… because I’ve nothing really to add to Alex’s excellent piece, other than to say, “Oh dear BBC, you really did get your story horribly wrong, didn’t you?”

See here.

Watford PPC Sal Brinton brings an account of the excellent Lib Dem performance in Welham Green.

The first by-election of 2008, and the first under Nick Clegg’s Leadership has given us a swing to the Liberal Democrats of 22%, and a very strong second place, in Welham Green, part of Welwyn Hatfield District Council (Grant Shapps MP’s local seat).

The full results were –

Conservative: 539 votes; 41% (67% in 2006); -26% change
Labour: 88 votes; 7% (19% in ‘06); -12% change
John Elvy (Liberal Democrat): 484 votes; 37% (15% in ‘06); +22 % change
BNP: 214 votes; 16% (n/a ‘06); +16% change

John was a strong candidate fighting on genuinely local issues, with excellent literature from Watford’s Stephen Giles-Medhurst, and well done to Paul Zukowsky for managing the campaign over Christmas and the New Year. We out-delivered the BNP on literature (including a Christmas Card on Christmas Eve), woke a complacent Tory team up at the last minute, and trounced Labour into a very poor third place.

The election was called following the resignation of the Tory Cllr, following pornographic literature being found on his council laptop. We were determined not to let the BNP get a foothold, so colleagues from Hertfordshire piled in to help. Canvassing in the run up to and over Christmas was interesting to say the least!

During polling day the BNP teller numbers crept up (at one point there were three burly chaps crowding out the vestibule making it difficult for electors to get in), but firm action by the returning officer and the police sent all but one on their way. The police presence was welcome and reassuring.

There was a glorious moment at the count when Grant Shapps suddenly thought they’d lost it (I heard him swearing behind me!). It was matched only by the large BNP entourage slinking out during the result being announced.

A good start to 2008!

Sal Brinton is PPC for Watford

I only ask, because Caroline Spelman has just been on News 24 claiming the Conservatives won eight of the last nine by-elections held on Thursday.

One small problem.

They didn’t.

Make that two, rather than eight.

Another one to add to the list of untrue comments made to the media by the Conservatives (who have, of course, also admitted that you can’t believe what their own candidates say).

If I were Iain Dale, I’d be feeling either rather foolish or rather cross with Grant Shapps. Why? Well it’s because of the allegations about Liberal Democrats and election poster displays which Grant Shapps persuaded Iain Dale to run on his blog.

Iain wrote at the time:

There must be some rather compelling evidence for Grant Shapps to make this direct accusation.

However, no evidence has ever been provided - although numerous people personally involved in Lib Dem poster campaigns have denied the story (and, to be fair to Iain, several of these denails were published in comments on his blog).

But scratching under the surface the story gets murkier: one former Liberal Democrat poster person (Hywel Morgan) emailed Grant Shapps, pointing out possible future employers would know of his involvement in poster campaigns and that there could be serious repercussions for his employment prospects if allegations about illegally postering were left hanging in the air.

How did Mr Shapps respond? He emailed on 4 July admitting that, well, he didn’t have any decent evidence:

I do not have a list of the by-election contests which were alleged to be involved in this practice

Nor did he go on to provide any evidence at all for the claims. 

So, there are two possibilities here. Either (a) Iain published the story without asking Grant Shapps what the evidence was (which would be foolish, and surely not what a respected political commentator would do*) or (b) he asked and was assured that Grant Shapps did have good evidence, which would have been, err…, untrue.

Oh, and by the way - Grant Shapps did promise that an unnamed media organisation was researching a piece and was planning to run a “major package” in the next fourteen days. That deadline expired on July 19th, and no - no such package ever surfaced.

* If you are suffering apoplexy at this point, pause to consider that you may have missed a smattering of irony.

Right, let’s keep this brief. The Welwyn & Hatfield Times (his local newspaper) reports of Grant Shapps MP:

The Welwyn Hatfield MP said it [the Ealing Southall by-election result] was not a total whitewash as the Tories had slightly improved their share of the votes, something which the party had not been able to do for years in a by-election.

