New Labour up to their old UKIP tricks again

IN the Top-Up List vote for the London Assembly for Chadwell Heath Ward in Barking and Dagenham, the British National Party came third behind Labour and the Tories.

The full result was:
Barking & Dagenham Council
Chadwell Heath
Thursday 1st May 2008
Labour Party 636
Conservative Party 567
British National Party 390
Liberal Democrats 135
UK Independence Party 94
Green Party 67

Now there is a by-election in Chadwell Heath on July 3rd and the BNP candidate is 24 year-old James Webb. He is an electrical engineer who was born in Dagenham and stood as a BNP candidate in Village ward in 2006 where he was just 15 votes short of becoming the BNP’s 13th councillor in Barking and Dagenham.

Chadwell Heath is a real Labour and Conservative Party battleground with all the other parties normally squeezed out, but the votes on May 1st show that the BNP is now emerging as a serious challenger here.

Once again Labour are employing the help of a ‘UKIP candidate’ to try to syphon off a few BNP votes.

The UKIP candidate is Kerry Smith, whose sister, Nadine Smith, just happens to be a Chadwell Heath Labour councillor and whose elder brother Liam Smith, just happens to be the deputy leader of the Labour group on Barking & Dagenham Council.

The line-up for Chadwell Heath are:
Terry Justice (Con)
Ashley McIlroy (Ind)
Margaret Mullane (Lab)
Kerry Smith (UKIP)
James Webb (BNP)
Chadwell Heath Ward, May 4th 2006: Lab 1101, 999, 987. Con 873, 734, 583. Ind 560. UKIP 385, 376.

I visit a site called Vote 2007 most days which has all the latest election info provided by a variety of different political sources. It was interesting to read this morning that our canvassers in Henley are concentrating on the housing estates in the constituency in an effort to win over the Labour vote! There are plenty of similar interesting postings and I suspect that a couple of BNP sympathisers have managed to register for this forum, which was something I was unable to do.

The move into the new office has been put back to the weekend because of some logistic problems, so there's a still few more days working from home.

Severe weather warnings for Cumbria but at the moment it's still fine although the wind is getting up. Better get ready to batten down the hatches.