This Editorial at a Glance:

• Conservative Party – Rot from the Top.

The Bugler has already reported that on Monday the 22^nd of May 2017 CC Driver with his three fellow accused were arrested and charged with activities which ranged from ‘perverting the course of justice' to 'intimidation of witnesses’.

On Thursday 25^th May 2017 CC Driver stood for re-election as leader of the Conservative Party in Lancashire and thus Leader of the Lancashire County Council.

This posed an immediate and considerably embarrassing problem for the Party membership in Lancashire but inevitably also posed rather a problem for the Chairman of the Conservative Party in the UK, Rt Hon Sir Patrick McLoughlin MP, who was appointed July 14th, 2016 and of course the actual Leader of the Conservative Party the Rt Hon Mrs.Theresa May MP who is also the (non-elected) Prime Minister.

The Lancashire Conservative ‘faithful’ required and asked for emergency guidance in their dilemma from Party HQ.

This was hardly a challenge for the PM because she also has squalid form and a consistent policy in backing her loyal Party members/MPs(against the advice of her own backbenchers) when one considers that not only are they under arrest but are also under continuing criminal investigation.

Early this year she backed Conservative MPs who were under criminal investigation for allegedly breaking election expenses rules in 2015 and said they can stand again as Tory candidates in this coming General Election on Thursday.

Only recently following the arrest of yet another Conservative MP  the PM true to form once more supported her man South Thanet Tory candidate Craig MacKinley charged over his expenses.

Presumably the PM clings to the valid legal point that the accused is 'innocent until proven guilty' and whilst that maybe admirable in principle it is never as clean cut as this.

Surely it would have been politically expedient for her and her Party to advise all these accused to step down or aside whilst under arrest/bail if only for the cynical good of her Party’s reputation as incorruptible whilst in pragmatism ensuring that Justice is not only done but seen to be done?

Driver is somewhat different. He is small beer in the national Conservative Party but he has, as the Public knows already been the subject of a Police preliminary investigation in the past and once more, currently.

He claims that the initial investigation found him to be as pure as the driven snow but it begs the question if that statement is true why then did the investigation not only continue but logistically expand in Police resources and time?

When voting in secret cabal for the election of their new Leader every single one of those members of the Lancashire Conservative Association who voted, whether a County Councillor or not, are fully aware of all those circumstances both past and current yet in that knowledge they nevertheless voted to re-elect Diver as their local Leader.

The simple question was asked at the time…’How can this be possible?’.

Unfortunately for local and national democracy the answer is profoundly simple.

The local Conservative Party Whip, the old purer than pure O’Toole, will have exerted all the dark tools at his disposal in convincing the righteous that their man Driver is ‘innocent until proven guilty’.

Supported of course right from the top by the Prime Minister and the Chair of their Party allied with the promise to the leading opponents of Drivers re-election of appropriate sweeteners in the local ‘Cabinet’ jobs on offer on that day.

Clearly those who accepted such inducements all had their price…

Should there be those principled few who spurned such

blackmail inducements then of course there is always the final threat of expulsion and black balling from the local Party.

Given the use of all those black arts in those circumstances which were represented by Driver’s actual re-election on that day the Public can be sure that as usual the ‘money’ came out on top in the end.

This unacceptable face of rotting patronage which exudes corruption will be the price which will haunt their term of office when the going gets sticky and when they will be reminded  by their political opponents that the local Conservatives simply represent the Public face at local level of Conservative Party corruption right from the top.

In spite of this ‘victory’, which is completely pyrrhic, Driver and his Gang of Four should continue to sleep uneasily in their beds at night because even recognising the face value of the charges they face as merely holding the CPS and the law is actually much cleverer than that.

Let us for sake of argument propound the theory that in following the ‘money trail’ the Police investigation reaches a dead end without a result, which given the heavy money involved is unlikely, and the whole investigation has to be wound up, what then?

At this point the original holding charges change from holding to represent the actual charges per se which can stand alone as the Gang of Four will find as they stand before  a Jury of 12 of their peers.

How so one may ask?

Well, in the first place the Police are duty bound to investigate a criminal complaint and whether of not that investigation provides sufficient evidence, or not, they must present their conclusions to the CPS.

In the second place if the CPS then concludes that there is insufficient evidence (not none) upon which to bring a successful prosecution it is at this juncture that a second  and third major question will arise.

The second and third questions, the 'catch alls', that both the Police and the CPS have now to answer is, was their investigation hampered or impeded by the suspects acting in any unlawful manner, and was their ability to interview withesses equally hampered by those potential witnesses being intimidated?

If the answer to either, or both, of those questions is yes and does the evidence of intrusion support those scenarios then the ‘holding’ charges simply become stand alone separate charges which are only indirectly connected to the mainstream of the investigation.

Charges which are on occasions even more serious in that the actual criminality involved lies at the heart of the investigation because perverting the course of Justice and intimidating witnesses are inevitably offences going to the core of a Citizen’s duty to assist the maintenance of law and order and as a consequence  penal history records that substantial jail terms are inevitable for those who fail their civic duty.

The question then is, if the central investigation provides sufficient evidence to support it own charges, not how few the charges will be, but how many?

So the Gang of Four have a long way to go before that are out of the woods and the drip of distasteful corruption will continue to do incalculable harm, to not only Driver, but to the political reputation of all members of the Lancashire local Conservative Association and their National Party.

Such are the pragmatic examples of the smearing contamination which political corruption brings with it…