Is Brown's Electoral Commission submission complete?

Here's an interesting thing, anyone remember the Gordon Brown leadership website domain registrations and Silverfish from early in 2007? Well, why is it that Silverfish do not appear on Brown's Electoral Commission submission as a benefit in kind?

The domain, along with all the others that were originally registered (and Silverfish said they intended to sell) are still registered to Rachel Bull at Silverfish. Also there were quite a few videos on Gordon's campaign website and videos are not free to produce now are they? Who was likely to have filmed them? Couldn't be a production company called Silverfish could it?

Could this potentially mean Brown received non-cash donations above the value of £1000 and he's failed to declare them in his non-cash submissions on the Electoral Commission website? Everyone is so busy looking at Hain's donations and records, perhaps they should be looking at Brown's too?

Update: It's been noted domains are cheap as chips, which is true. However the plethora of registrations were, according to Silverfish at the time, carried out with the intention of selling at a profit to Brown later. So their value once registered would have increased somewhat. Of course, if Silverfish were fibbing about them being speculative profit purchases then the point about their cheapness stands, and so Team Brown lied to the press about the domains all those months ago when they denied all knowledge.

Silverfish say "GordonBrownforBritain" dot com

Yesterday, Guido pointed out that the domain gordonbrown.org was pointing at Silverfish TV. Silverfish of course are only buying domains speculatively with the intention of selling (which is a breach of ICANN policy). Back when I broke the story the critics said it wasn't a website, just a domain registration, so I wonder what they will make of gordonbrownforbritain.com which was also registered, and is still registered, by Rachel Bull from Silverfish TV and suggests...well... look at it.

Still, it's only a speculative purchase of course! The .co.uk, .org and .org.uk have been purchased by Rachel too.

Update: And then it went LIVE! Speculative purchasing my arse. Look... all the kids love him!

Conclusion? The Brownites and Silverfish are.. well... it's pretty obvious really.

EXCLUSIVE: The Gordon Brown campaign website?

This morning's Times carries an interesting article about how senior figures in the Labour Party have tried to stop the Electoral Commission from scrutinising the forthcoming leadership election. They quote an Electoral Commission source saying

"We would assume Gordon Brown doesn't need any money. He would take the line there's no campaign going on at the moment and he doesn't have a website."

No website you say? Well I guess it all depends on how one defines "website". If you mean he has no textual presence on the Internet putting out his stall for leadership then yes, arguably he doesn't. However, if by website we mean the back-end preparations such as registering domains and putting the infrastructure in place to build it, then actually he probably does and the work for it appears to have started between October and December last year.

Gordon Brown's leadership campaign website, should there actual be a contest, will - on the balance of probabilities - be located at "gordonbrown4leader.[insert tld here]". How would I know this? Well it's rather simple. All the most obvious permutations for the domain have been being registered since October last year by the assistant producer Rachel Bull at the political campaign production company Silverfish TV.

Silverfish TV are the people behind the Dave the Chameleon advert, whose client list includes errr.... HM Treasury, as well as the Labour Party and lots of other Labour Party connected organisations such as Progress and the The John Smith Trust. John Prescott is quoted on their website saying they are "bloody brilliant".

The Electoral Commission may not think there is a website visible but there are certainly domains, ready and waiting with holding pages, and the website that is presumably being built by someone will no doubt be an all singing and dancing new media web 2.0 love-in too be sure.

Update: As per my post here, Channel 4 News have followed this story up and Silverfish TV say they are cybersquatting.