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WORRIED Scottish Labour will not risk a by-election by trying to force out disgraced MP Eric Joyce, it emerged yesterday.

One Labour source said: “They really would rather have a nutter in that seat than a Nat.”

Joyce went to ground yesterday as activists stepped up plans to deselect him as MP for Falkirk.

But Labour chiefs, who have now suspended him, are unlikely to lean on him to resign because they are desperate to avoid a by-election in the seat, where they lead the SNP by just over 7000 votes.

The 51-year-old MP was charged with three counts of assault following a row in a Westminster bar on Wednesday night.

He was released late on Thursday after spending nearly 24 hours in a London police cell.

Some senior Labour figures want the party leadership to press Joyce to “do the decent thing” and resign as an MP immediately.

But they are outnumbered by others who want to avoid a by-election in the immediate future.

Any MP receiving a jail sentence of less than a year can continue to serve in Parliament, even though the party whip is removed.

That means that Joyce, if he is convicted, could continue to draw his £65,738 salary, expenses and pension contributions as an independent MP until the next general election, due in 2015.

Activists in the Falkirk Labour party, who are due to meet tomorrow, have tried on a number of occasions to deselect Joyce – who became MP in 2000 – as their candidate. But he has always managed to survive.

There was little sympathy for Joyce from other Scottish Labour MPs, who felt he had tarnished their image.

But there was no condemnation of him from Scottish leader Johann Lamont’s office.

Instead, Labour’s official response was issued by UK deputy leader Harriet Harman, who said: “He’s been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Labour Party.

“If there’s a charge of assault, which there is, we regard it with the utmost seriousness.”

Joyce’s predecessor, Dennis Canavan, who was expelled from the Labour Party for standing as an independent for the Scottish parliament, said Joyce was not “a fit and proper person” to be an MP.

He said: “This all speaks volumes about the way the Labour Party goes about selecting its candidates.

“I am saddened but not very surprised to hear about this latest incident.

“My sympathies lie with the people of Falkirk, not with Mr Joyce.”

Tory backbencher Andrew Percy, one of those caught up in the fracas, tweeted yesterday that he felt “sorry” for Joyce.

Insisting he was “fine” after the incident, the Brigg and Goole MP added: “Tbh, I sort of feel sorry for him. People in a good place don’t act like that. That’s all I’ll tweet on it!”

Last night, a senior Labour MP said: “Eric Joyce’s political career is over. Whatever the outcome of the court case, he is now a political pariah.

“People in the country may think it’s just an escapade but what happened was an outrage to Parliament.

“Many of us are amazed that he has never been deselected by his own constituency or taken off the candidates’ list by the party.

“It’s been a complete mystery why he has survived this long.”

What we paid

THE cell walls of Belgravia police station, where Eric Joyce was held for almost 24 hours, would have looked familiar.

It would have reminded him of November 2010, when he pleaded guilty to failing to provide a breath specimen on a ­drink-driving charge in Falkirk.

He resigned as shadow Northern Ireland minister as a result but few shed a tear.

He was unpopular among MPs and many of the people of Falkirk, particularly when they discovered how much he had been claiming in expenses.

In fact, Joyce was frequently No1 in the list of House of Commons expenses claimants.

For the 2005-6 parliamentary session, he claimed £174,811 in expenses.

He made a public pledge to cut his expenses and, for a year, he did move down the list of top claimers to 11th place.

But he was back at the top in the 2007-8 Parliamentary session with a whopping claim of £187,334.

He became Britain’s most expensive MP with cumulative claims breaking the £1million mark.

Last year, he became the first to claim more than £200,000. Joyce has never apologised for this and in October 2007, he faced down his expenses critics on Newsnight Scotland.

Asked if it was necessary to claim £180 for three oil paintings which hung in his Falkirk surgery, Joyce replied he had used taxpayers’ money on them “because they look nice”.

Being Scotland’s most ­expensive MP didn’t put Joyce off using other perks.

Also in 2007, he used air miles built up while spending £30,000 on ­parliamentary business to arrange for his children’s au pair to fly home, business class, for a family Easter reunion in Slovakia.

He was one of Westminster’s top flippers – who “flipped” their main and second homes for tax purposes.

Under the old expenses system, the mortgage for MPs’ second homes in London or their ­constituency was paid by us.

When it came to selling the second property, usually to make a profit, MPs could declare that the second home was their main residence – avoiding capital gains tax on the profit of the sale.

Several prominent MPs were caught up in the expenses scandal by “flipping” the ­designation of their second homes.

In May 2009, Joyce was in ­negotiations with HM Revenue and Customs over £40,000 in unpaid capital gains tax on the sale of his London home.

He had designated it as his second home, not his main ­residence, under the Second Homes Allowance scheme.

The house had been bought in September 2001 for £249,950 and was sold in August 2007 for £383,000.

In recent years, amid problems with his marriage, Joyce had become the focus of concern over his drinking.

Even before he was banned from driving after the drink-drive charge, he had become an ­embarrassment for Ed Miliband.

Shortly after Miliband became Labour’s new leader, Joyce used his position as the party’s Northern Ireland spokesman to launch an attack on middle class voters, suggesting they were liars, ­hypocrites and racists.

By the time he quit the post, Joyce had become such a loner in the Scottish Labour ­parliamentary party that no one took him in hand.

Friends say that he has ­struggled to contain his anger on a daily basis.

Constituents have even been at the wrong end of foul-mouthed tirades from Joyce on Twitter, the social messaging microsite he often uses.

Even Westminster colleagues who kept an eye on him were staggered by the alleged incident in the Strangers’ Bar, which, if true, they say indicates that his ­problems go deeper than taking a drink.

It’s a far cry from when Joyce left the Army after his political activities became increasingly incompatible with military service.

Seen as a bold leader with a bright future, his square-jawed, military bearing and smooth-talking style made him ideal material for a bitterly fought by-election in Falkirk in the wake of the ­resignation of Dennis Canavan.

His ­constituents may now be thinking that his public behaviour is ­incompatible with public service.