It’s one of the great unsolved political mysteries of our time. What really happened to the Ed Stone? Was it smashed in to little tiny pieces or is it still gathering moss in a warehouse? For those of you who have been living under a rock, or in this case a giant tablet, since last year’s general election — the Ed Stone was the much-mocked policy plinth which the former Labour leader, Ed Miliband, promised to place in the rose garden of Downing Street if he won.
It was unveiled amid much fanfare only to spark a wave of viral humiliation for the beleaguered Miliband. The Mole remembers peering painfully through its paws and trying to ignore the smirks of its fellow rodents. Now, the spectre of the ill-fated tablet has arisen to cause the Labour Party one final humiliation.
An investigation by the Electoral Commission has revealed that two sums totalling £7,614 were spent on the Ed Stone which were missing from the party’s election return. The report found that in total Labour failed to correctly declare 74 payments worth £123,748 of campaign spending “without a reasonable excuse”. They were also missing 33 separate invoices totalling £34,392.
The commission said Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, who is also its registered treasurer, had committed two election offences and imposed a record £20,000 fine — the biggest since it began operating in 2001.
All of which has left the Labour Party red-faced once more, and the mole feeling slightly nostalgic for the days when politics was simple and the news was full of amusing images of politicians smearing bacon sandwiches across their faces and striking the odd biblical pose in front of a giant stone. Don’t forget, if the Ed Stone was standing proudly in Downing Street today, then Brexit would just be a bad dream.
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