Yes call a Gower By-election but lets have on for every seat the Tories cheated,

I would really have some sympathy  with call has been made for Gower Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi to resign and “fight a free and honest by-election” after a Twitter user apologised for making a false allegation about her Conservative predecessor if it would set a precedent and we would see MPs who have over-spent  on their election or lied to the electorate being forced to stand down and face the electorate in a by-election.

Mind you there would be a lot of them

The wasting Mule reports that 
 
During the 2017 election campaign Dan Evans claimed the Tories’ Byron Davies – who won Gower in 2015 by just 27 votes – was under investigation for electoral fraud, which was untrue.

Ms Antoniazzi won the election with a majority of 3,269.
Mr Evans has since made a full apology and admitted he “wanted him to lose”. It is understood he agreed to make a “substantial contribution” to a charity of Mr Davies’s choosing, and to cover the former MP's legal costs.

In a packed House of Commons, Conservative MP Steve Double made the case for a by-election.
He said:

 “Free and fair elections are the foundation of our democracy. The Prime Minister, I am sure, will be aware of events that happened in the Gower constituency in last year’s election where the Labour activist Dan Evans is admitting spreading lies and libellous accusations against our former colleague Byron Davies in order to influence the outcome of the election.
“It appears his efforts worked. Does the Prime Minister believe that the leadership of the Labour party need to make very clear that our democracy has no place for this sort of behaviour and does she believe that the honourable thing would be for the new incumbent of that seat to resign and fight a free and honest by-election?”

Prime Minister Theresa May said Mr Davies had

 “lost his job as a result of the action that was taken”.

However, Ms Antoniazzi said that neither she nor her team had acted in a “dishonest manner” and raised concerns for Mr Evans.

She said:

 “I am extremely worried about the news [that] youth worker Dan Evans has been made to pay a considerable amount in damages... The image that Dan Tweeted was not originally posted by him, and he has been punished for his naivety in this matter.
“Dan has a young family to support, [is] on a low salary [and] runs a food bank and supports refugees, and having to pay out significant damages, when common sense should have prevailed and an apology would have been sufficient, is just cruel...
“Dan offered to apologise unequivocally to Byron Davies in public on Twitter, but this was not sufficient for the former MP.”

I doubt that Dan Evans made any difference to the result, but that would not be argument that a rerun should be dismissed.

But the sheer hypocricy of the Tories in calling for a By-election is breathtaking.


An undercover investigation by C4 News, broadcast last , claimed the workers may have been carrying out paid canvassing, banned under electoral law, as they promoted key Conservative messages to undecided voters in the weeks before the election. by using a Neath call centre to canvass voters during the  campaign.

The investigation claimed that calls were made to voters in key marginal seats, including Bridgend, Gower, Clwyd South and Wrexham.
At the start of the election campaign, the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, contacted all parties to remind them of the law around direct marketing.

 I doubt that Gower in 2017  was influenced by a lone Twitter,but  Gower 2015 may well have had been.

A Conservative party spokesman denied the allegations, saying:

 "Political parties of all colours pay for market research and direct marketing calls.
"All the scripts supplied by the party for these calls are compliant with data protection and information law".

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office said it would take action against any party which had not "followed the law".

He said,

"We will be asking the Conservative Party about the marketing campaigns conducted from this call centre,"

The party has repeatedly denied allegations it exceeded spending limits ahead of the 1915 General Election.

But two activists who worked on the campaign now claim that the party cheated and has since engaged in a cover-up.

Gregg and Louise Kinsell, who volunteered for the Tories in the final few days of the 2015 election campaign in the South West, said funds which the party had declared as national spending were actually spent on local candidates.

The allegations centre on the ‘Battlebus 2015’ campaign, which sent coach-loads of party activists into 29 marginal seats.

Party spending on the battlebuses was declared only in the national election campaign’s expenses.

The Tories insisted the buses were a national event and not used to specifically promote local candidates.

However, the Kinsells said that, while working on the battlebus tours in four key marginal constituencies in the South West, they were specifically tasked with promoting local candidates.

This included being given local briefing papers and seat-specific scripts, being handed specific voter data and distributing local leaflets. Mrs Kinsell told Channel 4 News: 

‘We worked for the local candidates and MPs to ensure that they won their seat and we were sent wherever they thought we would help.’

Mr Kinsell said: ‘If people are saying, and the MPs concerned in these areas are saying it was part of a greater expense nationally for the Conservatives, that is a lie and an obvious falsehood.

‘In that case I feel especially motivated to go to the police and go to the Electoral Commission. They are telling lies about what we did – and we duped people on the doors, it feels like cheating.’

 ‘It has shocked me that they have been this arrogant and think they can get away with it.

‘We were on the bus. We know what happened.

Of course the subsequent  General Election may have ben the reason the Electoral Commission did not continue to pursue it.

But it is a toothless institution and if it was to really act then there would be a spate of By-elections after every General Election until the parties obey the rules or (more likely) hide their wrongdoing more carefully.