The criminal gang of Tories masquerading as the Shadow Cabinet has now been ordered to collectively repay £250,000 in fraudulent “expenses” claimed out of the pockets of the long-suffering British taxpayer.

The latest estimate of the total amount of money swindled by the Tory leadership in the ongoing parliamentary expenses scandal was revealed after Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox was forced to pay back £7,984 in mortgage interest, repairs and council tax. His total repayment to the taxpayer now stands at £12,279.20.

Other Tories are to repay a further £24,800 in what has been described as “overpaid expenses claims,” (in plain English, money fraudulently claimed from the taxpayer) bringing the total repayments by the Shadow Cabinet to more than £70,000.

No less than 13 members of David Cameron’s shadow cabinet have paid back fraudulent expenses identified as “excessive” by Sir Thomas Legg’s audit of MPs’ allowances.

In total, that disgraceful party’s MPs have now paid back more than £250,000 in claims since the expenses scandal first became public.

Patrick McLoughlin, Tory Chief Whip, was asked to repay £4,058.54 covering cleaning bills and mortgage interest.

Caroline Spelman, the shadow Communities Secretary, was asked for an additional £2,167.51 for cleaning, utilities and telephone bills. She has now returned £2,635.

Andrew Mitchell, the shadow International Development Secretary, faced a demand for £2,673.33 he claimed towards council tax and mortgage interest.

The shadow Business Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, is returning £1,345 for cleaning bills after successfully disputing a demand to pay back £4,733 for gardening and cleaning.

Cheryl Gillan, the shadow Welsh Secretary, is paying back £1,884.23 in mortgage interest claims.

William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, is returning £601.14 in mortgage interest.

Owen Patterson, the shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, is giving back £281.19 covering mortgage interest, council tax and repairs/maintenance. His total repayment as a result of the Legg investigation stands at £5,229.15.

Andrew Lansley, the shadow Health Secretary, is returning £877.56 for furniture, repairs and mortgage, taking his total repayment to £3577.56.

* Meanwhile it has been reported that police investigating the abuse of parliamentary expenses have uncovered four cases that are so serious that they have been referred to prosecutors with the aim of criminal court cases.

The identities of the four parliamentarians, who come from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, have not yet been revealed.

The Metropolitan Police said “a small number” of further cases were still being investigated. There have been no arrests during the investigation, although some people have been interviewed under caution.

Tony Blair lied over the reasons for the Iraq War, Labour Party Defence Minister Bob Ainsworth told a public meeting at Aldermoor Farm Primary School in Coventry last night.

Mr Ainsworth made the startling confession after being confronted at the meeting by BNP official and Coventry North East parliamentary candidate, Tom Gower.

Mr Gower used the public meeting to ask Mr Ainsworth, who became Secretary of State for Defence in June this year, “Now that it has been proven that there were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, do you accept that you and the whole of your wretched party are nothing but war criminals and have the blood of hundreds of British soldiers on your hands?”

Mr Ainsworth, clearly taken aback at the question, then told the public gathering that the reason why his party sent so many British soldiers to their deaths was because they were “fed lies by Tony Blair.”

Mr Ainsworth’s remarks will come as a huge embarrassment for the Labour Party, which has so far stuck by Mr Blair and even tried to get him elected as president of the European Union.

The public accusation by a cabinet minister that Mr Blair lied to the country and the world over the reasons for the Iraq war will no doubt cause more than a ripple through the labour Party and could even impact upon Mr Ainsworth’s future career.

The visibly shocked audience were then further amazed when Mr Ainsworth pleaded innocence by claiming that he did not know the truth because he “is an ordinary man from a council estate in Coventry. I don’t sit in ivory towers,” Mr Ainsworth said, adding that he was “sorry” about the deaths of the British soldiers in that illegal war.

Mr Gower said even he, as a firm opponent of the Labour Party and their illegal war, was taken aback at Mr Ainsworth’s remarks. “Why on earth do we have this man as our Defence Secretary?” Mr Gower asked.

“This is a man who uses his council estate roots as an excuse to send hundreds of soldiers to their deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. To make matters worse, when I pressed him about defence cuts, Mr Ainsworth completely ignored the issue and just went on with the next question.”