Cheadle, 2005; Blaenau Gwent 2006: can you guess what happened to the Conservative vote in both of those? I mean 2006 - that, oh, years and years ago isn’t it?

PS I offer very competitive rates for personal history tuition lessons. Do get in touch.

PPS I’ll leave it to other to pick up on Grant Shapps doing a u-turn and rewriting his online housing petition.

This has to be one of the most bizarre rebuttals from a Conservative spin doctor in a long, long time (well, at least since the Grant Shapps password incident).

When questioned about David Cameron’s less than flattering comments about gay rights back in 2000 (when he wasn’t yet an MP), a Tory spokesman responded to the New Statesman thus:

But a spokesman tried to brush off the comments. “It was only as a candidate. If you know how politics works you’ll see why being a candidate is different to being an MP,” he said.

In other words - doesn’t matter what you say as a candidate because that doesn’t count if you’re elected as an MP. Glad we’ve got that one cleared up.

Things aren’t getting better:

Anxious Tories turn heat on Cameron

PRESSURE is growing on David Cameron to embark on a shake-up at his party headquarters amid plunging opinion poll ratings … “Nothing is going right at the moment and it is difficult to see a way out of it,” said one insider.
Sunday Times

As Brown soars in the polls, a split opens up between Cameron and his Shadow Chancellor

The first signs of a split between David Cameron and George Osborne emerged as the Conservatives blamed each other for Gordon Brown’s surge in the polls … But there was undisguised fury with Shadow Minister Grant Shapps, who was blamed for the decision to call the party ‘David Cameron’s Conservatives’ in the Ealing by-election at which the Tories came a disastrous third.
Mail on Sunday

Cameron insists he won’t wobble

Alan Duncan, a key moderniser in the shadow cabinet, is leading the charge against Cameron for failing to set a strong strategic direction for the party … His criticisms directly contradict Cameron … One senior Tory feared that Cameron’s intervention was a sign of weakness as he attempted to appease the Tory right at a difficult moment.
The Observer

CAMERON ‘FAILING TO REACH VOTERS’

David Cameron is failing to reach out to voters in the North and Midlands, a former Tory frontbencher warned.
Sunday Express

And one from yesterday:

Tories are revolting
Davis allies turn on reeling Cameron 

Civil war broke out in the Conservative Party yesterday as senior Tory MPs publicly blasted David Cameron. Die-hard Derek Conway said there were “generational difficulties” with the new leader.

He claimed the views of older Tories had been forgotten in plans to rebrand the party.

Veteran MP Bob Spink accused Cameron of relying on gimmicks and “wet behind the ears” advisers.

And a third MP, Philip Davies, gave him just six months to turn round the party’s plummeting ratings.

All the MPs are close to Shadow Home Secretary David Davis - Cameron’s leadership rival. And there are now fears within Conservative high command they will face a “summer of discontent” with increased restlessness about Mr Cameron’s leadership.
The Mirror

There’s an interesting write-up in this week’s New Statesman of the goings-on in the last few days in the Cameron bunker, including Andy Coulson’s initial impact.

People with an interest in by-elections though might be taken by this part of the piece:

It has not been a good month for the ferret-like campaign manager, Grant Shapps, who is still facing a barrage of abuse from fellow MPs and party workers. Says a shadow minister: “Shapps is immensely pleased with himself for very little reason, overpromoted and inexperienced.” Another fan adds: “He overegged our chances by claiming huge successes at the beginning. It was political suicide.”

Shapps also appears to have upset the team around him. One member of the Ealing by-election ground team says: “Something as simple as placing a news story was beyond him. He took a very London-centric story that was perfect for the Evening Standard and insisted it was given to the Times. The resulting coverage was a pitiful few lines.”

