Will Farage Step In After Mercer Resignation?
Updated: 12:15am UK, Wednesday 30 April 2014
By Jon Craig, Chief Political Correspondent
When the 13 MPs on the Standards Committee squeezed into tiny Committee Room 13 in the Commons to decide Patrick Mercer's fate, I'm told the Labour MP Tom Clarke proposed that he should be expelled.
But he could not get a seconder and the majority of the committee backed a six-month ban, which is the same as the House of Lords handed out to some peers caught up in a similar cash-for-questions sting.
But Mercer didn't bother to wait for publication of the committee's report, but swiftly announced his resignation as an MP, triggering a by-election in which Nigel Farage is considering throwing his trademark fedora in the ring.
When I spoke to Mercer at about 6pm, he said he hadn't heard either officially or unofficially what the Standards Committee was going to recommend. But then events then moved quickly.
Within the next hour he did hear. And at 7.15pm he marched in the military style of the Army officer he used to be on to the green outside Parliament and put his hands up.
"As an ex-soldier I believe that when I have got something wrong you have got to fess up and get on with it," he barked.
"No point in shilly-shallying and trying to avoid it. What's happened has happened and I'm ashamed of it."
The Conservatives responded by declaring: "We agree that Patrick Mercer needs to stand down and that there should there be a by-election so the people of Newark can have a new MP."
Really? A by-election in Newark in the summer, shortly after UKIP's expected surge in the European elections on May 22, is David Cameron's worst nightmare.
Yes, Patrick Mercer's majority as the Tory candidate in 2010 was a healthy 16,000 and, yes, UKIP polled just under 2,000.
But times have changed. The YouGov poll in The Sunday Times a couple of days ago showed UKIP on 31% in the European elections, Labour 28%, the Tories just 19% and the LibDems 9%
So if Nigel Farage does stand, it would be at a time when his party is likely to be on a roll, having topped the poll in the Euros or coming close to doing so, and when Tory morale is at rock bottom and David Cameron's party possibly in meltdown.
On the morning after the Eastleigh by-election, in which UKIP came within 1,700 votes of defeating the LibDems, I asked Farage why he hadn't stood himself and whether he would stand in another by-election before 2015.
His answer, which he has often repeated, was that he was concentrating all his efforts on the Euro-elections and he wouldn't consider standing in a Westminster by-election until after May 2014.
Well, Newark will be after May 22. And the timing perhaps couldn't be better for him. But there are risks. If he stood and lost he would be badly damaged. So it's a gamble for him.
Margaret Thatcher used to accuse her political opponents of being "frit", an old Lincolnshire word meaning frightened.
If Farage doesn't stand in Newark, the Conservatives and Labour will accuse him of being "frit".
He says he's tempted. But if he dithers, he'll also be accused of "shilly-shallying", to use Patrick Mercer's colourful phrase.
A by-election triggered by a sleaze scandal is a potential disaster for the party defending the seat and a gift to an opposition party, particularly an "anti-politics" party like UKIP.
In 2009, when the left-wing Labour MP Ian Gibson got into trouble over his expenses, he quit and caused a by-election in his Norwich North constituency which was won by the Tories' Chloe Smith.
So if the Tory MPs on the Standards Committee thought they were helping to avoid a by-election by snubbing Tom Clarke's proposal to expel Patrick Mercer from the Commons, they were badly mistaken.
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