Andrew Mitchell counts cost of campaign to clear his name

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/27/andrew-mitchell-counts-costs-plebgate-libel

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Looking crestfallen, Andrew Mitchell stood on the steps of the high court and signalled that he would be ending his campaign to clear his name over the Plebgate incident as he emerged from the high court after losing his libel trial.

Flanked by his wife Sharon and his daughters, Mitchell said he was “bitterly disappointed” by the result but added it was time to bring the matter to a close after a “miserable” two years.

The former government chief whip, who faces a legal bill running into millions of pounds - up to £3m according to some reports - said on the steps of the high court: “Obviously I am bitterly disappointed by the result of the judgment today. This has been a miserable two years. But we now need to bring this matter to a close and to move on with our lives.”

Mitchell’s remarks suggest that he accepts he has no future on the political frontline, suggesting that he will think hard about standing again in next year’s general election.

The result – and Mitchell’s speedy response – brings to an end a two-year campaign to clear his name which was launched when friends invoked the memory of Margaret Thatcher to persuade him to come out fighting after he lost his job as chief whip. Imagine the regrets you would feel, they said to a downbeat Mitchell, if you did not at least try to stage a fight. The friends were quoting the advice of Dennis Thatcher to his wife in 1975 which helped persuade the future prime minister to contest the Tory leadership.

The advice, delivered during lengthy discussions with friends, family and parliamentary colleagues, emboldened Mitchell to launch an aggressive campaign in the media to clear his name with the help of his mentor, the former shadow home secretary David Davis. That campaign has now ended in spectacular failure, leaving Mitchell with a legal bill running into the millions, after Mr Justice Mitting chose to believe the word of PC Toby Rowland over the former cabinet minister.

Mitchell will be able to point to many successes. A series of police were disciplined and one off-duty officer, who falsely claimed to have witnessed the encounter between Mitchell and Rowland on a September evening in 2012, was jailed. David Cameron even called last year for members of the Police Federation, who gave a false account of a subsequent meeting with Mitchell, to apologise.

But in the end Mitchell’s future was decided when Mitting decided that Rowland gave a more credible account of their 15-second encounter, which could only be heard by the two men. The former chief whip will face an immediate financial challenge after friends warned in May this year that he was making plans to sell his north London home to help pay his legal bills.

In the future the Mitchell camp may wonder whether it was wise to launch a scorched earth campaign to try to obliterate everyone who questioned his account of the incident in Downing Street. Mitchell and Davis believed they faced such a concerted campaign from the police – whose word is only ever questioned by the bravest of politicians – that they had no choice but to undermine each and every one of them.

But the Mitchell team may wonder whether it would have been wiser to have pulled back after Channel 4 Despatches broadcast footage on 18 December 2012 of the incident which helped to discredit the account of some of officers. The tapes raised questions about the claim that the incident had been witnessed by passers by while Channel 4 flushed out PC Keith Wallis, an off-duty officer, who falsely claimed to have witnessed it as a member of the public. Wallis was jailed.

Opinion shifted dramatically in Mitchell’s favour after the film. But Mitchell followed the Channel 4 programme with a Sunday Times News Review in which he gave a highly detailed account of the incident. This article came back to bite Mitchell during his libel trial when Sir John Randall, his former deputy in the whips’ office, said he found the account “rather extraordinary” because Mitchell had told him he could not recall what he said five days after the incident.

Mitchell has many friends across the political spectrum and he will no doubt repair to his country house in Nottinghamshire to begin rebuilding his life. But the former president of the Cambridge Union appears to have accepted that this will be a life outside Westminster, possibly in the world of international development where he built his reputation over nearly a decade as secretary of state and shadow secretary of state.