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| Alistair Carmichael: election court throws out attempt to unseat MP | Alistair Carmichael: election court throws out attempt to unseat MP |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| An election court has thrown out an attempt to unseat the Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael after he admitted lying about his role in leaking a controversial memo about Nicola Sturgeon. | An election court has thrown out an attempt to unseat the Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael after he admitted lying about his role in leaking a controversial memo about Nicola Sturgeon. |
| Two judges in Edinburgh ruled that it had not been proved that the former Scotland secretary’s dishonesty about the memo in a Channel 4 News interview was intended to mislead voters in his Orkney and Shetland constituency. | Two judges in Edinburgh ruled that it had not been proved that the former Scotland secretary’s dishonesty about the memo in a Channel 4 News interview was intended to mislead voters in his Orkney and Shetland constituency. |
| The court of session said Lady Paton and Lord Matthews refused the petition by four voters in Carmichael’s constituency because “it had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt that he had committed an illegal practice under the terms of the Representation of the People’s Act 1983”. | |
| Their ruling follows a very rare attempt to strike down an MP’s election under the Representation of the People’s Act 1983 by four voters in Orkney and Shetland, who raised nearly £165,000 through crowdfunding to pay for their legal action. | Their ruling follows a very rare attempt to strike down an MP’s election under the Representation of the People’s Act 1983 by four voters in Orkney and Shetland, who raised nearly £165,000 through crowdfunding to pay for their legal action. |
| Carmichael is Scotland’s last surviving Lib Dem MP, holding on to his seat in May’s general election with a substantially reduced majority of 817 votes. | Carmichael is Scotland’s last surviving Lib Dem MP, holding on to his seat in May’s general election with a substantially reduced majority of 817 votes. |
| Speaking after the ruling was issued, Carmichael said he was pleased. A former state prosecutor, he said he had always been confident of winning but “the last few months have been a difficult and stressful time for me and my family”. | |
| He added: “This case was politically motivated. It was a deliberate attempt by nationalists to remove the last Scottish Liberal voice at Westminster, and is a mark of the unhealthy polarisation of Scottish politics since the referendum. | |
| “I shall continue to represent Orkney and Shetland as a member of parliament to the best of my ability, as I have done for the past 14 years.” | |
| The election court had heard that Carmichael had authorised his then special adviser, Euan Roddin, to leak a Scotland Office memo to the Daily Telegraph which stated that Sturgeon had purportedly told the French ambassador, Sylvie Bermann, that she privately wanted David Cameron and the Tories to win the UK general election. | |
| If true, it would have been politically sensational: the first minister had been telling voters she wanted Labour to win and form an anti-Tory alliance at Westminster. | |
| However, the memo’s account was immediately repudiated by both Sturgeon and Pierre-Alain Coffinier, the then French consul general. They denied the first minister had made that remark. | |
| The hearings heard very detailed and highly critical attacks on Carmichael’s conduct after the memo was leaked: he only admitted his role in authorising the leak to his colleagues and the Cabinet Office after the general election, when his majority had been slashed by 92%. | |
| Jonathan Mitchell QC, acting for the petitioners, accused the MP of repeatedly and deliberately lying to his voters, his own party, the civil service leak enquiry and to the media about his involvement in the leak throughout the election campaign. | |
| Mitchell had won one early victory in the proceedings, after the court ruled for the first time that the wording of the 1983 act included attempts by a candidate to talk up their own character or to conceal their own misbehaviour. Until then, the act was thought only to focus on candidates smearing or abusing their opponents. | |
| In their final decision the court agreed with Carmichael’s lawyer, Roddy Dunlop QC, that the case hinged on the precise wording of the petition to the court, which had only detailed Carmichael’s interview with Channel 4 News and did not complain about any other parts of his conduct. | |
| In a summary of the decision, which is being released in full later on Wednesday, Paton referred to the precise words used by Carmichael in the Channel 4 News interview two days after the Telegraph published the memo. | |
| She said: “There is no dispute that the words: ‘I told you the first I became aware of this, and this is already on public record, was when I received a phone call on Friday afternoon [i.e. Friday 3 April 2015] from a journalist making me aware of it’ constituted a false statement of fact, in other words, a lie. | |
| “Obviously [Carmichael] had been aware of the existence of the memo and its contents as described to him by Mr Roddin since the flight to the Faroe Islands in March 2015. Moreover, he had authorised Mr Roddin to release the memo to the Daily Telegraph.” | |
| But Mitchell had not proved that that deception was designed to deceive voters in Carmichael’s seat. | |
| The judges had reasonable doubt that this lie was about Carmichael’s personal character and conduct. | |
| “It is of the essence of section 106 that it does not apply to lies in general: it applies only to lies in relation to the personal character or conduct of a candidate made before or during an election for the purpose of affecting that candidate’s return,” Paton said. |