Thursday 16 February 2017

It's all going to hell...

This dismal by-election just sinks lower and lower. I took a short break from monitoring the news, and what do I find on returning to the keyboard this lunchtime?

Firstly I picked up a bit of news I had missed, that Labour activists recently screamed abuse at a jewish man as he entered the recent Ukip rally. Today other Labour activists have been caught out telling local muslim voters that they will 'go to hell' if they don't vote Labour. As a result the Lib Dems have officially reported Labour to the police and electoral authorities.

No condemnation from local Labour feminists of their candidate's anti-women tweets, or none that I've been able to find through various searches.

I see that Ukip's Nuttall hasn't yet withdrawn his candidacy, though he has suddenly withdrawn his entire website. Perhaps it'll be replaced by a claim that he was once Cilla Black's stylist, or had a former career as a secret member of Echo & the Bunnymen. He's pulled out of Stoke-on-Trent's City Centre Partnership hustings today, but judging by an article in The Express it looks like he's going to brazen it out. Yet his lies have lost him the Conservative tactical voters who he might perhaps have had, and without whom Ukip very probably can't win.

The Evening Standard is even suggesting that...

"So fed up are the people of Stoke Central that there is little chance more than 30 per cent will turn out to vote in seven days' time".

I might take this with a pinch of salt, though. It's a big London newspaper, always distinctly leftish in tone (although that's set to change soon). The report's journalist mysteriously managed to rock up at the extreme left's secret 2pm rally with Ken Loach yesterday, and his report managed to imply that the rally was a sedate 'local community' event. Is the left trying to 'talk down' the turnout?

Oh well, in a way it's all good for Brexit, which is some kind of silver lining. Since now, if a Remainer wins, not even the most jaded London hack or rancid Remoaner will be able to say that 'the Stoke Central result is a mandate for stopping Brexit'.

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