By-election roundup No.5

* Two senior Ukip figures have just quit, as a result of Paul Nuttall's comments on Hillsborough. They've quit on principle, but you can't help thinking that they're probably fairly sure there's another Ukip leadership election in the offing:

"Stuart Monkcom, the chairman of Ukip leader Paul Nuttall's own branch in Liverpool, and Adam Heatherington, chairman of the Merseyside regional branch, said comments made by party figures had been "upsetting and intolerable" for the victims of the families."

Still no sign of the Ukip candidate in Stoke, at nearly 3pm Monday.

---

* Conservative HQ have today sent Mrs May to Emma Bridgewater's thriving pottery factory in Stoke. "Theresa May visits Stoke ahead of 'really important' by-election".

"I want to deliver on Brexit. That's what the people here in Stoke voted for. I want to make a success of it. The only candidate who will be a strong voice to Stoke-on-Trent Central, the only candidate who is a strong supporter, supports my plans to make a success of Brexit, is Jack Brereton, the Conservative candidate."

"She said the Government would put an extra £10 billion of funding into the NHS by the end of this Parliament."

---

* Conservative odds in Stoke Central have been slashed at the bookmakers, now at 14/1:

"The Tories had been largely ignored in the betting until overnight Sunday, and early on Monday morning, when there was a sudden surge of support for them." said William Hill.

Oddly coinciding with my Sunday midnight post on this blog, hem hem. Though the weather forecast for Thursday may have helped, since a storm seems likely to favour the Conservatives whose core voters will battle through driving hail in order to vote. Whereas Labour voters, especially students, have always proven to be more fair-weather types.

---

* The school holidays have started today in Stoke, so some parents will likely have more time to talk with their kids about the election. Possibly it might make a slight difference to the turnout, re: having to walk small kids a mile or more to the polling station and back, on what looks like a wet and windy day?

Poll apocalypse

The by-election day weather gets even worse, according to the Met Office forecast for Thursday. The 'God is showing his wrath by sending storms' Christian party will be whooping it up, by the look of it. Followed, in the evening, by snow.

By-election roundup No.4

* The Stoke Central Ukip news stories continue to become more bizarre. On Saturday a Ukip campaigner urinated on a fence, then barged into pensioner's house in order to use the toilet. Apparently the 73-year-old granny pressed the button on CCTV footage and, according to The Sentinel newspaper, "Police have launched an investigation".

Ukip HQ also issued an online picture of their leaflet-eers in a Bolton car park, but mis-titled it as being in Stoke. A petty matter, but then Ukip HQ inadvertently linked the mis-titled photo with the peeing news, by calling the confusion a "cock-up". Even their damage-limitation headline-spinning goes awry.

At the start of the election I predicted on this blog that the street campaigning would turn into a "pantomime", but I didn't realise it would also become a full-blown Joe Orton-esque toilets-and-grannies farce. Is there a tragi-comedy stage play or graphic novel or TV mini-series to be made from this election, once the dust has settled? Quite possibly, and there are still four days to go. Plus the election aftermath, in which we'll get a month of either: "Stoke goes Ukip, Labour in chaos..."; "Labour wins yet again, Corbyn secure..." or "Stoke shock sends bright young Conservative to Parliament, Ukip and Labour both stuffed...".

---

* Still no sign of Ukip's man Nuttall, nor his deleted website. If he doesn't get out of the doghouse and out-and-about in Stoke by noon on Monday then his Thursday tactical one-off conservative voters will be slipping away by the hour. Even normally sedate media will start asking if he'll even turn up for the final count when the polls close. But possibly he'll be too busy preparing for his new role as the next Doctor Who. The BBC have already sent him the eccentric costume and some curious assistants, now all he needs is a TARDIS (to whisk him back in time to a point before all this mess).

---

* Where are the Greens? Looks like they have a good honest candidate in the form of a local warehouseman. But he's not very visible in the media, although a few of his yoga-and-yoghurt students are no doubt still fervently tweeting anti-capitalist slogans and moaning about fracking. I had hoped that the Greens would have amused the Stoke electorate by trying to sell them on policies such as group marriage. The Green General Election manifesto managed to include such odd policies, but oddly didn't even mention litter.

---

* Stoke's dogs, recently featured on this blog, are apparently nipping at Labour's heels. If not also leaving smelly poops-on-paths. As canvassers stomp around streets and estates:

"On the doorstep we're finding that it's either UKIP or next door's damn dog again".

