Phil Woolas to be challenged in court over election 'dirty tricks'

[afleitch]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7998847/Former-minister-in-High-Court-battle-over-election-dirty-tricks.html

"The Labour MP will appear at the High Court today to face allegations that he told “devastating and far-reaching” lies about his Liberal Democrat opponent as he tried to cling on to his seat, which he won with a majority of just 103 votes.

Mr Woolas is the first MP for 99 years to face a challenge to his election victory on the basis of publishing false statements about an opponent. If he loses the case, which is scheduled to last five days, he would face being disqualified by the court from sitting in the House of Commons."

The MP’s election agent, Joseph Fitzpatrick, allegedly sent an email in the run-up to the poll saying: “We need … to explain to the white community how the Asians will take him [Woolas] out … If we don’t get the white vote angry he’s gone.”

[Filuwaúrdjan]

He ran a dirty campaign (of course; he always does), but the leaflets were no worse than large numbers (hundreds if we're looking at the course of a five year parliament) put out by candidates of all parties at different levels every year. The difference in this case is that the defeated LibDem is sufficiently wealthy and feels sufficiently entitled to take this to court. That, and the fact that this is the constituency that it is; a lot of bad blood there, dating back to the Littleborough & Saddleworth by-election.
I don't know much about election law and have no idea how it works in this case (especially as we're dealing with a part of it that had basically been dead letter), but normally you have to prove chain of causation (in this case that would be to show that not only were the leaflets outright untrue, but that it caused enough people to change their votes to affect the outcome), and I doubt there's any evidence of that. But maybe that isn't a factor in this particular law; media reports have been very unclear on that.

[You kip if you want to...]

Who'd win such a by-election? It'd be anyone's game really.

[minionofmidas]

People don't tend to like a sore loser.

[You kip if you want to...]

People don't tend to like a sore loser.

True, but don't forget this is a three way marginal and Labour have no money.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

People don't tend to like a sore loser.

As Gerry Malone - who had a much better case than Watkins - could tell us. Admittedly he was/is a totally unsympathetic prick, which probably didn't help much.

True, but don't forget this is a three way marginal and Labour have no money.

Labour will get Short Money now that the Party is in opposition; I'm not sure when the first payments come through though. Any by-election would also be after the CSR. Of course Labour would also loose Woolas's sizeable personal vote.

[You kip if you want to...]

People don't tend to like a sore loser.

As Gerry Malone - who had a much better case than Watkins - could tell us. Admittedly he was/is a totally unsympathetic prick, which probably didn't help much.

True, but don't forget this is a three way marginal and Labour have no money.

Labour will get Short Money now that the Party is in opposition; I'm not sure when the first payments come through though. Any by-election would also be after the CSR. Of course Labour would also loose Woolas's sizeable personal vote.

It would be hard to call until the votes are counted. Who knows if the Liberals are still "The party of by-elections" while they're in government?