Conservatives can't wash hands of Oakley

I notice with disappointment, but perhaps not much surprise, that the national Conservative party are trying a Pontius Pilate routine if the comment on the Mail on Sunday website is correct:

A Conservative Party spokesman said they could not comment on the issue as Oakley was no longer a member of the party.

The point is that these offences were carried out while he most definitely was a member of the party, and many of them while he was holding the responsible roles of either parliamentary candidate or general election campaign manager for a parliamentary candidate.

As was stated in court, the deliberate intention of Mr Oakley was to subvert the democratic process. It seems clear that his intention was to intimidate people from standing as Lib Dem candidates and from displaying Lib Dem election posters.

At the very least, the Conservative party owe Mr Oakley's victims some answers about how they failed to detect what he was up to. It is perhaps worth adding, as my colleague Sara Bedford points out, that Mr Oakley is not so divorced from the Conservative party as to prevent senior local Conservatives treating him like a long lost brother at court this morning.