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.

BNP's consistency will appeal to voters

The Times this morning in its lead article informs us that books calling for the beheading of lapsed Muslims, ordering women to remain indoors and forbidding interfaith marriage are being sold inside some of Britain’s leading mosques.

Some of the fundamentalist works were found at the bookshop in the London Central mosque in Regent’s Park, which is funded by the Saudi regime and is regularly visited by government ministers. Its director, Ahmad al-Dubayan, is also a Saudi diplomat and was among those greeting King Abdullah when he arrived in Britain last night for his official state visit.

Extremist literature, including passages supporting the stoning of adulterers and waging violent jihad, was also found on sale at many other mosques regarded as mainstream institutions.
More than 80 books and pamphlets were collected during a year-long project in which researchers visited 100 mosques across Britain.

Today's Daily Telegraph reports that the Government has been forced to apologise after admitting that false information about the number of immigrant workers in Britain was given to the Commons. Peter Hain admitted that 300,000 foreign workers were left out of official statistics.

The Guardian, on its front page, tells us that the Labour Government will close the door to Bulgarians and Romanians hoping to live and work in Britain in the hope of deflecting criticism that it has lost control of the immigration system. The move, which maintains the tight controls introduced last year, means they are still being refused the rights given to migrants from six other eastern European accession countries.

And all this follows on from the Tories playing the immigration card just 24 hours earlier.

The fact that the issues of immigration and radical Islam just won't go away however much the establishment tries to stifle the debate, only goes to show that these are the issues that the British people are concerned about the most. While Labour and the Tories chop and change their policies and turn somersaults in their efforts to sound as though they intend to do something to keep Briton's happy (of course, dressing up their statements so as not to alienate the immigrant and Muslim vote) - the British National Party stays resolute, promoting the same policies it has advocated since 1999.

And it is this consistency that will set us head and shoulders above the old gang parties in the minds of voters, with Gordon Brown and David Cameron appearing more and more disingenuous with their meaningless slogans in the desperate scramble to win votes.

On Sunday I reported on the drama unfolding in the West Cumbrian town of Maryport, where the local Labour Party rehabilitated a disgraced councillor in order to keep the BNP's Steve Harris off the town council. Initially the story was only reported in the local West Cumberland Times and Star newspaper, so many people in Maryport might have been unaware of what was taking place . . . but not anymore!

Last night the first of 10,000 Maryport Patriot leaflets were delivered in the town to make sure that Labour's disgraceful manoeuvring is well and truly exposed. Such instant response on important issues like this is what local politics is all about and Cumbrian Press Officer Clive Jefferson, must be mentioned in dispatches for his swift and sterling work in this department.

News from the Sutton-in-Ashfield West Ward by-election is that Labour was out in force over the weekend delivering Trade Union leaflets attacking the BNP. Many of those leafleting were the same thugs that tried to prevent the public attending a British National Party meeting in Kimberley in Nottinghamshire a couple of weeks ago.

And finally congratulations to Derek Dawson, a British National Party councillor from Burnley who has been cleared by the Standards Board after a complaint by Shahid Malik

Derek filmed Colin Auty singing the song Where's it all gone? outside Malik's office in Dewsbury. But the MP, who is Britain's first Muslim minister, had claimed that filming had taken place inside his offices. There followed an investigation by the Standards Board which has now cleared both Derek and Colin, a member of Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council, of bringing their authority or office into disrepute.

A Freedom of Information request over the cost of the six-month investigation has now been made by the two councillors.

Derek told the Lancashire Evening Telegraph:
"I had no doubt about the outcome of the inquiry. Anyone with any common sense could see that there was no malice intended. It was all harmless.
"All of the words in the song are true - it is the reality of what is happening."
"The video was just a publicity exercise which came about because Shahid Malik had reported Colin to the Standard's Board after reading the words of the song in the BNP's newspaper, Freedom."

In its official ruling the Standards Board of England adjudicated:
"The ethical standards officer concluded that councillor Dawson was not acting in his official capacity or performing his functions as a councillor when he filmed outside Mr Malik's office for BNPtv.
"Consequently, the ethical standards officer could not examine councillor Dawson's conduct any further in relation to this incident, and so could only find that there was no evidence of a breach of the code of conduct."

The inquiry also ruled that there had been no attempt to film inside the premises. Similar findings were made in respect of the separate complaint against Colin Auty.
Police did attend the filming, following a complaint, but no statements were taken and no further action taken, according to the Standards Board.