Leading article: When victory is won by deceit

Ed Miliband was very ill advised to allocate a place on his frontbench to Phil Woolas, the MP who was found yesterday to have broken electoral law when he defended his seat at the general election.

Perhaps the new Labour leader wanted to show his confidence in a colleague under attack, or perhaps he believed this ruling to be so unlikely as to be a risk he could ignore. It is, after all, the first time in 99 years that a parliamentary election result has been overturned on the grounds that the campaign waged by the victor was deceitful.

It would have been bad enough if this judgment had been delivered against a backbench Labour MP. That it involved the recently appointed shadow Minister for Immigration makes it all the worse. In one day, the Labour leader has gone from trusting Mr Woolas to speak on one of the most sensitive issues in modern politics to suspending him from the party for insensitivity on that same issue.

Elwyn Watkins, the Liberal Democrat whom Mr Woolas defeated by only 103 votes, is understandably pleased by what he calls a "victory for fair play". Unless the court ruling is overturned in a judicial review, Mr Watkins will get another crack at the seat he so nearly won. In the longer term, though, the Liberal Democrats may regret this extraordinary judgment in which – for the first time since the introduction of universal suffrage – judges told the voters they were gulled into electing the wrong candidate. Nor is a Liberal Democrat victory in the court-ordered re-run guaranteed. Indeed, the present state of opinion polls makes it something of a long shot.

Liberal Democrat candidates are themselves frequently accused of misrepresenting their opponents, though none has ever been hauled before an electoral court. After yesterday's judgment, that may start to happen. The next MP to be brought down by a procedure that empowers judges to overrule the voters could be a Liberal Democrat. They should be careful what they wish for.