“Ferret-like” seems a mite unfair to me. He seemed pretty human when we had a brief chat about YouTube passwords at the Ealing count

But one thing about the New Statesman piece puzzles me. Read more »

Welcome to the 22nd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (15th-21st July), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

As you might expect, this last week’s offerings have been rather dominated by the Ealing Southall and Sedgefield by-elections:

Read more »

So says The Telegraph:

Much of the blame has been apportioned to campaign director Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister, who was promptly stripped of his role running by-elections. It was Mr Shapps, and the then Tory chairman Francis Maude, who persuaded Mr Cameron to put his name on the Ealing ballot paper, something the Tory leader at first resisted.

As Nich Starling has pointed out, last night Conservative MP Grant Shapps said on TV:

The third placed party in by-elections always gets their vote squeezed … [and] …

I cannot remember a by-election in the last ten years where the third party has not had its vote squeezed.

So here are fourteen by-elections since 1997 that must have slipped his mind:

Dunfermline (where the SNP were third)
Hartlepool
Leicester South
Birmingham Hodge Hill
Brent
Ipswich
Preston
Tottenham *
Ceredigion *
Wigan
Eddisbury
Leeds Central
Bromley
Paisley South (ok, I admit - I had forgotten this one until I looked it up)

I do have some sympathy for MPs who have to appear in the media after a bad result for their party and talk it up nonethless. But maybe next time the Conservatives shouldn’t use such a forgetful MP (No jokes about poor memory explaining using 1234 as your password please).

PS Those marked with a * were the ones where the Tories were the third party and increased their vote. So it wasn’t just a slip of the tounge with him meaning to limit his comments to Conservative third places only.

Grant Shapps MP, the Tory by-election campaign manager in Ealing Southall, gained some level of infamy last week when he was caught red-handed pretending to be a Lib Dem member posting comments to YouTube.

Mr Shapps’ weak excuse - that his account password was set to ‘1234’, and hacked by opposition parties - was widely derided.

So it comes as some surprise to see this story in today’s Times:

The Conservatives claimed to have identified a woman who confronted Mr Cameron during a walkabout in the constituency as a Labour supporter involved in the party’s campaign. …

Referring to Mr Cameron’s heated exchange, Grant Schapps [sic], the Tory MP running his party’s campaign, said: “The Labour Party is resorting to dirty tricks by a party apparatchik posing as a member of the public to harangue David Cameron.”

It’s hard to top that, frankly.

***

GOOD LUCK to the Lib Dem campaign teams in both Ealing Southall and Sedgefield.

Oh dear. Oh deary me. I think you can guess what’s coming… so without further ado, here’s the evidence.

Photograph A: illegally flyposted Conservative election posters.

Photograph B: illegally flyposted Conservative election posters removed by Ealing Council (insert outrage at hard-pressed local Council Tax payers having to fund the tidying up etc etc).

Photograph C and D: the people who erected the Conservative posters. (Doubtless they weren’t acting on behalf of Grant Shapps, but instead the number keypad code on the Conservative poster store was 1234 and someone sneaked in and stole the posters, etc etc).

(Click on the photos for a large size version.)

PS If you’re wondering how come I’ve got photographs of all of this, it’s because the site in question is just round the corner from the Liberal Democrat by-election HQ.

What do you think will happen this Thursday, 19th July, in the crunch by-elections in Ealing Southall and Sedgefield?

Will Labour cling on in one, both or neither seats? And which of the two main opposition parties, the Lib Dems or the Tories, will fare best? The political blogosphere has been humming these past couple of weeks with pundits on all sides arguing the toss.

But now’s the moment to put your credibility on the line, online, and to say what you think will actually happen this Thursday. There are no prizes on offer - merely the respect and admiration of friend and foe.

For each by-election, please:

a) Predict the percentage turnout (you lose a point for each % you are out by);
b) Give the name of the party you think will win, and their margin of victory in % (lose 20 points for the wrong party, and a point for each % you are out by);
c) Predict the absolute number of votes the Lib Dems will get, and the party’s % vote (lose a point for each 100 votes you’re out by, and lose a point for each % you are out by).