* Mr Gower also asked Mr Ainsworth if he thought it was “fair that we’re being dictated to by unelected bureaucrats” in Brussels. Mr Ainsworth replied that he fully supported the EU and claimed that Britain could not survive without it.

Mr Gower also grilled Mr Ainsworth on the issue of uncontrolled immigration. “How do you feel about the projections that the population of Britain is set to reach 70 million by the year 2030? Do you think this is ludicrous considering Britain is the third most overpopulated country in the world and the most overcrowded country in Europe?” he asked.

At this point Mr Gower got cheers of support from the audience. Embarrassed and clearly shaken by these projections, Mr Ainsworth stated he was happy that the population is growing, provided living conditions remain the same and that he has met many immigrants who are from war-torn countries who would rather set fire to themselves then go back to their homelands.

Mr Gower then asked, “Surely all the different countries they’ve come through to get to Britain are safe enough. Will you admit these people are only coming here to take advantage of soft touch Britain, with our free NHS and liberal benefits systems?”

Mr Ainsworth replied that he was so proud that these people are coming to Britain and refused to discuss the matter any further.

Total cost for having Bob Ainsworth as a Labour puppet and scapegoat:

Salary: £104,050

Total second home claims

2004-05: £19,275

2005-06: £18,911

2006-07: £18,878

2007-08: £23,083

Total cost to have Bob Ainsworth humiliated in front of his constituents:

03rd Dec 2009: Priceless

The war-mongering Conservative Party has promised to pull all British troops out of Germany if they win the next election — so that they can be deployed in Afghanistan to escalate Britain’s involvement in that bloody conflict.

Tory shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said that if his party forms the next government, they would pull all British troops out of Germany as part of a “defence revolution.”

Mr Fox said the withdrawal would be “part of a fundamental reorganisation of Nato forces designed to free troops for military operations outside Europe.”

In other words, the Tories seek to increase British troop deployment in the unwinnable and illegal war in Afghanistan. This was confirmed by Mr Fox in a speech he gave on 28 September 2009, when he said that he had told US General McChrystal during a meeting in Kabul that “a Conservative Government would be sympathetic to a request for an increase in the number of British troops to help expedite the training of the Afghan Security Forces.”

In that speech, Mr Fox pointed out that the “mission in Afghanistan has received just a fraction of the troops, equipment and resources that have been deployed to Iraq even though Afghanistan has roughly the same population as Iraq and is about one and a half times the size of Iraq.”

He then went on to describe the “two main objectives” of the war in Afghanistan. They are, he said, to “deny al-Qaeda a safe haven to plan, train and launch terrorist attacks on a global scale” and to “remove the Taliban regime from power.”

It is clear that this hopeless, incompetent Tory fool does not have a full understanding of the broader geo-political picture in Afghanistan.

Firstly, al-Qaeda has not ceased operating in Afghanistan. All military reports indicate that vast areas of that country are back under effective Taliban and al-Qaeda control.

To make matters worse, al-Qaeda has extended its worldwide presence since the outbreak of that war and now operates in Pakistan, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Birmingham, Manchester and Luton.

Even more incredibly, Mr Fox is also on record as supporting calls for the reintegration of the Taliban back into the government of Afghanistan. This means that even his “second aim” of the war — removing the Taliban from government — is a hoax.

These blatant contradictions and lies aside, Mr Fox actually wants to increase the intensity of the war in Afghanistan. As he concluded in his September speech on the topic, “Afghanistan must be, and will be, our military’s main effort under a future Conservative Government.”

Voters who choose the Conservative Party at the next election must therefore be aware that they are voting for a party which will bring home even more of our boys and girls in coffins.

Let us prepare ourselves for even longer and sadder homecomings in Wootton Bassett.

* The alternative is to vote for the British National Party which is the only political party totally committed to an immediate withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan.

The Labour Party has endorsed the Conservative Party’s call to increase the number of British troops in Afghanistan despite rising fatalities and the cost of the conflict already reaching near to £10 billion.

