Court rules that it cannot be proven Lib Dem’s MP’s dishonesty was designed to mislead Orkney and Shetland voters about his personal conduct

An election court has thrown out an attempt to unseat the Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael, even though he told a “blatant lie” about the leak of a memo about Nicola Sturgeon.

Two judges in Edinburgh ruled that Carmichael lied about the leak but said it could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt that the former Scotland secretary’s dishonesty was designed to mislead voters in his Orkney and Shetland constituency about his personal conduct.

Despite clearing him of breaching the Representation of the People Act 1983, the judges were damning about his conduct. Carmichael authorised the leak of allegations that Sturgeon had secretly backed David Cameron to win the general election when she met the French ambassador, Sylvie Bermann, in March.

The judges said his constituents were “justifiably shocked and dismayed” that he had repeatedly lied about his role before the election. They would have felt “shock, outrage and upset” the judges said, fuelling immediate calls from his critics for Carmichael to resign voluntarily.

Tim Morrison, one of the four petitioners who have so far raised nearly £165,000 to take the case to a rare election court, said the judges’ opinion about Carmichael was personally devastating and would irreparably damage his reputation in Orkney and Shetland.

The court had upheld two of their three complaints, so Carmichael had won “on the slimmest of legal technicalities,” the group said.

“Carmichael has been demonstrated, by two judges in a court, to have lied, to manipulate the results of an election here,” Morrison said. “That’s unacceptable, he must resign now. Who’s going to trust that man?”

Carmichael, who acknowledged on Wednesday that the affair had caused him and his family great stress, still faces two potentially damaging battles.



Kathryn Hudson, the House of Commons standards commissioner, is investigating whether he broke three parts of the code of conduct for MPs on protecting the public interest, breaching confidentiality and upholding the reputation and integrity of the Commons.

Carmichael could be asked to apologise or have his case referred to MPs on the Commons standards committee for a further inquiry and possible sanctions, including his suspension from parliament if Hudson rules against him.

Carmichael is also being advised by his allies to fight to recover his legal costs from the four petitioners, all constituents of his. They hope to raise a total of £208,000 in preparation for a court hearing on dividing up the legal costs.

Carmichael’s crowdfunding appeal has been far less successful, raising only £8,340. A senior Scottish Lib Dem source said: “He has been personally left with a pretty hefty bill. [I] don’t think he seeks any vindictive redress from the petitioners but their costs were crowdfunded. If the boot was on the other foot, they would be seeking their costs from him.”

A former prosecutor, Carmichael said he was relieved by the verdict but furious about the decision to mount the action against him. “This case was politically motivated,” he said. “It was a deliberate attempt by nationalists to remove the last Scottish Liberal voice at Westminster, and is a mark of the unhealthy polarisation of Scottish politics since the referendum.

“I shall continue to represent Orkney and Shetland as a member of parliament to the best of my ability, as I have done for the past 14 years.”

The election court heard that Carmichael authorised his then special adviser, Euan Roddin, to leak the Scotland Office memo to the Daily Telegraph, based on a briefing from Pierre-Alain Coffinier, the then French consul general.

Carmichael believed it was true that Sturgeon secretly wanted Cameron and the Conservatives to win the UK general election and not Labour, as she had claimed. But the memo’s account was immediately repudiated by both Sturgeon and Coffinier. They denied that the first minister had made that remark.

The hearings heard very detailed and highly critical attacks on Carmichael’s conduct after the memo was leaked: he only admitted his role in authorising the leak to his colleagues and the Cabinet Office after the general election, when his majority had been slashed by 92%.

Jonathan Mitchell QC, acting for the petitioners, accused the MP of repeatedly and deliberately lying to his voters, his own party, the civil service leak inquiry and the media about his involvement in the leak throughout the election campaign.

Mitchell won one early victory in the proceedings when the court ruled for the first time that the wording of the 1983 act also included attempts by a candidate to talk up their own character or to conceal their own misbehaviour. Until then, the act was thought only to focus on candidates smearing or abusing their opponents.

In its final decision, the court agreed with Carmichael’s lawyer, Roddy Dunlop QC, that the case before them hinged on the precise wording of the petition to the court, which referred only to Carmichael’s interview with Channel 4 News and did not complain about any other parts of his conduct.

In that interview, Carmichael was not asked whether he had leaked the memo but whether he had known that it existed. He lied about his knowledge of its existence but not about his role in leaking it.

The judges said that lie was designed to protect his own and his party’s political interests, but they had reasonable doubt that this lie was designed to protect Carmichael’s personal character and conduct – the key test under section 106 of the 1983 act.

The judges concluded: “Ultimately, [Carmichael’s] unimpressive response to the inquiry, although showing him in a bad light, and resulting in his constituents being initially misled and then justifiably shocked and dismayed on discovering that they had been so misled, cannot alter our conclusion that section 106 does not, on a proper application of the law to the facts proved, apply in this case.”