For the record, please note the highest score wins.

The competition is open to all - I’d be especially interested in Lord Rennard’s prediction - so Tories are welcome to join in the fun. Though if you can remember to use your own name, rather than fake a Lib Dem member’s identity just ‘cos it’s the internet and you can, we’d be much obliged.

To help you along, here are the results from the 2005 general election:

Ealing Southall
Labour: 22,937 (48.8%)
Nigel Bakhai, Liberal Democrat: 11,497 (24.4)
Conservative: 10,147 (21.6)
Green: 2,175 (4.6)
Workers’ Revolutionary Party 289 (0.6)
Labour majority: 11,440
Turnout: 56.2 %

Sedgefield
Labour: 24,429 (58.9%)
Conservative 5,972 (14.4)
Robert Browne, Liberal Democrat: 4,935 (11.9)
Independent: 4,252 (10.2)
UK Independence Party: 646 (1.6)
National Front 253 (0.6)
Others: 996 (2.3)
Labour majority: 18,457
Turnout: 62.2 %

And remember: it’s just a bit of fun…

Welcome to the 21st (yes! - we’ve finally come of age) of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (8th-14th July), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

For some reason, events in Ealing seem to have dominated the blogs this week - as I suspect they might do next week, too. Here we go, then, in descending order of popularity: Read more »

After the all-round rubbishing of the Grant Shapps “but my password was set to 1234″ story which Iain Dale published (and is pretty much the only person to say they believe) you’d have thought Iain would be a bit more careful about stories he is fed in future.

But it would seem not … for his latest outburst about the Liberal Democrats using a photo of the Conservative candidate and thereby breaching the law, leaving themselves open to massive legal costs (and probably being guilty of eating babies too) is left looking really rather odd by one small fact.

Can you guess what the leaflet the Conservatives have been distributing today in the Ealing Cleveland council by-election includes?

Oh go on, I’m sure you can… (hint: it’s a photo, it’s of the Lib Dem candidate, and it’s taken from a Lib Dem website).

Now, if using such a photo is a heinous crime, do pray tell us Iain what that means the Tories in Ealing have been up to. After all, it’s not as if you would be saying that there is one rule for the Tories and another for everyone else is it?

The Lib Dem Voice posting on Monday, ‘Five Labour councillors switch to the Tories in Ealing’, provoked a large response - 54 comments at the last count.

Four of these comments (Nos 16, 20, 23 and 24) purported to be from Cllr Abid Latif Chohan, a Lib Dem city councillor in Manchester, claiming he would be supporting the Tory candidate in the Ealing by-election: “I have many friends in Southall, mainly muslim, who plan to vote for Mr Lit. I really hate Labour. Could we withdraw at this stage to give Lit a free run? We could devide the anti-Labour vote and let them back in. I don’t normally endorse tactical voting, but this time its right to do it. Have looked at the 2006 results and its clear that we’re not going to take it. As a liberal democrat councillor, I wish Mr Lit well.”

This was picked up by a couple of Tory blogs, and given wider circulation.

But all this has come as news to Cllr Chohan himself, who has written a letter to Simon Ashley (a fellow Manchester Lib Dem councillor) - which he has given permission to LDV to publish - categorically denying that he made the comments posted in his name:

Dear Simon,

Thanks for your E-mail regarding the Ealing Southall By-election.

I was disgusted to read these postings, which clearly were not done by me. I’ve never met this Tory, and would not urge Liberal Democrats to vote tactically for the Tories.

We were in second place at the General Election and have the best chance of beating Labour in the By-election.

Please forward this letter to our campaign team in Ealing, and let them know that they can use it to rebut these Tory dirty tricks in any literature they like.

I am proud to be a Liberal Democrat, and will be actively supporting Nigel Bakhai in Ealing Southall.