The promise to deploy even more troops in Afghanistan was made by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth at the flop Labour Party conference where he told delegates that “the risk of leaving Afghanistan before the job is finished is stark” and to do so would see British troops cast as the “losers.”

“In my view we can’t afford not to be there,” Mr Ainsworth said. “The war in Afghanistan is our war. We are there to ensure our national security. The distant threat can become a local atrocity,” he added.

To make matters worse, Mr Ainsworth said he could not put a time limit on Britain’s military commitment to Afghanistan.

“We want to see significantly more progress in the next year or so,” he said.

Mr Ainsworth’s comments have made it crystal clear that his party’s policy on Afghanistan is absolutely identical to that of the Tories and that there is no difference between the two in this vital area of foreign policy.

Even their mad idea of “engaging” with the “moderates in the Taliban” is identical to the Tories. Labour’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband told his party’s conference that “the way to defeat the Taliban was to separate the hard core from the rest.

“To this means talking to the Taliban, to say: ‘Live within the constitution and you can come home to your communities and have a share of power, but stay outside, in hiding, linked to al-Qaeda, plotting mayhem for Afghanistan, and you will face unremitting military force’,” Mr Miliband said.

Earlier, Tory Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said in London that “moderate” elements of the Taliban could be brought into a democratic Afghani government. “If sections of the Taliban can be brought into the political fold in Afghanistan and allowed to express their grievances through a political process rather than through violence, then why shouldn’t we support this?” Mr Fox said.

In other words, British voters who are opposed to the illegal and immoral war in Afghanistan have a choice between the Labour Party who want more troops, and the Conservative Party who want more troops deployed in that country.

Quite apart from the suffering involved for British soldiers taking part in a conflict which has nothing to do with this country, both Tory and Labour spokesmen are studiously avoiding mentioning the financial implications of their mad policies.

Last year, for example, the cost of the operations in southern Afghanistan accounted for £2.6 billion alone. The previous year it cost a cool £1.5 billion. Considering that British troops have been deployed in Afghanistan since 2002, some £7 billion had been spent on the conflict as of the end of 2008.

Britain now has about 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, up from 8,000 at the beginning of this year. The increased presence of British troops this year will certainly cost more than last year’s amount, which means that calculated as of the end of this year, the total cost of the war in Afghanistan will be in the region of £10 billion.

These figures do not include civil aid money, which also runs into billions of pounds.

This is an extravagant waste of resources, especially in an economic climate where the Government is so broke that essential services are being cut back.

This staggering amount of money is put into perspective when it is considered that Britain’s entire defence budget for this year only runs to some £38 billion.

Only the British National Party has consistently opposed this war and the massive waste of resources which is has entailed. That party will soon be launching its ‘Bring our Troops Home’ campaign which will involve the distribution of hundreds of thousands of booklets detailing the lies and treachery of the Labour and Tory parties in manufacturing this war, the human cost involved and the deliberate undersupply of British forces in the field.

Finally, the campaign will call for the immediate withdrawal of British forces from Afghanistan and for war crimes trials of those Tory and Labour politicians who engineered and supported the war.

The Conservative Party has formally committed itself to increasing the number of British troops in Afghanistan should it come to power.

This shocking statement from Tory Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox was made at an International Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS) meeting in London.

“A Conservative government would consider NATO requests for extra Afghanistan UK troops sympathetically,” Mr Fox said.

“We would be prepared to send additional forces to accelerate the training of the Afghan security forces in order to enable them to take on responsibility for combating the Taliban,” the Conservative Party frontbencher said.

He added that Afghanistan would be the military’s “main effort” under a Conservative government and that he had assured General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in the country, that the Tories would be prepared to send more British troops.

Directly contradicting a number of British military commanders, Mr Fox went on to say that the “war in Afghanistan is winnable” and that “Britain’s commitment remains firm.”

With over 9,000 troops stationed in some of the most violent parts of Afghanistan, Britain is America’s biggest NATO ally there.

Mr Fox went on to fantasise that “moderate” elements of the Taliban could be brought into a democratic Afghani government.

“If sections of the Taliban can be brought into the political fold in Afghanistan and allowed to express their grievances through a political process rather than through violence, then why shouldn’t we support this?” he said.

