I can't let this lie

I think watching Martin Bright comes under what this blog is supposed to do.

As so often, I'm ambivalent about this. Bright makes some decent (no pun intended) points.

I'll point you to fellow-Decent John Rentoul for some background.

However, I managed to take the elementary precaution of reading the judgment – or at least its conclusions. I am afraid that I had no idea that there was a law against telling lies in election campaigns. But there is, and, now that I have looked at it, it is a good law. It is section 106 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, which says that anyone who "for the purpose of affecting the return of any candidate at the election, makes or publishes any false statement of fact in relation to the candidate's personal character or conduct shall be guilty of an illegal practice, unless he can show that he had reasonable grounds for believing, and did believe, that statement to be true".

It is a limited and specific law, designed as a fail-safe for extreme cases. It is intended to prevent candidates publishing factual assertions about their opponents that they know, or should know, to be untrue, and which are likely to affect the outcome of the election. In such cases, the law of defamation offers insufficient remedy, because the successful candidate might simply pay damages while continuing to serve as an MP, which would be a reward for "illegal practice".

Indeed, there is such a law, and it was passed under a Tory government (indeed under Mrs Thatch herself, not under one of those wibbly-wobbly pseudo-leftie Tories like Heath or Macmillan).

Politics is a dirty business and general election campaigning is politics at its dirtiest.

That's Martin Bright. But, if I may make a suggestion, perhaps politics could be cleaner. The Marquis of Queensbury cleaned up boxing. It's still thuggish and about breaking jaws, but not the sci-fi death sport it once was. Does this have to be an eternal truth? I don't think the voters really want dirt. Laws making general elections less dirty, passed, perhaps ironically enough, by elected MPs, may be a good start.

I was not comfortable with Phil Woolas's "robust" approach to immigration policy. And I cringed at his election leaflets. His attempt to scare white working class voters was distasteful to this north London liberal.

And to me. See: Martin Bright and I agree on some things.

But the gleeful way in which he has been hung out to dry by the Labour Party has been more so. How quick were Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman to reject him – and how slow to condemn Ken Livingstone for backing a non-Labour candidate in the Tower Hamlets mayoral election in London.

But not on everything. Woolas broke the law. A sensible law, passed by his (ex-) peers. Livingstone didn't. He's a loose cannon and a bete-noire of Martin Bright, but he also has a power base - and in this case he stayed on the right side of the law.

I called Martin Bright's prose "over-caffienated" (have lost the link, sorry) once, and it's his adjectives I object to as much as anything here. I think Miliband was very slow to reject Woolas. He should have realised this was coming, and at least looked at those election leaflets as Bright did. And 'gleeful'? No, I really don't see any evidence for that, other than the celerity of their reaction. And, of course, they'd have been torn apart had it been slower.