What's up at the Christian Party?

Its seems that not all is well at the Christian Party. The party has been fined £2,750 by the Electoral Commission for failing to provide accounts. The fine has been levied on party leader Rev George Hargreaves.

From the Electoral Commission web site:

Legal action to recover two fines totalling £2,750, imposed on Reverend George Hargreaves, Treasurer of the Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship” has been initiated.
The first fine was originally £500 for failure to provide accounts by the deadline of 7 July 2011. This automatically increased to £750 because it was not paid. A second fine of £2,000 is for Reverend Hargreaves’ failure to comply with a notice requiring accounts to be delivered to the Commission by 1 March 2012.

Full article here.

The Christian Party holds quite a fundamentalist position with policies that include:

• "a science curriculum which should "reflect the evidence of creation/design" in the universe."
• "replacing the standard of 'beyond reasonable doubt' with the more biblical 'evidence of two or three reliable witnesses' in the criminal justice system."
• and rather oddly (until you relaise that Rev Hargreaves earns part of his income from songwriting royalties)  "that Mechanical Copyright Protection enjoyed by songwriters should be extended to featured recording artists and record producers."

This may be why it has never got any electoral traction. In the 2010 United Kingdom general election, the party stood 71 candidates, gaining 18,623 votes.

I notice that their web site currently carries a copy of an election leaflet for a candidate standing in an election  in July 2011, but with the date misprinted as 2001: