The Taxpayers Alliance - A funny kind of independence

The most annoying campaign group/Tory front will be facing a quite considerable dilemma after the general election if everything goes as it looks likely to. If the Tories form a government, the Taxpayers Alliance will have to decide whether they continue to keep up the façade of being an independent campaign group that will campaign against anything the government of the time does, or admit to being a Tory front and not actually take the new government to task at all.

The signs look ominous, looking at the TPA's last set of press stories which they have whored themselves out to,  three of them are the same story, based on councils not picking up rubbish over the Christmas period. All of these stories are in right wing rags, and attacking Northampton, Walsall, and Oxford councils. A quick bit of research reveals that Oxford is run by a Labour council, Northampton by a Lib Dem council, and Walsall by a Tory council. Yet why does the TPA never seem to mention in its blogs or press releases the sort of stuff that Jon Cruddas and Chuka Umunna are now flagging up on Tory Stories is done by the Conservative party. There are very few if any negative mentions of the Conservative party across the TPA’s blogs.

This all comes back to one simple issue, the TPA don't want to admit that they are a Tory front organisation, even though it is painfully obvious, from the right wing rags they appear in (Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph) to the way that they never mention anything that the Tories are doing wrong in local government, to the fact that they are run by the likes of Andrew Allum who "led the student Conservative groups both in Imperial College and across London and sat on the national committee of the student wing of the party." and  “From 1998 to 2002 Andrew served as a Conservative member of Westminster City Council.” “He left the party in 2003” but hasn’t been too critical of it since. Matthew Elliott’s profile on their site shows their obvious connections with the Tories: 

“In 2006, the TPA won the ConservativeHome “One to Watch” award and in 2007 the Bumper Book of Government Waste was awarded the Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Award. In November 2007, Matthew was presented with the Conservative Way Forward ‘One of Us’ award by William Hague and in December the TPA won the Stockholm Network's prestigious Golden Umbrella award for Innovation. In 2008, the TPA was named 'Pressure Group of the Year' by the readers of Iain Dale's Diary”

With all of this evidence, how can they not admit that they may be independent in name, their whole existence is to highlight what Labour have done wrong, while ignoring all the Tories are doing wrong in local government and taking all the plaudits they can from the Conservative party. That’s a funny kind of independence.