Y'all have probably heard about the crazy Tory in Watford who waged a two year hate campaign against his Lib Dem opponent and when convicted on five counts of criminal damage and two of harassment, asked for a further 68 instances to be taken into consideration? I feel a sense of weary resignation that this sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later. Given the hijinks that activists on campaign trails get up to all the time, I'm just glad it wasn't a member of my party who went a bit mental and took it several shades too far with the name-calling. But you know what? If it HAD have been a member of my party, the reaction of the higher-ups would have been very different.

You see, the thing that brings the whole political process into disrepute is not that one bad apple (or even bunch of bad apples) who do nasty things; it's the reaction of those in charge of them. If it comes to light that someone in the party has done something totally unacceptable, like this, you hold an investigation. You don't fob people off and hope it goes away. If they are actually convicted of criminal offences, you don't deny all knowledge and pretend you never knew the guy in the first place. You certainly don't try to pretend it was all larks, especially not when you've been banging on for years about how people who do this sort of thing should have the book thrown at them...

Politicians of ALL parties need to pay attention to this and decide NOW what they are going to do when the next bad apple turns up. Because the next bad apple WILL turn up, and yes, it might be a Tory again, but it could be Labour, or Green, or even one of us. There need to be procedures, and they need to be followed. People are never going to regain any sort of trust in the political process if this culture of cover up continues. When something like this happens in your own party, you need to gird your loins and unite in condemnation of it; anything less is fodder for those who think politicians are all weasels on the make (no offence to the lovely pink_weasel).

And the less said about putting convicted forger/fraudsters and bunny-boilers who can't control their temper up for election, the better.