High-handed electoral commission over-reacts!

Alan Brown- the donor who (for some of the time) wasn't on the electoral roll

The Daily Telegraph's Brendan Carlin (former Southampton Echo reporter by the way trivia buffs!) filed a remarkable story today on how the Electoral Commission is planning on forcing UKIP to forfeit over £360k of donations, mainly because one donor was not on the electoral roll at the time he gave some of the money. The fact that he was on the roll when he gave previous and subsequent donations apparently cuts no ice with the powers that be.

I am no fan of UKIP (far from it!) but this seems to me to be both high-handed and a huge over-reaction. Personally I think that the whole loans for peerages scandal that Labour has got embroiled in and events like UKIPs latest difficulty as a result of an over-zealous Electoral Commission are very damaging for democracy. As bad, it make it more likely that we are going to have the unfair and immoral policy of state funding of political parties foisted upon us!