Beaten a neck by the Tories

Hell's teeth! There are times when even an excellent election result makes you want to spit!

BNP candidate Peter Cooper, was just 18 votes behind the Tories in an election in Waltham Abbey last night, where the Tories, who are meant to be running away with things in all the opinion polls, saw their vote crash.

The Conservative vote was down by nearly 28%, while the BNP vote was up 8.5%, Lib-Dems up 7%. Labour who didn't contest the ward last time, secured 13% of the total vote.

But as with the Church Gresley vote last week, there is no back-slapping going on in the BNP camp in Epping, just a reflection on what might have been. "If only there had been some more help in the final week we could have won this," rues one poster on a forum, while another was more hard-hitting on a different debating site,"those who sat in doors watching football on TV on Tuesday and Wednesday instead of helping with the final sweep, should hang their heads in shame." Strong words, but as I said last week it is a sign that there is a real desire and hunger for victory in many of our activists which hopefully will spread to others in the run-up to the all important elections next May.

It was much harder, as predicted, in Manor Ward for Sefton Council where Michael McDermott scored 4.1% of the vote. But on the forums there were no recriminations, just some satisfaction that the UK Independence Party had been beaten. Now this is surprising because the BNP always trounces UKIP at the polls these days. But apparently here, UKIP fought a very strong campaign in what was once a very good area for the Party, and our activists on the ground were told by them that they were expecting around 20% of the vote. In the end that didn't happen in the contest dominated by stories concerning the disgraced Labour councillor the election was called to replace. Understandably it was the Labour vote that collapsed this time.

Last night's results

Epping Forest District Council
Waltham Abbey Honey Lane
Thursday 25th October 2007
Jonathon Collier (Con) 299
Peter Cooper (BNP) 281
Christine Akers (Lib-Dem) 274
Patricia Sumner (Lab) 131
BNP Percentage: 28.5%
Last Time: Con 636, Lib-Dem 240, BNP 225.


Sefton Council
Manor Ward
Thursday 25th October 2007
David McIvor (Con) 922
John Gibson (Lib-Dem) 769
Sue Hanley (Lab) 419
Michael McDermott (BNP) 94
Peter Harpe (UKIP) 71
BNP Percentage: 4.1%
May 2007: Con 1651, Lab1082, Lib-Dems 701.

Still on the subject of UKIP, the Freedom Office in the past has received pleas from well meaning people that the BNP should try to co-operate more with UKIP. In the past I have just directed these correspondents to UKIP's Democracy Forum website where they can read first hand what the hard-core UKIP member actually thinks of the BNP. It always works and I'm never bothered by them again. Yesterday in my inbox was an email concerning a bulletin put out by UKIP East Midlands official Don Ransome.

Under a heading of "Not so good for BNP - read, smile, enjoy," he posted a report that had been lifted from a Labour Party website concerning the BNP meeting in Kimberley where Labour Party thugs had managed to stop members of the public attending a British National Party meeting. At the end of the missive, Ransome wrote "Don't you just love it when a British Nazi Party plan doesn't come together!"

I think examples of internal correspondence like this tells us all we need to know about UKIP. I'm afraid that Party was dispatched to my 'useless' bin a long time ago, along with shock jocks Jon Gaunt and Richard Littlejohn. Yes, it's that phrase I'm going to use again I'm afraid . . . establishment safety valves . . all designed to let voters blow off steam about the state of the country without intending to do anything about it.

The elephant was in the room on Radio 4's Today programme this morning and yet again no one dare mention it. A property expert was on, informing us that house prices in the South West, South East and East Anglia will continue to rise. He said that people were leaving London in their droves to move to the outlying areas even though there were more and more jobs being created in the capital. He said that 270,000 new houses a year had to be built in these areas just to meet demand.

Now if I had been John Humphrys I would have put him on the spot. "Isn't this White Flight?" I would have asked him. "Aren't these jobs just low paid ones in the service sector, which are being filled by newly arrived migrant workers?". "Isn't it because of immigration that we need to build all these new houses on greenbelt land?" But sadly I didn't have the opportunity to ask these pertinent questions and any listeners were probably left confused as to why if more and more jobs were being created in London, people were leaving the capital in their droves.

Freedom is at the printers . . hurrah! I'm having a well earned day off at Fakenham and Doncaster courtesy of At The Races and shall be lifting my self-imposed Betfair ban for the afternoon. Initial form study indicates I shall be looking for the favourites Slam and Tourist to get beaten in the first two races at Donny.