The Sunday Times has a got a story about Labour breaking the rules on postal voting:
All three main parties, meanwhile, have signed up to the Electoral Commission’s code of conduct [on postal voting] … Today we report that the Labour party in Leeds has driven an articulated lorry through this code in a desperate attempt to gain power on the city council. An undercover reporter posing as a student activist was part of a team told by the leader of the Labour group on the council, Keith Wakefield, and a fellow Labour politician, to collect postal votes in two key wards, and if necessary “help” voters fill in the forms. The other councillor, Graham Hyde, who worked in the Commons for George Mudie, the former Labour deputy chief whip, warned the canvassers not to get caught with any postal voting forms on them. Every aspect of the code, in other words, was breached. As David Crompton, assistant chief constable of West Yorkshire, put it when told of Labour’s actions: “This is extremely sharp practice and a clear breach of the guidelines. We will now be looking at this carefully to determine whether a crime has been committed.”
From what is online about the story, it looks like the Sunday Times has done a pretty good job at distinguishing between breaches of the (voluntary) code of conduct and breaches of the law (and credit to them for that – the media don’t have a great track record at getting these sorts of details right in election law reporting).
They have a very solid looking case that Labour in Leeds has systematically broken the code, though it’s less clear at this stage if the law was also breached. But even if the law has not been broken, will Labour take disciplinary action against widespread breaches of the code it has signed up to? (In the Liberal Democrats the code can be grounds for expelling someone).
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5 Comments
This story will come back to haunt you, Mr. P.
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=451398&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=
Why will it come back to haunt him.
Liberal Democrats have expelled people who behave unacceptably with regard to postal votes.
By contrast see what John Hemmings reports on his blog:
“The Labour Party’s attitude to electoral fraud however has to be recognised in the fact that they have not expelled the 5 ex-councillors found personally responsible for election fiddling and they have allowed one of the people elected as a result of fraud to restand. That is not a “zero tolerance” approach to vote fraud.”
As we’ve all noted before, too hoarse is really a bit of an old nag… or maybe just an ass
I’ve only just seen this story – but it’s
the same old story with Labour – they pass
laws e.g. a bout campaign funding, which they do not themselves bother to comply with – they think they’re above that kind of thing. Lying for Labour would appear to be standard practice these days.