Yours sincerely,

Cllr Abid Latif Chohan
Longsight Liberal Democrat councillor
Manchester City Council

So, once again, someone has decided to impersonate a Lib Dem in an attempt to belittle the party’s chances in the Ealing by-election, and big-up the Tories’. This is now the third occasion on which LDV has reported what appear to be dirty tricks, and follows Mark Pack’s exclusive yesterday, Grant Shapps says “realistically we’re not going to win” in Ealing, which was picked-up by today’s Times and Guardian.

However, this one is more serious, as it was not simply a question of impersonating an anonymous activist - this was an attempt to suggest a named Lib Dem councillor was openly backing a Tory opponent, with all the potential embarrassment that could cause Cllr Chohan. It’s high time some folks just grew up.

I’ve edited Cllr Chohan’s comments in the original posting to make clear that he has denied being their author. They will remain up for a couple more days to help put this article in context, and then they will be removed.

There has been a series of three comments in the last few days on Lib Dem Voice under the username “timcrowley” (see this thread and this thread). They have all been from the same IP address, all give the same email address and it’s clear that the comments are either from Sutton Conservative Councillor Tim Crowley himself (or from someone pretending to be him, or from someone who has discovered his password is 1234 etc etc). That’s because of content in the comments such as:

When the voters of Sutton see how the Ruling Lib Dem cllrs are voting through retrospective allowance payments we will see how the electorate react.

Not surprisingly, he doesn’t really like the Liberal Democrats, but the comments have had some content rather than just being abuse or hectoring. All ok so far … so how dashed unlucky for him that the same IP address was then used to post a comment on the thread about Terry Sutton:

Why no comments on this disaster news. Have we still got our heads in the sand?

Note that use of the little word “our” as if it was a comment from a Liberal Democrat supporter. Moreover, it appeared in the name of sadboy (a new one on this site) and gave an email address with the name Pete Burton in it (another new one to this site).

Could Sadboy / Pete Burton by any chance by Tim Crowley in (not very good) disguise? I’m open to explanations, especially as it would really be very, very daft to be caught faking a comment as a Liberal Democrat just after the Grant Shapps affair broke now, wouldn’t it? If there is an innocent explanation, do let me know and I’ll be happy to amend the story.

Now here’s an interesting tale. … can anyone provide a decent explanation?

Over on one of the (official) YouTube films from the Liberal Democrats there is this comment from someone:

Okay, realistically we’re not going to win though. Especially since the Tories have just received 5 defecting Councillors from Labour. Don’t quite know how they’ve done it, but the Tories have stolen a march on us this time.

With phrases such as “us” this is clearly written as if from a Liberal Democrat member or supporter.

But according to YouTube the comment was posted by a “GrantShapps” (look just above the comment for the name), which is the name of the Conservative MP for Welwyn Hatfield, Shadow Housing Minister and their Ealing Southall by-election campaign supremo.

A forged name perhaps? Except that click on the name and it takes you through to Grant Shapps’s genuine YouTube profile: http://uk.youtube.com/user/GrantShapps

And yes, I know it is his genuine YouTube account because it is the one linked to from his own website, http://www.shapps.com/

I know that on Blogger you can post a comment and make it look like it really was posted by someone else, but that doesn’t seem possible on YouTube. To post under a particular name, you have to really be logged in with that name and password.

What’s the story here then?

Well, bear in mind that YouTube tells you at the top of the page who you are logged in as, but if you are at the comment box on a video and ready to type in a comment, there’s no reminder next to the box as to who you are logged in as, nor is there a username/password box there.

So it would be possible to make a comment, thinking it was anonymous or that you were logged in as someone else, and overlook that you are really, er…, you. That would be a bit silly wouldn’t it, but how else do you end up with a comment appearing under Grant Shapps’s name?

I’m a generous soul, so I’m willing to listen to an innocent explanation for all this. Can anyone reasonably explain away why Grant Shapps appears to be trying to pass himself off as a Liberal Democrat? (And Grant, if you’re reading this, happy for you to post an explanation in the Comments).