---

* The Labour candidate is still out and about on the doorsteps, and is perhaps charming the voters with his delightful poems. "Would-be MP Gareth Snell posted a poem reading "Soft Brexit, hard Brexit / Massive pile of s***" in September.

It's yet another dog/shoe encounter for Gareth, by the sound of it.

---

* A telling comparison of two tweets shows some Stokie ex-pat commentators living in the past, presumably by not having been back to the city in decades...

Though possibly that temporary and surprising low crime rate is something to do with all the "eyes on the streets", the result of all the leafleting and doorstep canvassing? A lesson there for the police, perhaps, re: the value of bringing back regular street patrols on foot?

On the subject of tweets, there are now said to be plenty of fake or tweaked or spoofed screen-shots of what are being claimed as Labour 'Snell tweets' circulating on Twitter. Beware of re-twating.

---

* I'm told that as much as a third of the total vote could be in the post-boxes already, via postal voting. But obviously some heavily insulated people are still getting up to speed, since even on Sunday night I read:

"I didn't realise until today that it's not a Labour Council in Stoke."

Yes, Stoke council is now effectively being led by some excellent and efficient local Conservatives. But when you hear comments like that from voters you have to wonder how many people in Stoke still have a hazy notion that a guy called Tony Blair is Labour's leader. Mind you, it appears that Tony sometimes still thinks that he's leader too.

---

Ominous headline: "Labour could lose Copeland and Stoke by-elections but Jeremy Corbyn won't quit, Diane Abbott says".

Breaking the mould

Stoke has a glimmer of good publicity today, amid the by-election. Via an AFP press-agency feature that's being widely syndicated:

"Artisans break the mould in Britain’s pottery capital".

Regrettably AFP rather spoil this very positive story at the end, by quoting the old-old moaning that implies there are no new industries:

"The mining’s gone, the steel’s gone, there’s only this, really”"

While it's true that the old heavy industries have mostly gone, new ones have replaced them. The feature might better have ended by noting that Stoke's biggest employer is now Bet365, effectively an advanced world-leading tech-media company, employing thousands of new media content-production staff in the centre of Stoke. And that the spread of industry types in North Staffordshire is now incredibly diversified, employment is booming for those with skills, and the number of staying-local graduates is increasing.

By-election roundup No.3

* The Sun newspaper visits and comes to the conclusion that:

"Inspired by Donald Trump’s unlikely win, Labour could well be ousted from the seat, which has been the party’s safest since 1950".

Most other national journalists who have visited don't seem to have stepped more than 150 yards beyond Ukip HQ and the usual faces, with The Wall Street Journal apparently spending no less than two hours on Saturday gabbing with veteran Labour supporters over tea in the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, rather than sitting on a cold bench outside Stoke public library actually talking to Stoke's voters. Most journalists seem to be 'going through the motions', pushing out lacklustre vaguely pro-Labour articles with little real insight into the city.

The Sun newspaper did however manage to get a couple of insightful new local voices:

"barrister Tariq Mahmood, a former Labour member who has lived in Stoke all his life, told how he will vote Ukip on Thursday — and has even joined the party as a campaigner. He said: “Ten years ago it was taken for granted that every single Asian voter on a council estate would vote Labour. I certainly did."

It is not just long-term Stoke residents predicting a surprise Ukip win. On the outskirts of Hanley is the studio of ceramics designer Reiko Kaneko, who moved from London in 2012 to be nearer pottery manufacturers. The 34-year-old, who is half Japanese and produces designer items for stores including posh London shop Fortnum & Mason, said: “Lots of people I speak to here seem to be ready for that change." “They’re thinking along the same lines as the Trump fans in America — they want the products made in this country put before imports.”

Yes, in the age of podcasts you do have to wonder how far the shockwaves of the Trump win will have had a backwash in Stoke Central. Not just in terms of the crazed anti-Trump left, but also in terms of the influence of pro-Trump podcasters.

And at the end of The Sun's article a local bar manager pipes up that his family is divided between Labour and Ukip, but he comments that:

"You’ll find a lot of people who have not voted here will come out for Ukip."

It's the populist The Sun, obviously, but you have to given the journalist credit for finding and talking to some people from outside the Labour bubble.

