Man accused of slamming a traffic cone on Iain Duncan Smith's head cleared with no case to answer
15 November 2022, 15:21 | Updated: 15 November 2022, 15:23
A man charged with attacking former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith with a traffic cone has been told he has no case to answer.
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Sir Iain told Manchester magistrates court that he feared for his wife's safety during the attack, which took place on October 4 last year as the couple were walking to a party conference event with a friend.
But judge Paul Goldspring told defendant Elliot Bovill, 32, that the evidence suggesting he was the person who had wedged the cone on Sir Iain's head was "weak' and "tenuous".
He said: "It seems to me there are a number of difficulties with the identification that had been made.
"The fact is that what (the officer) was working with was vague and flawed in the first instance."
He said the CCTV footage was poor quality and affected by glare.
Mr Goldspring continued: "In my view, the identification evidence is weak, it's tenuous, and it is completely unsupported by any other evidence."
The judge upheld the application made by Katrina Walcott for the case against her client to be dismissed.
Ms Walcott said she accepted the detective made the identification "in good faith" but his "honestly held belief" that the man in the footage was Mr Bovill was not good enough.
Mr Bovill's co-defendants Radical Haslam, 29, of Douglas Street, Salford, and Ruth Wood, 51, of Oak Tree Avenue, Cambridge, were still on trial on Tuesday, with Mr Bovill watching from the public gallery.
Haslam and Wood deny using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
Mr Goldspring told the court that a police detective identified Mr Bovill on the basis of CCTV footage. The court saw the footage on Monday, along with some descriptions of the clothing worn by Sir Iain's attacker.
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The judge made it clear the politician had been assaulted in the incident but the question was whether there was sufficient evidence to prove Mr Bovill was responsible.
He said: "It seems to me there are a number of difficulties with the identification that had been made.
"The fact is that what (the officer) was working with was vague and flawed in the first instance."
He said the CCTV footage was poor quality and affected by glare.
Mr Goldspring continued: "In my view, the identification evidence is weak, it's tenuous, and it is completely unsupported by any other evidence."
The judge upheld the application made by Katrina Walcott for the case against her client to be dismissed.
Ms Walcott said she accepted the detective made the identification "in good faith" but his "honestly held belief" that the man in the footage was Mr Bovill was not good enough.
The judge awarded Mr Bovill £37 in costs to cover the travel expenses he said he had incurred through the prosecution.
Speaking at the trial yesterday, Sir Iain said he was followed by the men who were making "a cacophony of sound" as they walked from the Midland hotel to the Mercure hotel in central Manchester during the Conservative party conference last year.
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After the traffic cone attack, he turned around and told the group that they were "pathetic" before the group continued on their way to the hotel, where he was giving a speech on Brexit.
The Chingford and Woodford Green MP said the protesters were "peculiarly threatening", adding that he was particularly concerned for his wife's safety.He added that he was "frightened those with me, and myself."
He told the court on Monday: “I have seen a lot of protests in the course of my time as a politician. I’m normally not overly concerned.
“People normally make their points, but not in a threatening way.
“This, I felt, was threatening, it’s as simple as that. I think they set out to be threatening.”
Sir Iain told the court: “It was threatening, it was abusive and my wife and her friend felt that particularly.”
His wife told the court the group that followed them from the hotel "used the c-word, the f-word, they called us scum, Tory scum".
Lady Duncan Smith said: "I remember particularly, as we went further on, they said 'Manchester hates you - go back to Chingford and Woodford Green'."
She said "it was getting quite nasty" as they were confronted with a "barrage of rudery".
