Mark Pack, the Lib Dem president, is facing questions about his judgment after the party threw in the towel following a three-and-a-half-year legal battle with a parliamentary candidate who was barred from standing for wearing a T-shirt bearing the words: “Woman: Adult, Human, Female.”
“Mark has been presiding over an illiberal management culture where we are too quick to litigate and too slow to listen,” one party worker tells Mandrake. “We’ve taken almost £3m in donations from people who would be aghast by the proportion of it we are now paying out in court cases that should never have been fought.”
Natalie Bird, the candidate in Wakefield prior to her deselection in 2019, sought legal redress after concluding that the party’s complaints procedures left her nowhere else to go. She expects to receive substantial damages after the T-shirt row, which, with costs, is expected to set the Lib Dems back by up to £500,000.
I disclosed in July how the party had officially set aside £257,000 for what was coyly described as “provisions for liabilities – regulatory matters and claims”, which seemed at the time optimistic given the number of legal tussles the party was involved in.
These include cases brought by Jo Hayes, a barrister ousted from the Lib Dems’ federal board and seeking an injunction to get herself reinstated; David Campanale, demanding redress after being sacked as a candidate in Sutton and Cheam; and Avril Coelho, once the chair of its Disability Association, who has already accepted a substantial undisclosed sum after successfully arguing that she was victimised by party officials.
Pack was named as a representative of the party – in addition to Alison Rouse, its chair – in the case that Bird brought, where she had successfully argued breach of contract and direct discrimination because of gender-critical beliefs. The party finally admitted all of Bird’s claims at the pre-trial review hearing on July 22.
Bird said when she wore her T-shirt a senior party official had asked her if she was an approved candidate and when she said she was, the woman had replied: “Well, we’ll see about that.” Judgment on damages is not expected until December.
The historian Sir Anthony Seldon has written biographies of every British prime minister from Margaret Thatcher to his most recent, last year, on Boris Johnson. This leaves him in the unhappy position of having to deliver a work on Liz Truss, knowing full well that, like the 49-day PM, it is likely to make little economic sense and be quickly forgotten.
Seldon’s Truss at 10 at least has an honest strapline – How Not to Be Prime Minister. But amazingly it is 384 pages long. That is eight pages for each day she was in Downing Street.
There have already been two Truss books, which have flopped. Just after she stepped down in late autumn 2022, there was a biography by Harry Cole and James Heale. Then, four months ago, came the utterly self-serving book by Truss herself – Ten Years to Save the West. As this column has already noted, its sales have been minuscule.
Hopes are not high for Truss at 10. There was scarcely a battle for the serialisation rights, and the Sunday Times half-heartedly kicked off with a brief extract on page 18 and no front-page trail. Waterstones, Britain’s largest bookstore, has ordered very few copies, and has already cut its price to £18.99.
“The book world has very little faith in this biography,” says my publishing source. “Its prospects are as limp as the infamous lettuce.”
I’m told Lord Rothermere is growing increasingly resentful that his newspaper empire is turning into a retirement home for the Tory Party, with beds already for politicians such as Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries; former WAGs such as Sarah Vine – the former Mrs Michael Gove – and even former backroom staff such as Amanda Platell, who helped to ensure that Lord William Hague, as party leader, remained in opposition.
Paul Dacre, Rothermere’s editor-in-chief, is close to Gove and would like to accommodate him with a column, too, but his lordship has made it clear that, with more newsroom redundancies on their way, he would only be willing to countenance that if one of the existing Tory bed-blockers were turfed out.
Vine boasts that she is “unsackable” in any case on account of her friendship with Lady Rothermere, so that, I am told, leaves Dorries and Platell looking vulnerable.
Nigel Farage appears to be tightening his grip on ownership of Reform UK Ltd just as it promises to democratise and professionalise itself.
Updated accounts for the party for 2023 show that it has just repaid £200,000 of the £1.1m loaned to it by former leader Richard Tice via his private company Tisun Investments. The repayment means the party is now in hock to him to the tune of £900,000, from a peak of £1.4m. Reform repaid the six-figure sum on June 10 – seven days after Farage’s return as party leader, which resulted in a spike in donations.
In addition, new ownership records show Farage has increased his ownership stake to 60% from 53.3%, while Tice’s interest has remained at 33.3%. The party is becoming quite a money spinner, returning a £26,216 surplus on income at £1,353,051, compared with a £256,594 loss on £692,424 in income in 2022.
Reform’s one-time deputy leader Ben Habib, forced out of that position when Farage returned, has criticised the party’s structure, telling Times Radio: “You can’t stand for a democratic entity… if the party through which you wish to do it isn’t itself democratic.”
Reform chairman Zia Yusuf, a former Goldman Sachs banker, has promised to create a constitution giving members a say. With a talent for hype that would please Reform UK’s leader/owner, he said: “We are chartering (sic) a course to be a party of government in 2029. So that document must be fit for purpose today, for the next year, but also for when we’re in government.
“We have some of the finest legal minds in the country working day and night, round the clock like most of our team, to draft the document.”
Lord Peter Mandelson had been hoping for a coronation as Oxford’s next chancellor in succession to Lord Chris Patten rather than a serious contest, but Imran Khan’s decision to throw his hat into the ring has complicated matters.
Khan, who graduated from Keble College, is considered the most glamorous candidate by students. The “politically motivated” 10-year sentence he has begun in a Pakistan prison for supposedly leaking state secrets has only added to his lustre.
Other runners and riders in the race include the former Tory leader Lord William Hague; Lady Elish Angiolini, former lord advocate of Scotland and solicitor general; and the lawyer and businesswoman Dr Margaret Casely-Hayford.
When I was first to reveal Mandelson’s candidacy, I explained he was going to get the government’s endorsement as it was seen as the consolation prize for not getting the soon-to-be-announced ambassadorship to Washington.
