BBC website rewrites political history

The BBC has a story about Harriet Harman's blog being hacked, with the result that it briefly announced her defection to the Tories. At the time of writing it is still down, but Guido Fawkes has a picture of how it looked.

Further down the BBC story we are told:

Last year, Conservative housing spokesman Grant Shapps was targeted by hackers who broke into his YouTube account to post a message under his name saying the party could not win the Ealing Southall by-election.

Nonsense.

The message posted under Shapps' name purported to come from a Lib Dem activist and said that the Liberal Democrats had no chance of winning.



Thanks to Bloggerheads for the graphic.

He also gives his explanation of how that message came to appear. You may think it more believable than the claim that someone hacked into Shapps' YouTube account, but I couldn't possibly comment.

Lord Bonkers on the aftermath of Ealing Southall

Lord Bonkers writes exclusively for Liberal England:

I learn from authoritative sources that David Cameron is planning to seek asylum in Rwanda. I have to say that I am not at all surprised.

Grant Shapps in the Portaloo

More on the Tory fallout from the Ealing Southall by-election, this time from the blog of the Daily Mail's Benedict Brogan:

In its jollier moments, the Bullingdon Club - members: D Cameron, G Osborne, B Johnson - liked to lock wayward guests in a Portaloo and roll them down a hill. And today I suspect Mr Cameron would like to do the same or worse to whoever it was who talked him into betting the farm on Ealing Southall. The noises coming from the floors below me here in the Commons suggest the person who thought it was a brilliant idea to put "David Cameron's Conservatives" on the ballot paper is first in the queue. Word is Grant Shapps and Francis Maude were the ones who devised the strategy and sold it to Dave.

Tory MP: "Our Ealing Southall campaign may have done lasting damage"

Mark Field, the Tory MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, has written a devastating critique of the way his party fought the Ealing Southall by-election. You can find it on the ConservativeHome website.

A few tasty morsels:

The centralised imposition of a Sikh candidate, who first became associated with the Party ten days before the by-election was called and whose most recent political activity had been attendance at a Labour Party fundraiser in mid-June, always had the makings of a fiasco. The way in the sensitivities [sic] of local Tory activists were bypassed amounted to contempt towards our supporters and the electorate at large.

This potential calamity was clearly spelt out by local folk as soon as the normal candidate selection process was discarded in favour of CCHQ adopting the photogenic son of a prominent local businessman with no previous links to the Party. Our consequent attempts to woo the Sikh vote in Southall by exploiting divisions which have wracked the local Sikh and Hindu communities for decades also struck many as blatant opportunism.

For sure the defection of five local Labour councillors, all Sikhs and whose ringleader was someone who only days before had failed to secure the Labour nomination for the by-election, made for good headlines at the start of the campaign. However, it became increasingly evident that the Conservatives had been manipulated by this dissident group, who were misleadingly presented to the public as having defected on ideological grounds.

Those by-election results in full

Well, the votes for the major party candidates at least. You can find the full results on the BBC site.

Ealing Southall
Virendra Sharma (Lab) 15,188 (41.48%, -7.28%)
Nigel Bakhai (LD) 10,118 (27.63%, +3.19%)
Tony Lit (C) 8,230 (22.48%, +0.91%)

Sedgefield
Phil Wilson (Lab) 12,528 (44.77%, -14.11%)
Greg Stone (LD) 5,572 (19.91%, +8.02%)
Graham Robb (C) 4,082 (14.59%, +0.19%)

Tories trailing in Ealing Southall

BBC Newsnight and Labour blogger Chris Paul agree.

Later. They were right.

Tory hypocrisy over defecting councillors

In Ealing Southall the Conservatives have been crowing about the Labour councillors who have defected to them from Labour. No one has mentioned those councillors resigning to fight by-elections because they have changed party.

Oddly enough, the Tories take a different view when someone defects from the Conservative Party.

Nick Yates was elected as a Tory councillor for Brighouse on Calderdale Council. He resigned the Conservative whip several months ago to become an Independent, and yesterday it was announced that he was joining the Liberal Democrats.

How did his former colleagues react? You guessed it.

The Yorkshire Post reports:

Coun David Ginley (Warley) said: "I don't understand why people have the impertinence to stand under one colour and then defect.

"I think he should stand under his new colours.

"I always thought he was a man of principle and I am surprised that he doesn't want to. I think we ought to have a by-election. Unfortunately I think Nick is a lost cause.''

Coun Grenville Horsfall (Skircoat) added: "It's ridiculous isn't it. He was elected on a Conservative ticket and in my mind he should carry on. Everyone is up in arms about it. The electorate elected him as a Tory and he should respect that.''

OK, so Tory councillors seldom represent the intellectual flower of our nation, but the hypocrisy of this is still enough to make you blink.

Ealing Southall postal vote totals published by Telegraph blog

From the Ministry of Truth:

With everything else that’s gone on around the Ealing Southall by-election and mere hours before the polls open, you’d think there was nothing left to be said until the result is announced tomorrow night.

And you’d be wrong, because just when you thought you’d seen every last twist and turn, Jonathan Isaby pops up at the Telegraph and manages to drop himself and the Tory Party right in the shit with a blog post (now hastily removed) that appears to contain a criminal breach of the Representation of the People Act.

This story has just been on Newsnight too.

Tom Watson: Where's your big story on Ealing Southall?

Yesterday morning Tom Watson MP, the Labour supremo in Ealing Southall by-election wrote on his blog:

I’ve just received a phone call, that if true, will mark the most remarkable culmination to one of the most incredible by-elections I have ever worked in.

Since then he has made no reference to this phone call and failed to produce the promised revelation.

Maybe it was a wrong number?

Tony Lit: Labour donor to Tory candidate

From the Daily Telegraph website this evening:

The Tory candidate in a key by-election is a Labour donor who posed just weeks ago for photographs at a fundraiser with Tony Blair, it can be revealed.

Tony Lit, 34, the wealthy head of an Asian radio station, became a member of the Conservative Party only days before he was unveiled as their surprise choice to fight the vacant seat of Ealing Southall later this week.

As they paraded him on June 28, Tory campaigners hailed Mr Lit as the perfect candidate, with good looks and charm and a high profile in the west London constituency, where they hoped he could secure a massive coup by routing Labour from the safe seat.

But it has now emerged that, just a week earlier, he donated £4,800 to the Labour Party and attended a glittering Labour fundraising dinner at the Riverbank Plaza on London's Albert Embankment.

I suppose you could just about mount a defence along he lines that he was representing his company at the Labour dinner. But you would need a heart of stone not to laugh at this.

Photo stolen from Tom Watson.

What is going on in Ealing Southall?

The excellent Pickled Politics offers some pointers.

LIb Dem HQ in Ealing Southall

FIRST ACTIVIST: [Sighs.]

SECOND ACTIVIST: What's the matter, Tarquin?

FIRST ACTIVIST: I wish I knew where the Liberal Democrat headquarters were in Ealing Southall and how to get there.

SECOND ACTIVIST: Sigh no longer: it's here.

FIRST ACTIVIST: Where?

SECOND ACTIVIST: Here. You just click with your mouse.

FIRST ACTIVIST: How do I click with my mouse? We're on stage.

SECOND ACTIVIST: This doesn't really work as a play, does it?