---

* The Sunday Times reported today that Labour trades union bosses are battling it out for power, and one of them took the opportunity to savage another in Stoke:

"The Unite chief Len McCluskey was branded a “fat cat” who presided over a “culture of freebies and favours” as the battle to run Britain’s biggest union descended into tribal warfare. Speaking to Unite members at the Michelin works in Stoke-on-Trent, Coyne talked of: “fat cat bosses living a life of luxury at the workers’ expense. I am talking about a fat cat union boss." He then "launched a blistering attack on the 'eye-watering' £417,300 'loan' McCluskey received from Unite to buy a flat"."

---

* On Saturday there seems to have been no argy-bargy arising from the various pavement-pounding teams in Stoke (why do they think paper leaflets still have such power, you'd think they'd never heard of Facebook?). But later on tempers may have frayed, and a member of the Welsh Assembly claims she saw a Labour activist being aggressively shouty in a Stoke-on-Trent nosh shop:

---

* New Labour schemer and anti-Brexit guru Peter Mandelson apparently slithers into Stoke today (Sunday), hot on the heels of his friend Tony Blair's unhinged anti-Brexit rant. If you see Mandelson around Stoke, ask him: "Labour championed the nation's switch to diesel vehicles. Around 1-in-50 of this city's people will now die an early death as a direct result of inhaling the toxic exhausts from those diesel vehicles. Would you like to say sorry to those people, on behalf of the former Labour government?"

In terms of the national politics you have to wonder if he and his mate Blair are going to be deliberately "unhelpful" via their anti-Brexit moaning, in the hope of toppling Labour in Stoke — and thus getting rid of Corbyn. A Ukip loss and national collapse would also deprive the left of a useful rhetorical enemy, leaving them without the ability to conjure up their bizarre fantasy politics which suggests to students that gangs of violent racists and neo-nazis are stalking the streets of Britain (they're not).

---

* I heard several curious suggestions last night that both Labour and the Lib Dems are only talking up a Ukip win in order to get their tactical voters out on polling day. Namely, to get out the new mostly young and student voters they've signed up, who think: 'we loathe Labour, but we'll vote for them to smash Nazi Ukip'. Because of the need to pander to such Ukip = Nazi delusions, it was said, Labour and the Lib Dems can't publicly admit that Ukip are "actually doing rather poorly" in the city.

I suppose Ukip "actually doing rather poorly" is possible, but it's not the impression I or many journalists get. Such a notion seems to overlook the stubbornness of Ukip's core vote, and also the determination with which Ukip and Conservative voters will show in getting to the polling stations come rain or shine. Perhaps it's a comforting false belief that's arisen among activists simply because Labour and the Lib Dems can no longer get through to the ordinary unreachable 'shy conservative' and 'unseen Ukip' voters — especially since those voters will have erected strong canvasser-blocking measures during the last week of campaigning.

Perhaps the Lib Dems' shambolic Saturday explains some of the confusion. Their blog reports that they ran out of oatcakes and bacon and then all their leafleting and canvassing went to pot. They "now have a data backlog".

---

Finally, the current weather forecast for polling day is looking distinctly iffy:

Polling day: 20% possibility of a rain of hellfire?

A few posts ago on this blog I noted that the Christian Peoples Alliance by-election candidate's party is actually a 'God is sending storms to punish the gays' type of party. But, according to the Met Office forecast, they do indeed have a hot-line to the Almighty! Because it looks like He will be sending a wrathful 42 mph whirlwind to Stoke Central on polling day. ;-)

Hartshill Park entrance re-vamp

I see that good work is continuing in Hartshill Park, and that the path by the northern view-seat is being re-surfaced. On the Park's notice-board, the notice states that volunteers are wanted for a work-party on Sat 18th March 2017 to "create an improved entrance to the Park". Meet at the North St. car-park at 10am.

No sign of people in Stoke responding to Labour's Tony Blair this Saturday lunchtime, and "rising up" to defeat Brexit. All I saw that was "rising up" in Hartshill was a lovely crop of spring bulbs, all along the moist turf by the church wall.

No sign of any yellow-and-red / red-white flashes of Labour leaflets placed in front windows, either, in a half-dozen terraced and semi-detached streets where I've noticed them during past Stoke Central elections. Not a single one. All I saw today were two low-key Ukip leaflets in windows, with Nuttall's name in big letters, and one Lib Dem leaflet all soggy in the gutter. Makes me wonder if the sudden departure of Corbyn's campaigns manager today was a case of: 'go, before you're sacked'?

Just one day with dogs

More local dog news today, just a day's worth:

'Only a bullet will stop them' - the fighting dogs on the streets of North Staffordshire...

"If a French mastiff gets out and kills a child, the maximum sentence is a £12,000 fine or six months in jail. You can have these quite legally and walk down the street with them."