Mr Fox’s plans are identical to those currently being followed by the Labour government.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has talked of a process of ‘Afghanization,’ in which NATO trains and prepares the Afghan army and police to handle security themselves, and Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said NATO should try to engage what he calls moderate parts of the Taliban.

“The goal of security is achievable,” Mr Fox continued. “The current war in Afghanistan in that context is winnable. This is the message we must get across to our own people — many of whom think any military action in Afghanistan is doomed from the outset,” he said.

In other words, Mr Fox and the Conservative Party are not satisfied with the over 200 British deaths in Afghanistan and actively seek to increase the exposure of our troops in that country.

The British National Party is the only party that has opposed the illegal foreign wars form the word go. A BNP government would not only immediately withdraw from this Afghanistan disaster but would also seek for war crimes charges to be pressed against the Tory and Labour Party politicians who created those wars in the first place.

Three days before announcing an £18.5 million increase in foreign aid to Bangladesh, the Government secretly cut benefits to wounded British soldiers, leaving them £3,000-a-year worse off.

The compensation cut, by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, was ordered in secret out of a well-justified fear of a public outcry following his earlier public attempts to cut payments to wounded troops.

The new cuts mean that badly wounded soldiers will have their disability benefits cut by half and will no longer receive the special £57-a-week allowance paid to all wounded soldiers who are too disabled to work.

This means that all troops injured in the lie-based Labour and Tory supported wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will now be £3,000-a-year worse off.

The new cuts in the Allowance for Lower Standard of Occupation (ALSO) — which helps injured troops pay for basic essentials and stay above the poverty line as they struggle to cope with psychiatric as well as physical wounds — means that even soldiers getting the existing benefit will have it taken away.

British forces in Afghanistan suffered their worst month to date in July, with 22 soldiers killed and 94 wounded in battle. Official figures show that 279 injured troops and veterans are currently involved in legal battles to try and extract more generous compensation settlements after having suffered horrendous injuries in wars started by the Government.

Around 12,000 veterans currently receive the allowance, which means that the total expenditure is £36 million — less than 0.5 percent of Britain’s total foreign aid budget.

The Government’s increased foreign aid grant to Afghanistan last week of £255 million has taken on an even more bitter significance with the court case which began yesterday in which the state is trying to reduce compensation paid to wounded British soldiers.

The legal case, currently being heard in the Court of Appeal, sees Labour’s Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth launching an attempt to reduce compensation payments to wounded British soldiers.

If successful, the case will not only see future compensation to British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan reduced, but also paybacks demanded from British soldiers who have already received what the Government regards as ‘too much.’

At the same time, as reported only by the British National Party news service, based on a Department of International Development (DFID) press release, the Government gave a further £355 million to Afghanistan. Much of that money is to be used to give personal loans to individual Afghanis.

The court case in Britain is about the compensation paid out in terms of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme which pays out money to servicemen and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Government is trying to reverse extra compensation awarded to wounded soldiers after they suffered complications during treatment and their conditions worsened, arguing that it should only have to meet the cost of compensation for the original injuries.

A comparison between civil and military payouts for identical injuries provided by a private solicitor showed that, for example, the loss of one eye in Afghanistan would see a soldier paid out £48,875, while a civilian would be compensated £231,000.

An RAF civilian was awarded £484,000 for a repetitive strain injury in her wrist, while a Royal Marine who lost both legs and his right arm was paid £285,000.

Observers have pointed out that the only reason why British troops are in Afghanistan are because of the Tory and Labour Party supported foreign policy, not because of any genuine British interest.

It is, therefore, nothing short of treason to then refuse to pay the brave soldiers decent comparable compensation when they are injured carrying out these Tory/Labour wars. It also exposes the Conservative Party’s current bleating about the poor compensation levels as hypocritical in the extreme.

The British National Party was the first party in Britain to point out that there was no case for war in Afghanistan or Iraq, and has been the only party to consistently call for a full withdrawal from both those theatres of operations.

Additionally, the BNP is the only party which has consistently demanded that all foreign aid be stopped while British people suffer deprivation.