Former British minister Phil Woolas is today asking three High Court judges to overturn a decision stripping him of his Commons seat.
In a rare ruling, a specially convened election court declared the general election result in Oldham East and Saddleworth “void”.
It removed Mr Woolas as the MP and banned him from standing for election for three years after finding him guilty of deliberately lying about a rival, Liberal Democrat Elwyn Watkins.
Today Lord Justice Thomas, Mr Justice Tugendhat and Mrs Justice Nicola Davies will hear his fast-tracked application for judicial review. The legal challenge has been brought on for hearing as a matter of urgency to ensure the seat does not go too long without an MP.
Labour - which immediately suspended him from the party - said it would delay calling a fresh election pending the legal fight.
Many Labour MPs have rallied round Mr Woolas and contributed to a fighting fund amid open revolt over the leadership’s decision to “hang him out to dry”. Yesterday Mr Woolas said he was “humbled” and “blown away” by the support he had received. Constituents, MPs and party members raised more than £30,000 in 48 hours.
However, deputy leader Harriet Harman came under fire from colleagues for cutting the former immigration minister adrift and signalling there was no way back for him.
She said after the hearing that Mr Woolas had no future as a Labour MP even if he succeeded in overturning the ruling because lies had “no place” in the party’s campaigning.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes said: “Labour’s leaders had spoken but since then many Labour MPs have come out in support of Phil Woolas both on and off the record.
“The judgment of the court was clear: Phil Woolas made statements which were not about Liberal Democrat politics but personal attacks on our candidate’s character and conduct which he had no reasonable grounds for believing were true and did not believe were true.
Mr Woolas was found guilty of illegal practices under election law over comments made in his campaign material that Mr Watkins tried to “woo” the votes of Muslims who advocated violence and that he had refused to condemn extremists who advocated violence against the Labour ex-minister.
The election court judges ruled that, although made in the context of an election campaign, they clearly amounted to attacks on his opponent’s “personal character or conduct” and Mr Woolas, who beat Mr Watkins by just 103 votes in a bitter campaign, had “no reasonable grounds for believing them to be true and did not believe them to be true”.
PA