​Out-of-control dog swam across Endon canal before killing 7 chickens.

Mum allowed to keep pets despite her Pitbull attacking another dog.

Stoke mum recalls horror moment devil dog ripped at son's face leaving him scarred for life.

Conservative social media in Stoke

Elections are not won by Twitter, and especially not in Stoke. But for those wanting to follow the Conservative candidate in Stoke via social media in the coming week, here are a few of the key links:

* Conservative by-election candidate Jack Brereton tweets at ToryPressMids with tweets signed 'JB'.

* Stoke Central 2017 website at Jack Brereton for Stoke-on-Trent Central.

* Jack Brereton, the new personal Facebook Page.

By-election round-up No.2

Today's by-election round-up on the last 24 hours, as the city heads into the final weekend of campaigning.

* On the Labour side, Jeremy Corbyn's campaign chief has just quit, according to the Evening Standard newspaper 'in concern at the direction the party is taking'. Not sure it makes much difference locally, although without his campaign director Corbyn seems to have been let off the leash and seems to be personally spouting to the media at every opportunity. That will get down to the difficult-to-reach parts of the grassroots in Stoke with some spin on it, via the newspapers. He'll also be in Stoke today, spouting directly.

* I hadn't realised that the Labour candidate is a paid official with a trades union. His union's website usefully pipes up about that fact, today.

* Police have warned a member of the Campaign for an English Parliament for driving a van in Stoke with the English flag on it. Seriously, how many vans are they going to have to stop now? It seems that every other white van in Stoke has such a flag on it. There are highly likely to to be even more this coming week, flying out of cars and vans across Stoke. All the police have done is boost that number, as some people will now be flying it just to say 'ya-boo to the cops'.

* The Sentinel newspaper seems to be effectively swinging behind Labour, with a heavy voter-influencing piece on the NHS yesterday and a smooth feature on the extreme-left film director Ken Loach today. They're also talking down the turnout with headlines anticipating a "disappointing turnout".

* Perhaps more important than The Sentinel, in terms of getting through to insulated last-minute voters, is The Daily Mail. Today they have a long and pavement-pounding article on Stoke headlined: Violence and race hate in Britain's grubbiest by-election:

"The police are now almost as busy as the candidates in what is fast-becoming the grubbiest by-election of modern times. And we still have six days to go before the voters of Stoke Central choose their new MP. Activists have been assaulted, posters have vanished or been vandalised and there have been numerous complaints of electoral misdemeanours."

The Mail's reporter has miraculously managed to track down and talk with both the Labour and Ukip candidates, both of whom are currently harder to spot than a red squirrel in Hanley Park.

* Conservative Home's 'Ukip Watch' section has some fairly sound musings on how the Ukip voters will have taken the Hillborough reporting. They write Ukip has:

"gone through media criticism over a wide variety of quite serious errors in the past and survived untarnished in the eyes of many of its supporters. Farage in particular was able to build up a following which was willing to disbelieve anything negative they might hear about him. Nuttall would like to repeat that feat. Although he isn’t as talented a communicator as his predecessor and may struggle to do so, for now he appears to be benefiting from a continued siege mentality by which core UKIPers treat most negative coverage as inherently untrustworthy or unreasonable.

In Stoke in particular, I doubt reports of Nuttall’s bogus Hillsborough claims will have a great deal of cut-through. By-election electorates live under a continuous barrage of leaflets and other materials, and many will already have made up their minds. Those switching from one party to another for the first time ever swiftly become strongly committed to their choice, too, and Labour haven’t exactly offered a great candidate to woo them back."

Yes, as someone on-the-ground in Stoke, I suspect he might be right on that. But only for the core of the city's Ukip voters. To win against the habitual Labour vote here, it seems to me that Ukip needs to woo a big chunk of the Conservative voters to make a one-off tactical vote for Ukip. The Conservatives have such as good clean candidate that it's difficult to see conservative voters going against their conscience and forcing themselves to switch, especially when it could land the city with Nuttall. So I can't see them deciding to tactically vote now, unless perhaps... if Nuttall rolls up his sleeves and is seen popping up everywhere in Stoke for the next six days. But I doubt he'd risk that, because the media and the leftists would try to ambush him on every street-corner — though his main risk so far appears to have been sitting down with small left-leaning community radio stations without first checking out their political leanings. If, on the other hand, he just hides away in Liverpool then he might keep his leadership — but he'd definitely be toast in Stoke.