Restore was unlikely to have been a major threat to Reform in this by-election:
“Restore Britain will stand in the Clacton by-election. The second one, held later this year, when the investigations into Farage’s finances conclude as we all suspect they will. We are not going to participate in a Reform-sponsored media circus over the summer months that is designed to puff up Farage’s ego and deflect away from wholly fair questions over why he has concealed such vast and irregular financial donations.
Farage can play with his toys for the next six weeks, but Restore Britain is going to continue producing detailed policy papers, exactly as we have been, outlining how we can fix our country. That is what I am interested in. Detail. Data. Policy. A plan. I feel for the people of Clacton who deserve so much better than this unnecessary sham forced on them throughout their summer.”
Ed Davey meanwhile says the LibDems working to delay Farage by-election in parliament and is unable to say if his party will stand:
“First I want to explore with parliamentary colleagues if we can delay this by-election until the parliamentary commissioner for standards has reported.”
Democracy denied?
UPDATE: Badenoch says: “We’re not standing in a fake by-election.”
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”