Local elections

It’s less than 48 hours until the polls open for the local elections and following last week’s anti-Semitism media-storm, Corbyn needs all the friends he can get if he hopes to keep voters onside. Alas, some friends are more helpful than others. As Labour try and show that they do not condone anti-Semitism, Corbyn has reportedly received a declaration of support from… Hamas. Yes, following Corbyn’s decision to reject calls to denounce the Islamist group — whose armed wing is banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK —  Breitbart Jerusalem report that Taher A-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, has said that Corbyn’s willingness to engage with the Gaza-based group as a

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thecleaneatingcult/media.mp3″ title=”Isabel Harrdman and George Eaton discuss what happens if Jeremy Corbyn wins” startat=696] Listen [/audioplayer]Jeremy Corbyn’s close friend Tony Benn had five questions he always asked of those in power: ‘What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how do we get rid of you?’ Labour’s leadership election has a month left to run, but most of those involved think Corbyn will triumph. So they’ve already started working out how they’ll get rid of him. John McTernan, a former Blair adviser, recommends deposing him immediately. As he said on The Spectator’s podcast:

The latest spurt of bile from the metro left about UKIP, and the people who voted for Ukip, comes from the extremely self-satisfied David Aaronovitch, a chap who grows more absurd each year as his waistline becomes ever more vast. Next to nobody voted for UKIP, he maintains. The 73 per cent of the population who didn’t vote for them (the majority of these, of course, did not vote at all) wish the party to simply “go away”. I thought you’d enjoy this extract – he is the first of his breed to compare UKIP supporters to the Russian rebels in Ukraine, who are of course another collective bete noir

‘I’ve had it with these people. They are so smug; they think they know everything and they know nothing. They want a good kick in the face.’ So said a close friend of mine, more usually a Labour voter, before she went out to vote for Ukip earlier today. I think it was the Jasmine Lawrence thing which tipped her over the edge. Jasmine is, improbably enough, the boss of the BBC’s News Channel. She had ‘tweeted’ that Ukip was a sexist and racist party – yesterday. Of course, she should be sacked. Right now. The BBC’s News Channel is supposedly impartial – that’s what we pay for, an impartial service.

Despite levels of media scrutiny and hostility unseen in recent political history, this Thursday up to 30 per cent of British voters will opt for Ukip. The odd thing is that the more outrageous the slurs made against them, and the wackier the members unveiled in the press, the more their popularity surges, perhaps out of bloody-mindedness; if a Ukip candidate was caught committing autoerotic asphyxiation dressed in a Gestapo uniform tomorrow the party would probably be on 50 per cent by the end of the week. One of the reasons is that Ukip is a product of lowered trust; the party’s supporters have noticeably less trust in politicians than

The Conservatives are holding another one of their road trips tomorrow, this time to Chester and Cheadle, where about 120 activists and MPs will hold a ‘day of action’ where they canvass and campaign in the constituency. The last one was in Enfield a few weeks ago, where the sitting MP Nick de Bois is fighting to hold onto his 1,692 majority. The City of Chester is held by Conservative MP Stephen Mosley with a 2,583 majority, while Cheadle is currently a Lib Dem seat, with Mark Hunter sitting on a 3,272 majority and the Tories in second place. Obviously these campaign days help those MPs or candidates fighting in

Mr S would like to share this video with readers. It is the latest campaign ad from the Labour Party. As spoofs go, it’s leaden: puerile personal attacks mixed with divisive class war. It says nothing positive about Labour; it’s aimed squarely at people who would vote Labour in any circumstances. All in all, it’s not very clever, which is strange because Ed Miliband has spent much of the week professing that he has ‘more intellectual self-confidence’ than David Cameron. Labour staffers are certainly a little nonplussed. One party dogsbody lamented to Mr S: ‘How have we got from “I’m cleverer to that video in just 24 hours? It doesn’t