Status Anxiety | 17 March 2012

Things haven’t been going particularly well for the Conservatives lately. The bounce we received in the polls from the Prime Minister’s wielding of the veto proved to be short-lived, the fault lines in the coalition are growing and Steve Hilton has left the building. The odds of us winning an outright majority at the next election are lengthening by the day.

All I can say is, thank God for Ken Livingstone. He’s the gift that keeps on giving. Following the revelation that he’s funnelled £755,778 through a tax avoidance vehicle over the last three years, the sensible thing would have been for him to write a large cheque to HMRC, particularly in light of his own tireless campaigning against tax avoidance. But no. Instead, he appeared on Andrew Marr last Sunday and tried to justify his tax arrangements by claiming he used the company in question to pay for two campaign workers. According to the law on political funding, that should have been recorded as a cash donation or a donation in kind to the London Labour party, yet no such declaration to the Electoral Commission has been made. Keep on digging, Ken.

The best thing about Ken’s car crash of a mayoral campaign is that it’s damaging the Labour party leadership as well. At a press conference on Monday, Ed Miliband responded to a question about Ken’s tax affairs by repeating Ken’s allegation that Boris has engaged in similar financial wizardry. That immediately prompted an emphatic denial from Boris, who said he’d never made any attempt to avoid paying his taxes in full. ‘No income earned by me has ever been paid to a “service” company, through which a person or persons’ freelance earnings can be channelled so that they pay corporation rather than income tax,’ he said.