There’s been much discussion in the press lately about Jim Murphy’s plan to change the elusive Scottish Labour “constitution”, a document almost nobody has ever seen and which most people didn’t know even existed until a few weeks ago.

Naturally we were curious to have a wee look, so when we stumbled across a page on the Electoral Commission website which said it held copies of party constitutions and provided them on request, we thought we’d take a shot on the off-chance. We weren’t at all surprised by the reply:

“the Commission does not hold a constitution for the Scottish Labour Party per se, since they are not separately registered with us. The Labour Party is registered for GB as a whole.”

But then an alert reader asked the EC a smarter question.

The reader in question told us that they’d “sought clarification on the legality of a candidate standing for the Scottish Labour Party on a different constitution from the UK Labour party”.

This is what they got back.

“Dear XXXXX, Thank you for your response. A candidate cannot stand for an accounting unit during an election; only for a registered party. An accounting unit, Scottish Labour Party for example, may appear as a description of the registered party on the ballot paper. The Electoral Commission does not regulate the content of campaign material. A party may present themselves under an accounting unit if they choose. Kind regards

Jack Goodman

Guidance Adviser

Party and Election Finance

The Electoral Commission”

That’s pretty unambiguous. No matter what Jim Murphy might claim about making policy without consulting Ed Miliband, he’s talking hogwash. Any candidate standing under an official Labour banner this May – as all Scottish Labour candidates will be doing – is legally representing UK Labour, and therefore UK Labour policies.

Now, we’ve of course known for a long time that “Scottish Labour” was a label rather than a party. But it’s perhaps worth bearing in mind that any candidate standing on the basis of a claim that the Scottish branch office makes its own policy won’t just be lying to voters, they’ll actually be breaking the law.