Liebour wins Salford by-election

There was a by-election in the Irwell Riverside ward of Salford Council in the north west of England yesterday, which Liebour won convincingly.

The ward is in expenses fraudster, Hazel Blears', constituency and should have been a key target for all parties but the local branch of UKIP only put up a paper candidate. As a consequence - in defiance of all polling putting UKIP as the second party in both European and domestic elections - Liebour won the by-election convincingly and UKIP came last.

The media and the LibLabCon and BNP have only been able to make half-hearted snide remarks at UKIP - fringe party, protest vote - but this gives them a real opportunity to ignore the fact that UKIP will, without any reasonable doubt, at the very least come second in the June elections and start playing down the massive support the party has.

It was a real mistake to allow a branch to put up a paper candidate in an important by-election so close to the EU Parliament elections. It gives ammunition to the media and the establishment who are desperate for some credible reason to portray UKIP in a bad light.

The results were as follows:

Liebour - 606
Lib Dim - 293
BNP - 276
Conswervative - 189
Green - 125
UKIP - 123

As you can see, the ward is hideously left wing. The left wing extremists - Liebour and the BNP - took nearly 55% of the vote between them with the wishy-washy left - the Lib Dims and Greens - taking another 26%. A proper by-election campaign would have been an up-hill struggle but as the result shows, a paper candidate is going to be a white-wash.

A lesson learnt for future elections.