Careful what you write, it may end up in court
As Nick Thornsby has covered on his blog, today was the first day of the court case against Labour MP Phil Woolas over his election campaign.
The case hinges on what Woolas put into his leaflets and, as a result, he was questioned about his attitude towards what is and isn’t acceptable in election literature. The basis of the questions were the ’10 golden rules’ for keeping leaflets legal which have appeared in various Liberal Democrat campaign guides that I’ve co-authored over the years with Candy Piercy and Hilary Stephenson (with assistance too for the wording of the rules from Serena Tierney).
I take it as a small badge of pride that Phil Woolas dismissed one of the ten rules as “naive”.
We will see if he is found guilty then he was wrong if he is innocent then we all know it was sour grapes.
And if he isn’t ………