The Prime Minister managed a double whammy of the unexpected yesterday. First, she visited Stoke, which is something PMs rarely ever do. And second, her presence and parade in front of the local media means she’s effectively campaigned for a Conservative candidate who doesn’t stand a realistic chance of winning, which is usually a no-no when it comes to playing the Westminster game. How to explain this most unlikely of high profile interventions? Continue reading
Posted in UKIP
A Saturday in Stoke-on-Trent Central
Has this week been decisive for the by-election campaigns in Stoke-on-Trent Central? Paul Nuttall must be nursing a cracking hangover. Having been so thoroughly exposed hasn’t done his campaign any good at all, to the point where he cannot really go door knocking again – not that he did much except hang around campaign HQ and have a few photos taken. And the lies keep on a-coming. He got rumbled over false claims that he served on the board for a North West skills charity. Michael Crick’s digging has discovered that Nuttall was on the local election register before he moved into his house – yet another offence to chalk up with all the others. And the dishonesty is spreading as UKIP supporters at their Spring conference pose as activists in Stoke. I know fibbing and politics are bedfellows, but Nuttall and co are something else. And this is without mentioning his yes-I-would-waterboard-a-10-year-old gaffe. Continue reading
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At the Stoke Central Hustings
Coming away from The Sentinel-sponsored by-election hustings at Staffordshire University, I spotted a blood moon hanging low over Stoke. For whom did this augur an ill omen? For Gareth Snell and the Labour Party, or Paul Nuttall and the United Kingdom Independence Party? If what happens at hustings matters, I’d have to say it doesn’t bode well for our Tranmere playin’, PhD totin’, compulsive fibbin’ UKIP leader. It’s not that Nuttall was totally dreadful from a presentation point of view, apart from a catastrophic gaffe at the end, but that he commanded hardly a presence. For the hustings was effectively the Gareth show, with Jack Brereton of the Tories as the supporting act. Nuttall played little more than a walk-on part and had to compete with the also-rans for attention. If he is a national figure, which he kept reminding us, then it’s a position achieved in the absence of discernible talent and charisma. Continue reading
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On the doors in Stoke Central
Hoping for another sunny, balmy Saturday was too much to ask for. As Labour’s canvassing teams went door-to-door in the Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election last week, it was under clear skies and dry weather. Those same teams today went out in biting cold and a snow so desultory it couldn’t be arsed to leave even a light sprinkling. Still, neither work as meteorological metaphors for the reception we found on the doors.
Understandably, a lot of people want to know how it’s going. The bookies more or less have Labour and UKIP level pegging, and despite almost two years of UKIP decline at the polls there are people in the media happy to talk the purples up. Typical of this was Polly Toynbee’s latest missive, which reckoned Labour is hanging on by its finger tips. Perhaps had she done some politics rather than just write about it and joined activists door knocking she would have found a different story. Continue reading
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On the Stoke Central By-Election Candidates
And so the finalised list of Stoke Central by-election candidates is out, and ten folks fancy their chances. And it’s a circus, albeit one not likely to produce much merriment. Who then are the lions and acrobats? Which of them is the clown?
Naturally, Gareth Snell has roared into action. Labour were all over the constituency from the very moment Tristram Hunt declared Trexit and, as I’ve observed before, the party has a formidable machine and a real weight in the constituency that will be tough for its opponents to crack. That hasn’t stopped people from outside the constituency who can’t find Stoke without the aid of Google Earth have tried explaining to me that the local party couldn’t have selected a less suitable candidate. Au contraire. Gareth has lived locally for 13 years, worked in a series of part-time, insecure jobs while a student, worked in a local MP’s office where he dealt with the full gamut of constituent concerns, has sat and currently is a borough councillor, organised low paid workers as an employee of a local Unison branch and, most topically, defeated UKIP in a council by-election this summer in a ward that voted 80/20 to leave the European Union. Continue reading