Labour breach electoral law in Ealing Southall

TOM Watson, the Labour MP running the Ealing Southall campaign, has broken electoral law by publishing a false statement about the Conservative Candidate Tony Lit.

Iain Dale exclusively reported the breach on his blog earlier this evening, when Watson claimed on his blog that Tony Lit is not registered to vote.

Watson wrote:

This by-election is getting very surreal. So much so, that I’m beginning to think that the Tories are running a fictional candidate. Yesterday, Andrew Gilligan, in a two page Evening Standard spread on the Conservative candidate wrote “[Tony] Lit does not live in Southall…preferring the leafier environs of the Chiswick-Isleworth border for himself and his young family”. There’s one small political problem with this. There is no Tony Lit registered to vote in Chiswick. I know he only joined the Conservatives last week but running a candidate who isn’t registered to vote strikes me as just peculiar.

The false allegation came at the same time as former Home Office Minister Joan Ryan MP wrote to George Osborne MP, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and General Election Campaign Coordinator, alleging the above.

It seems, however, that Labour have been up to their usual trick of jumping the gun, trying to grab headlines and discredit their oponents in one swoop. The pair jumped too soon before doing their homework.

Tony Lit is registered under his full family name Surinderpal Singh Lit and has voted in every election since he was 18. A letter to this effect has been sent to Ryan and Watson will soon be forced to make an apology on his blog.

The letter has been released to the media.