Comment: Weep no tears for Woolas
MPs are demeaning themselves by supporting Phil Woolas. Outright lying is not the same thing as political debate.
By Ian Dunt
Westminster is often a silly place, where people say silly things. Nowhere could this be more evident than in the reaction to the Phil Woolas case.
After John Bercow informed the Commons yesterday that a by-election would have to wait for Woolas to finish his (pointless) legal gambits, several MPs rose to voice their concern over the issue, including the Conservative’s Edward Leigh, who is rarely sensible, and Labour’s David Winnick, who sometimes is. “Enormous constitutional issues” were raised by the judgement, they said. “It is for the people to evict members of parliament, not the judges,” Leigh argued. “What worries me about this is if this is allowed to stand then it will become virtually impossible that there be really robust debate during elections.”
Bercow’s response ached with sympathy. He’s not very good at covering up his true feelings, our Bercow. That undercurrent of sympathy is everywhere, from the local Manchester papers characterising Woolas as the hard-done-by local lad, to the fashionable commentators making bizarre, depressing arguments about the necessarily ugly nature of politics. Leigh’s argument, that the case will dampen political debate during campaigns and that the judges have taken on the role of electors, is dangerously close to becoming a consensus.
So let’s just remind ourselves of what Woolas did. Woolas was found guilty of an illegal practise contrary to section 106 of the Representation of the People Act – of making or publishing “several false statements of fact in relation to the petitioner’s personal character or conduct which he had no reasonable grounds for believing to be true and did not believe to be true”.
Politicians, as we all know, are natural bedfellows with misleading statements. Crime stats are tweaked and dossiers sexed up. MPs appearing on news programmes appear evasive because they are specifically trying to avoid any sentences which might later be used against them. Instead, they rely on slogans and vague rhetoric. This was not the same as what Woolas did. He lost the case because he was shown to have known that the statements he was making were false at the time that he made them.
Saying the electorate, not a judge, should make the decision is quite beside the point. How is the electorate supposed to make a proper decision without having accurate information to hand? Voters might just be upset that a man they voted against because of his supposed relationship with Muslim extremists has no such relationship after all. The democratic system relies on reliable information flow. There’s nothing undemocratic about securing it and it’s childish nonsense to pretend otherwise.
Some commentators take a more nuanced view, insisting that the public understands the cut and thrust of politics and tends to blot out negative campaigning. It’s a very depressing and deterministic view to take, but one that is anyway irrelevant. The public have a right not to be lied to by the people seeking their trust as political representatives. This is entirely different to negative campaigning.
Everyone tweaks facts. Press officers put spins on stories. Officials tinker with figures. Plenty of politicians have played the age-old game with absolute and relative statistics, saying that knife crime has gone up by 50%, for instance, when they could just as easily have said that there were two more stabbings than last year. This is standard. But it is not deliberately lying. It is a politically useful interpretation of existing information.
That seems a sly distinction, almost a political distinction. Actually, it’s very important. Without it, we either allow a free market in truth at election time or we make standard political debate illegal. Interpretation of fact is fundamental to all political debate, not just party political debate. Why does crime happen, for instance? Is it poverty, or personal moral failure? That old left-right argument is really just a differing assessment of existing information.
Section 106 of the Representation of the People Act is how we make that distinction. Normal speech is protected, but knowingly misleading the electorate is ruled out. Without it, the only recourse would be libel – which is too expensive for anyone but the richest candidate. This law gives us a limited defence. Sure, both teams had to put down a £5,000 retainer at the start of the case and the loser pays the winner’s legal costs, but these are no more financially restrictive than a standard civil law case. If we were to rely exclusively on libel, we would leave the electorate open to endless lies without fear of consequence – unless one candidate is rich enough (and you have to be very rich) to fight a libel case.
This whole process has actually worked out rather well, and a bout of navel gazing nonsense about constitutional disaster is utterly unnecessary. Much better that we talk about the other things we have learnt during this debacle. I’ll give you four suggestions.
One: the a weirdly pleasing irony of Woolas talking, Braveheart-style, about free speech, when his government did more than any other to clamp down on it.
Two: the abject failure of Labour to do anything about the hateful, divisive nature of the Woolas campaign, which was designed, in the words of his team, “to make white folk angry”. Last night, Labour MPs apparently savaged Harriet Harman for disowning Woolas. They are trying to stump up the cash for his legal fight. Even as the court case was going on, Ed Miliband put him on the front bench – a staggering and disappointing error of judgement which has been largely overlooked due to the party’s rapid and clinical dismissal of Woolas once the judgement came in. If there’s one Labour trait that never quite goes away it’s the party’s tendency to cover up incompetence with brutality.
Three: Bercow really messed up yesterday when he put the by-election on hold until all Woolas’ legal avenues had dried up. A judicial review can’t happen, because it is not permitted to review the workings of the high court or the court of appeal. An appeal is also pointless, because the decision that made the election result void has no appeal by statute. It might overturn the sentence, but not the result.
Four: this is where our political culture goes when we pander to fears over immigration. This is not about immigration policy, this is about immigration rhetoric. Woolas’ stated strategy, to take away BNP support by delivering BNP rhetoric, takes mainstream politics to the gutter. It is cheap, nasty, spiteful politics which divides us, which brings out our worst responses, both as candidates and electors. It has demeaned our communities. The viciousness of Woolas’ rhetoric is not a separate factor to his behaviour during the campaign. It is part and parcel of the same monster.
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