Harriet Harman faces Woolas backlash

Mr Woolas’ election was declared void last week after an election court ruled he breached the law by approving untrue leaflets in his tightly contested campaign against Liberal Democrat rival Elwyn Watkins.

The former Immigration Minister was stripped of his seat and suspended from the Labour Party. Harriet Harman and other Labour heavyweights – including Ed Miliband, talking to Channel 4 News – quickly defended their decision to suspend Mr Woolas.

However, some Labour backbenchers appear to think their leadership moved too quickly to condemn Mr Woolas.

Ms Harman has come under fire from MPs today for suggesting Mr Woolas had no future as an MP. She said on Sunday it was “not part of Labour’s politics for somebody to be telling lies to get themselves elected.”

PLP showdown

Labour MPs rounded on Ms Harman at a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting last night – with one MP even calling her “a disgrace”.

Meanwhile Mr Woolas said he has had pledges of support from “dozens of colleagues”, and is raising cash for a legal challenge to the election court ruling.

Just to write him off when it appears that he still had the right of appeal seemed unfair, and unbalanced. Graham Stringer MP on Harriet Harman’s comments.

Graham Stringer, MP for Manchester Blackley, said Labour MPs were “unanimously” of the view that Ms Harman’s comments went too far.

“Just to write him off when it appears that he still had the right of appeal seemed unfair, and unbalanced,” he said.

David Watts, MP for St Helens North, told the BBC: “There is a concern within the Parliamentary Labour Party…With due respect to Harriet, she isn’t ‘we, the Labour Party’.”

Racial tensions

Mr Woolas was stripped of his Oldham East and Saddleworth seat and banned from standing for three years by the specially-convened election court, in the first such judgement for 99 years.

The court ruled he stirred up racial tensions in a desperate bid to win his seat – which he eventually did take, by just 103 votes.

Was former immigration minister Phil Woolas’ campaign leaflet the worst? Channel 4 News investigates.

Mr Stringer added: “General elections in marginal seats are not Sunday school outings. They are rough, tough places and things get said that probably in the cold light of day three months later look extreme. But that’s happened in every general election since the general franchise.”

A Labour Party spokesman said: “The Labour Party administratively suspended Phil Woolas following the judgment of the election court. In terms of the specifics of the PLP meeting, we do not comment on private meetings.”