election court strikes again (after 99 years)

Phil Woolas, ex-Home Office Minister and Labour MP, best known perhaps for his lambasting from Joanna Lumley over Ghurka rights, has found himself on the front page yet again for the wrong reasons. He is the first person to be judged against by an the little-convened Election Court, for 99 years. His charge was under section 106 of the Representation of the People 1983 which makes it an offence to make a 'false statement in relation to a candidate's character or conduct unless he believes it to be true'. The case was brought by the Liberal Democrat Elwyn Watkins who lost the East Oldam and Saddleworth seat at the last General Election by 103 votes. The court, composed of two High Court judges who found themselves sampling a hotel in Saddleworth unexpectedly, found that the case was proved as Woolas has alleged that Watkins had received 'illegal foreign donations'. Woolas was not helped by an email before the court from an aide which said 'if he don't get the white vote angry he's gone'. The case was proved, Woolas has threatened the last resort of many disappointed litigants without a clear route of appeal, judicial review, and the 2010 election will be rerun in which, ironically, the Lib Dems are unlikely to win because election courts unlike common law courts cannot order the parties back into the position they would have been in if the default had not occurred i.e.here, back in time to May 2010.They can only order the election to be run again in real time and due to the unpopularity of the Lib Dems since the Coalition Watkins is probably less likely to win this one than the last. In the meantime (wrongly in my view) Woolas has been disowned, indeed suspended, by the Labour Party, when in fact he probably went little further than many candidates in his electioneering propaganda.