Opaque organisation gives Kelly Tolhurst another £10,000
Plus Rehman Chishti gets another paid for trip, the Greens finally find a candidate, news in brief, and more
With a General Election looming ever closer but still potentially months away, today’s edition is dominated by politics. More specifically, we have two stories of questionable financial transactions of different types: One Medway MP receiving £25,000 in the past year from an opaque organisation, and another taking another paid for foreign trip. Further down, we have news of how the race is shaping up in Rochester and Strood as the Medway Greens finally find their first candidate, as well as our usual news in brief section.
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Opaque organisation gives Kelly Tolhurst another £10,000
It’s a double bill for the Register of Members’ Financial Interests this week, starting with Rochester and Strood MP Kelly Tolhurst receiving yet another mysterious donation from an opaque organisation.
Businessfore donated £10,000 to Tolhurst on 19 March, following a £15,000 donation back in November. This is on top of another £25,000 in the previous financial year.
There are fairly strict rules about transparency when donating to MPs, so any amounts over £1,500 have to be declared on the register. This seems positive on the surface, but there are some significant loopholes in the system.
Individuals are easy enough to identify from the register, and businesses making donations will have details on who is behind them via Companies House. Somewhat more problematically, ‘unincorporated associations’ are allowed to donate large sums of money to MPs, and there are no rules that require them to be transparent. Democracy is great.
In the last three years, one such association, Businessfore, has donated £50,000 to Kelly Tolhurst. Businessfore has no public-facing presence, no known directors, and no indication of what it actually does. It donates the money via Kerry London Ltd, an insurance company that offers little help as to where the money actually comes from.
Tolhurst isn’t the only MP to receive money from Businessfore, but she is in a very select group. In the past year, the organisation has donated amounts to six MPs, all of whom are Conservatives. However, Tolhurst has received more than any of them with the exception of Amanda Holloway in Derby North, who has received the same £25,000 figure.
For the obligatory disclaimer, there is nothing to suggest that Kelly Tolhurst or Businessfore have done anything that breaks any rules here. The problem is that an opaque organisation with no paper trail can repeatedly donate significant amounts of cash to politicians with no public information about who they are or what their goals are.
Another paid for foreign trip for Rehman Chishti
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the foreign trips of Gillingham and Rainham MP Rehman Chishti. In recent months, we’ve written about his trips to the US, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the US again, all within the last year.
Of course, even better for Chishti is when he can combine one of these trips with paid work, so happily, his latest jaunt is another where he’s managed to secure payment for his services.
His most recent addition to the Register of Member’s Financial Interests shows a trip to Stuttgart in February to deliver the keynote speech at the International Military Chiefs of Chaplains Conference.
The register is somewhat unclear as to why he seemed to receive two different payments for this appearance. Regardless, he seems to have received £1,913 for attending and £780 in flights, travel and accommodation.
What is more clear, however, is that the money has come from The Religious Freedom Institute. The anti-abortion American think tank used to employ Chishti to the tune of nearly £2,000 per month until he left to spend more time coming last in leadership elections.
It is also interesting to note that on February 8, the day Chishti spoke at the conference, he posted on social media about visiting the Kent & Medway Medical School. Now, there’s nothing in the post to suggest that the visit took place that day, but it is slightly eyebrow-raising and does perhaps imply that Rehman wasn’t overseas on the day in question.
By our count, this makes six funded foreign trips for Chishti in twelve months, totalling at least 36 days.
Electoral Calculus now gives Chishti just a 25% chance of holding his seat in the upcoming General Election despite his majority of over 15,000. Perhaps this explains his eagerness to find outside employment opportunities for the future.
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Medway Greens finally select a candidate
Always ones to leave everything to the last minute, the Medway Green Party has finally announced a parliamentary candidate for the upcoming General Election.
While most parties have been lining up their candidates for some time, the Greens have been oddly quiet. This is made all the more confusing by the fact they actually did fairly well (for the Greens, anyway) in last year’s local elections when they came within 50 votes of taking a seat in Cuxton, Halling & Riverside.
Still, they can at least now say they have one candidate, which is half as many as the SDP has managed to announce.
The Greens have, perhaps unsurprisingly, selected Cat Jamieson for Rochester and Strood. Jamieson has been active within the party since 2019, putting in solid performances in local elections across the constituency, reaching a high of 23% in the Strood North by-election.
Jamieson works in the charity sector and spent 15 years at Medway Youth Trust. She’s regarded as one of the better media performers in the party, and represented the Greens at our Medway Question Time event last year.
She will be one of at least five candidates fighting for Rochester and Strood in the General Election, with incumbent Conservative MP Kelly Tolhurst also facing Labour’s Lauren Edwards, the Lib Dems’ Graham Colley, Reform UK’s Daniel Dabin.
In brief
🏰 Great British Life magazine has written a guide to visiting Rochester. It contains nothing locals won’t be familiar with, but it’s always amusing to see how outlets pitch our towns to others.
⛪ In a Great British Life double header, the magazine sat down for a profile piece with Philip Hesketh, the Dean of Rochester Cathedral.
🏗️ A consultation has begun on redeveloping part of the Intra area. The plans would see some buildings between 320 and 346 High Street demolished and new homes built around the remaining Pizza Hut, Thai Market, and Flipping Frog.
👩⚕️ The new High Sheriff of Kent is from Medway. Dr. Gillian Farghar is the latest person to take up the largely ceremonial role that still exists for some reason.
🚌 KentOnline has been looking at the range of life expectancy across Medway. They helpfully illustrate this using the 151 bus where people at one end of the route will live 10 years longer than those at the other.
🚄 Another rail strike has been scheduled for May 7 on both Southeastern and Thameslink. Most trains will not run across the network, with none operating in Medway.
🏆 The winners of this year’s Pride in Medway awards have been announced. The overall winners were three teenagers who helped a man who fell ill in Rainham.
More Authority
Our paid supporters receive extra editions of Local Authority every week. Over the weekend, we published an interview with long-time Rainham councillor and Conservative Group Whip Barry Kemp about internal relationships within the Medway Conservative Group, what happened to the former mayoral chain, why people in Hoo wanted him dead, and if he ever considered joining the Labour Party.
Footnotes
Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: Future Me Hates Me by The Beths, It’s Sorted by Cheekface, Sentimental Scum by Suzie True, and Giant Elk by Me Rex.
Bit confused by the interview with the Dean. It is indicating he has only just been appointed when I am sure he was installed in 2016
In light of the Cass Review,I’m probably more shocked to find out that the gender identity pushing LibDems accepted £1.4million from the manufacturer of puberty blockers. I’ve yet to see any mainstream media outlet query this, maybe some award winning local journalists could do better!?