the Dead-Tree-Press etc.

Paging Deborah Mattinson, Paging Deborah Mattinson

Has Bright Joined the Dark Side?

Guido has long respected the New Statesman's Martin Bright as an investigative journalist, but his extended and continuing proximity to the Smith Institute seems to be compromising his objectivity. He wrote a very prissy and disingenuous defence of his employer, the New Statesman, when Guido pointed out that it is a Brownite fanzine which both cross-subsidises and houses the Sith HQ.

Now he is quoting discredited Sith propaganda in his article this week, claiming that Gordon Brown

is bolstered by a poll of 100 leading figures from the City, industry, media and politics carried out by Opinion Leader Research, which showed that 87 per cent believed what the Chancellor said, compared to 58 per cent for Cameron

That "poll of 100 leading figures from the City, industry, media and politics carried out by Opinion Leader Research" has zero credibility. The methodology is not one recognised by the rest of the polling industry. OLR is run by Brown's personal pollster, Deborah Mattinson, she is always wheeled out with contrary "research" when Brown gets a bad press from negative polls from more objective organisations.

OLR also has a six-figure contract with HM Treasury. Martin Bright had the cheek to question Guido's independence last month, how independent do you think that OLR poll might be?

Deborah Mattison also sits on the board of the Smith Institute and OLR does polling for them as well. The Sith's office is all of six yards away from Martin Bright's desk at the New Statesman. How independent is he?

The New Statesman publishes glossy corporate "sponsored supplements" for the Smith Institute, but not one single mention of the Smith Institute's troubles has appeared on it's pages...

Pollster's Answers Lead to More Questions

Opinion Leader Research have got back to Guido and they say nobody paid for that research. They just asked questions slanted to favour Gordon for no particular reason. They also say they won their lucrative HM Treasury contract and the Bank of England contract in a competitive tendering process.

They won't say why the Treasury needs pollsters, what they poll about, or how much they have been paid.

Guido could understand if the Treasury needed statisticians, but pollsters? Perhaps the Bank of England would be interested in measuring, say for example, people's inflation expectations, but their opinions? If public money has been spent by the Treasury on pollsters who have asked questions that assist Gordon in his personal political ambitions, that would be a massive breach of the Ministerial Code bordering on corruption. If it were to be proved that the payments to do something innocuous were effectively a hidden subsidy covering the costs of doing polling on issues of interest to Gordon Brown for no particular reason it would be scandalous.

Since Gordon's personal pollsters won't give Guido answers, maybe Gordon will answer Stewart Jackson's parliamentary questions?

• To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the decision to engage Opinion Leader Research to undertake polling for HM Treasury was subject to a competitive tendering process and will he make a statement.
• To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much has been spent in each year since 2001 by HM Treasury on polling services provided by Opinion Leader Research and will he make a statement.

A co-conspirator points out that they also had no identifiable paying client for their "What it means to be British" research in 2005. Shortly afterwards Gordon began loudly banging his Britishness drum. Opinion Leader Research has helped Gordon on "Britishness" issues before, their research was used extensively in “New Britain” a 1999 publication produced by the Smith Institute. The pamphlet was itself singled out and explicitly criticised by the Charity Commission as being party political in the first 2001 investigation into the Sith.

Guido sees a pattern here; the Treasury hosts over a hundred of the Smith Institute's seminars - rent-free, simultaneously the Treasury pays the Smith Institute to hold seminars. The Treasury pays Deborah Mattinson's Opinion Leader Research generously, Deborah Mattinson sits on the Smith Institute's board and does "polling" that is helpful to Gordon - for free. She also writes hagiographical press articles about Gordon, based on her own polling research, whenever negative independent poll findings come out.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the taxpayer has been paying, via the Treasury, for Gordon's polling and spin, all tightly coordinated via the Smith Institute to promote the Brownite political agenda. This is abuse of office.

Smith Institute's Mattinson Spins Poll for Brown

The Brownites are obviously getting increasingly desperate about his bad personal poll ratings versus Cameron. The Guardian/ICM survey last week showing Brown 13% adrift of Cameron (worse than Blair) shook Labour MPs at a vital time and led to renewed calls for Labour to skip a generation with Miliband.

A week later comes the Brownite response, today's Guardian reports on a survey of a hundred "opinion leaders" which shows Gordon outperforming Dave on a whole range of indicators - scoring a modest 92% on integrity.

Who conducted this highly scientific "survey"? None other than Opinion Leader Research run by Deborah Mattinson, the long time Labour Party consultant who is now Gordon Brown's unofficial pollster and sits on the advisory committee of the Smith Institute - alongside the veteran U.S. pollster Bob Shrum. It was Shrum's anti-Cameron advice to the Sith that forced the Charity Commission's official investigation. Guido wonders why a non-partisan, non-political, educational charity has so many pollsters involved?

Mattinson has plenty of previous, she was wheeled out by the dark forces of the Sith the last time Brown's negative ratings caused rumblings. Popping up in the Times with an article claiming, ironically, that it was all spin and that Gordon is in fact a popular guy.

Of course surveying "opinion leaders" is completely subjective and easily manipulated to give the required answers. Mattinson's clients know it, but since her clients include Defra, the Department of Education and Science, the Department for Work and Pensions and coincidentally HM Treasury, you can be sure she knows where her bread is buttered and what they want to hear.

Is Guido the only one who has noticed that in times of need, Gordon's pollster conducts polls with dubious methodologies which she then writes up in hagiographical pro-Gordon articles? Is Guido the only one who thinks there might, in the circumstances, be a serious conflict of interest in her not only sitting on the board of the Smith Institute but also having HM Treasury as a paying client? Who commissioned and paid for this survey of "opinion leaders"? How did she get the HM Treasury contract? Was it by competitive tender?

Guido has asked them repeatedly this morning who commissioned the poll, but nobody at Opinion Leader Research seems to know...

UPDATE : Guido has just noticed that The Sun this morning headlines Deborah's "survey" Brown is back in poll victory. Will that do Gordon?