Softly, softly . . . it's Shahid Malik

NOTICE anything different in the media's, especially the BBC's, coverage of the expenses scandal this morning?

For the past ten days, The Sun has been putting pig snouts on those MP's caught with their fingers in the public purse . . . but not this morning. I wonder why.

Lots of worried emails already over UKIP's 15% YouGov poll showing. Don't worry, is my advice.

Such polls will only go to rattle the Tories and prompt them into using their substantial media clout to expose UKIP for what it really is - a divided Party whose MEPs are even worse than the Old Gang MPs currently under the spotlight.

If you are still worried, maybe getting out and doing some extra campaigning might help you feel better, that's what I shall be doing.

I'm quite happy with our poll showings, because I know that the last thing the vast majority of our voters want to do is to tell complete strangers on the telephone or in the street how they intend to vote.


What a good press conference yesterday in Manchester. As I told the my four colleagues who travelled down with me in my car yesterday, I have attended in excess of 40-odd press conferences in my time in politics and for 90% of those not a single member of the press bothered to turn up. What a difference yesterday with all the main players in attendance.

I felt some sympathy with Mike McCarthy from Sky News. We know from his reporting that he particularly dislikes the BNP, yet yesterday he stoically lasted out the full press conference. I wonder whether he really listens to what is being said, and I wonder whether his entrenched view of the BNP shifts just ever so slightly as he witnesses the clearly changing face of our Party.

The weather is pretty grim up here this morning but that mustn't get in the way of our election schedule. Still on the postal voters today, but we coming to the end of this time-consuming but vital exercise. I think we will be finished by Tuesday which is well in time for the postal ballot papers which go out on May 22nd. As I have said before, if we can just dent Labour's massive superiority in the postal vote count, it will all have been worthwhile. In 2007 in Allerdale it was a definite 95% to 5% in Labour's favour - I'm hoping we might have reduced that to 80% to 20%, and we shall have some idea of how we have done when the postal votes start being opened on May 25th.

And finally something for those nationalist political history buffs. Yesterday lunchtime I met up with Andrew Brons for the first time in over twenty years. It was also the first time that Nick, Andrew and I had been together in the same room since a National Front directorate meeting held at our Pawsons Road Head Office in Croydon in May 1986.

Going into that meeting I had been the chairman of the National Front and Andrew a member of the directorate. Coming out of that meeting 40 minutes later neither of us were even members of the Party and Nick was the new NF chairman!

Such were days of British nationalism in the 1980s. Who would have believed that the three of us would still be here, on the verge of our long-awaited breakthrough into the political mainstream, some 23 years later.