INSIDE SUTTON: Time could be running out for MP Luke Taylor, as former party leader Tim Farron joins calls for an independent inquiry into the nasty and illegal campaign waged against a properly selected candidate
Happy days: David Campanale (left) with party leader Ed Davey. The LibDems have admitted they broke discrimination law over Campanale’s deselection
The simmering scandal over the Liberal Democrats’ deselection of their candidate for Sutton and Cheam because … checks notes… he is a Christian, could end up costing the party a cool £1million, and make the position of the party leader, Ed Davey and his shadow spokesman for London, Luke Taylor MP, entirely untenable.
When the LibDems’ Tewkesbury MP Cameron Thomas was arrested last month, the party leadership could not suspend him quickly enough.
Yet, in Sutton, Taylor continues to take the LibDem parliamentary whip, despite his part in an often vicious bullying campaign against a selection rival, David Campanale, that has seen his party dragged through the courts and forced to admit illegal discrimination and harassment.
Campanale was the LibDem candidate for Sutton and Cheam who was deselected just before the 2024 General Election. He then began a civil law case which looks to be heading towards £1million being awarded in costs and damages, after the LibDem defence collapsed with the party admitting to breaches of the Equality Act 2010.
Taylor was mentioned almost 30 times in Campanale’s claim and the LibDems’ defence documents submitted for the case.
In the space of 48 hours at the end of last month, Davey was confronted by explicit criticism from one of his predecessors as party leader, Tim Farron, for the handling of this nasty scandal. Then, a preliminary hearing held at the Central London County Court on June 29 laid out the financial costs the losing side might face as a consequence of the shenanigans of Taylor and senior party colleagues in Sutton, including Ruth Dombey, the former leader of the council.
‘This must never happen again’: former LibDem leader Tim Farron
Farron told the Sunday Torygraph, “It is clear that the party did not get this right… this can never be allowed to happen again.”
Farron’s comments are the first made on the Campanale case by any sitting LibDem MP, and follow remarks by former party president Simon Hughes, who in 2022 warned that the constituency campaign in Sutton and Cheam to oust Campanale as PPC on the grounds of his beliefs was illegal under the Equality Act.
Farron has backed calls for an independent inquiry into the Campanale affair, after his party’s admission to religious discrimination and harassment against its former candidate.
Campanale, an evangelical Christian, had been democratically selected in late 2021, and then faced a two-year ordeal by local activists objecting to his religious views on matters of conscience, such as abortion and euthanasia.
The day after Farron went public, Campanale’s lawyers were in court in central London to discuss the settlement of his case. A judge has already awarded costs to former BBC broadcast journalist Campanale – which are estimated to be at least £250,000. Now Campanale is seeking damages for loss of earnings and status as an MP over a five-year parliament.
The LibDems’ spin on all this is to stay schtum and claim it is a “live” legal case. Which it is not. But the tactic appears to be working, as the Campanale case has remained almost unmentioned by most of Fleet Street.
Party chief exec (Lord) Mike Dixon has even extended the disingenuous denial approach to party members in Sutton and Cheam. In his little weekly internal bulletin on June 29, sent to several hundred staff and party members, Dixon wrote, “We chose not to defend the case because doing so costs a huge amount in legal fees… and we think money is better spent on campaigning and staff than a technical win in court.”
Dixon in the dock: the party CEO’s note to staff and members was, at best, disingenuous
Hmm. Not entirely true: Dixon and the LibDumbs had defended the case for two years before realising they didn’t have a prayer, by which time they incurred massive legal costs for… what?
This is the same Baron Dixon of Jericho (the place in Oxford featured in the Morse books, not somewhere that once had trouble with unstable city walls featured in another book) who last autumn, having seen the Campanale evidence, said, “If this went to trial, the party would lose badly.”
Talking of bad losers… when Campanale was selected as the candidate, Luke Taylor didn’t even come close to winning the support of the party members in Sutton.
Taylor is known to be a political opportunist who had tried and failed to get into parliament in Battersea in 2015 and Mitcham and Morden in 2019. This time round, he bought a £1.3million house on Cornwall Road in Belmont to pursue his political ambition to be nominated as the prospective candidate in the target Westminster seat of Sutton and Cheam. Yet at the 2021 selection meeting, Taylor came last.
It was then that, rather than accepting the democratic choice of his own local colleagues, Taylor launched a relentless campaign to secure the candidacy for himself.
Court documents show that Taylor told Campanale in a phone call that the LibDems were building a “secular party”, bluntly telling him: “We are evidence-based… you are religious”. He warned him that the era of Christian LibDem heavyweights like Charles Kennedy and Shirley Williams was over.
Teflon: MP Luke Taylor has so far survived the Campanale scandal
Ahead of a party meeting, to be attended by 30 activists invited to interrogate Campanale, Taylor sent his rival a text message warning him to prepare himself “for the Spanish Inquisition”.
The whole ugly mess spilled out during the 2024 General Election campaign. When confronted at a public debate, Taylor tried to change the story. He claimed he actually “liked” Campanale, that he was his “second choice”, and he pretended the local party had no idea about Campanale’s past political work – a blatant lie that is exposed by a quick Google search of the interweb.
Yet despite the collapse of the LibDem case, and the mounting costs of staging that ill-judged defence, Taylor has never offered a single word of apology for his actions.
For now, at least, Taylor looks to be Teflon-coated as far as Davey and the LibDems are concerned, despite the potential damage to the party’s reputation, and bank balance.
How long that lasts will depend on a number of factors, including the rumblings at party conference in Brighton in September.
A few weeks later, the Campanale case is due for its final session, at the Central London County Court off The Strand, when a judge is expected to hand down his ruling on the full extent of the damages claim.
With that likely £1million price tag, Davey will need to decide if he can any longer afford Teflon Taylor.
Read more: Sutton LibDem ‘should not be a lawmaker’ after court defeat
Read more: LibDem Taylor rattled as questions of religion won’t go away
Read more: With 51 councillors, ‘Basher’ Lewis faces a fight for his survival
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Would Campanale’s opponents have succeeded if they had simply argued they were exercising a right of recall over a candidate whose views were not in line with local LibDem members’ views on abortion and assisted dying?
You’re the lawyer, David, you tell us.
But Campanale’s case has always been that these “protected characteristics” were known to the members when they selected him, and indeed were discoverable with a simple internet search, something that seems to be beyond the capabilities of Luke Taylor…
This wasn’t a new adventure for Campanale. The LibDems knew exactly who he was, or should have. He’d previously been a LibDem GE candidate in Spelthorne, coming third to Kwasi Kwarteng in 2019, so he’d been through the selection mill. He also applied for the candidacy in Carshalton & Wallington and came third to Bobby Dean. What’s even more astonishing is that neither Luke Taylor, nor his then LibDem councillor colleagues, were bothered that they were already working alongside another former Christian People’s Alliance leading light in Christopher Woolmer, who is now part of Barry ‘Basher’ Lewis’s executive team on Sutton Council. The smell of someone’s ambition seems stronger than the smell of genuine concern over Campanale’s background.