As if the Ealing Southall by-election needed another twist… news has broken tonight that police will be mounting an investigation following the leaking of alleged postal vote scores via the Telegraph’s Little and Large blog, authored by Daily Telegraph journalists Brendan Carlin and Jonathan Isaby.
As any fule kno, it’s a criminal offence to disclose the results of postal vote counts before polls close. The complaint to the police has come from Labour’s election agent, Ken Clarke (no, not him, a different one).
It is of course a complete mystery which party might have chosen to leak figures – which may be accurate, or may be designed to mislead, or may just be plain wrong – to their friends at the Telegraph. Hmmm.
For the moment – at least until the relevant comments are removed – the curious may wish to check out this thread on PoliticalBetting.com.
PS: Ironically, the Telegraph’s Little and Large blog splashed on Monday with ‘Lib Dems setting themselves up for fall’, a brazen attempt to spin anything other than a landslide Lib Dem victory in Ealing Southall as a disaster for the party and for Ming. As they prepare to help the police with their inquiries, Brendan and Jonathan might wish to reflect that pride comes before a fall.
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6 Comments
Let me guess, the Tory source has the Tories leading by a majority of 1234?
I saw the story before it was pulled, and it said the figures came from a source in the Conservative camp.
*cough*
Indy caught at it in their print edition.
Also any fule kno that it is virtually impossible to get an accurate subjective impression of the postal vote proportions on a long ballot paper as anyone who has attended a postal papers verification session could tell you. My suspicion, this was a bit of attempted media manipulation by someone who made figures up and simply didnt understand the consequences of such imaginative talk. A total incompetent at election management then. Er, that offers no alibis for the Tory team then…
Whether the figures were made up or not I hope the police take this blatant breach of election law seriously.
The article is still available if you look in Google’s cached pages.