Co-operative Party set to benefit as joint candidates allowed to use logos

The Co-operative Party, which runs joint candidates with the Labour Party, reports:

Following last year’s ruling by the Electoral Commission that precluded joint candidates from using an emblem – which was made without warning and after the nominations deadline – we have spent a long year of negotiation with the EC and the Cabinet Office to secure the necessary change to legislation.

A statutory instruments laid before Parliament last week updates election rules to tackle this. The Local Elections (Principal Areas) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Rules 2011 adds the following to the rules:

If a candidate who is the subject of an authorisation by two or more parties under rule 5(3) so requests, the ballot paper must contain, against the candidate’s particulars, the registered emblem (or, as the case may be, one of the registered emblems) of one of those parties.

The rules for parish and community council elections in England and Wales have also been updated.