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.

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.

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.

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.

Smith Institute : Polly Advised Sith on the "Legend for the Left" Against Tories the Month Before 2005 General Election

MPs like Ed Balls, Douglas Alexander, Liam Byrne, Martin Salter discussing with Polly Toynbee anti-Tory political strategies is nothing new, discussing them at a non-partisan, non-political charity event would be very interesting. That is exactly what they did at a seminar held on Tuesday 22nd March 2005 on the very eve of the General Election.

Also attending were - surprise, surprise - Deborah Mattinson and Scarlett McGwire from Opinion Leader Research, pollsters for the Treasury.

Polly advised the Labour team about the Tory's tactics; "Dog whistling is exactly what it is: hitting and running day after day, leaving Labour looking lame, wrong footed, unable to keep up. All the more important is to be able to produce the kind of moral vision that is envisaged here or is beginning to be described here."

All the more important for who? Ed Balls tells her he was "very taken by Polly’s language in terms of a need for a legend for the left." The seminar transcript goes on and on. So the question is - does the Charity Commission still believe that the Smith Institute is non-political?

Isn't it just Gordon Brown's strategic campaigning arm?

UPDATE : Christopher Hope in the Telegraph has discovered that Ed Balls advocated a new NHS tax at another closed meeting of the Sith.

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.