ALISTAIR Carmichael’s fate lies in the hands of two senior judges who will decide whether or not he will keep his Orkney and Shetland seat following a three-day Election Court “trial”.
The case was brought by four of his constituents – Tim Morrison, Phemie Matheson, Fiona Grahame and Cary Welling – who have raised nearly £130,000 through crowd-funding to finance the rare legal move.
At its heart was an inaccurate leaked memo claiming Nicola Sturgeon told the French ambassador that she would prefer David Cameron to remain in Downing Street after May’s election.
Carmichael initially denied any knowledge of the leak, but a Cabinet Office inquiry found that he had given his special adviser Euan Roddin permission to release it to the Daily Telegraph.
After the trial finished yesterday at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Morrison said they were convinced they had done the right thing.
He said: “Mr Carmichael acknowledged in court that he misled the Cabinet inquiry. That’s a huge statement for a politician to make.
“At the beginning people were saying ‘he just made a mistake, it was nothing very serious’. I think that has been blown out of the water.
“The simple point is that people were surprised and shocked to find their MP had behaved like that. We weren’t in full possession of the facts.”
He added: “If Mr Carmichael had resigned at the very beginning and stood again, if he said ‘this is what I did and I made a mistake’, he might well have been elected and that would have been absolutely fine, that would have been democracy.
“Ultimately what we hope we can achieve is a by-election in Orkney and Shetland, that’s it. We have no purpose beyond that.”
Counsel for the Orkney four, Jonathan Mitchell QC, said yesterday that Carmichael had launched an “unguided missile” by sanctioning the leak, never believing that he would be found out.
“He goes into the inquiry with three people knowing the truth of the matter – himself, Mr Roddin and Mr Simon Johnston of the Daily Telegraph,” said Mitchell.
“We have here a Liberal Democrat MP and a Liberal Democrat adviser who wish to launch this unguided missile into the blue.
“And he goes for that purpose to a Conservative-supporting journalist at a Conservative-supporting newspaper.”
Mitchell said what they had was “a false statement that cannot be met with a denial”.
“Nobody was in a position to deny what Mr Carmichael was saying. That’s why it was critical to keep the ball in the air until 7 May,” he said, adding that there could be no “coherent explanation” claiming an innocent purpose for the leak.
Its sole purpose was, he said, to benefit his party – the LibDems – in his constituency.
“There simply is no other dog in the race in his purpose other than affecting the return in his constituency,” said Mitchell.
He added that any lie struck at “personal integrity”.
Mitchell said: “If I make a false accusation against my opponent, yes, he can deny it but how can the public judge?
“In Mr Carmichael’s case as he does, lying about himself, no one in the election can contradict this.
“They can say he is obviously not telling the truth, but there is no position to put before the electorate until he admits it.”
Earlier, Mitchell criticised Carmichael, who had admitted a “catalogue of untruths to save his reputation”.
He said the MP’s explanation for lying to “Channel 4, to the Daily Record, to his political friends and allies and civil servants”, as well as trying to mislead the Cabinet Office inquiry, was “naïve and ingenuous – he was on oath”.
“The court must take his evidence with extreme caution,” said the QC.
Roddy Dunlop QC, representing Carmichael, told the court that leaking “happens in politics”.
“It is irrefutable that the leak was a political leak. That was very clearly Mr Carmichael’s evidence,” he said.
“Leaking is, on the evidence, something that happens in politics. This leak was political. That means a false denial about involvement in the leak would be a false statement about a political matter.”
Dunlop said it would be disproportionate to end his client’s career based on what he “blurted out” in a TV interview.
“That interview, on its own, uninformed by any other evidence: it cannot be said beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Carmichael’s purpose, dominant motive, was to affect his return at the election,” he said.
“It is a very strange way to try and enhance one’s prospects at the election by trying three times to avoid answering the question.”
The first Election Court in Scotland for more than 50 years was sitting as a sub committee of the House of Commons. Lady Paton and Lord Matthews will deliver their verdict to the House in due course.
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