English Democrats collapse in London

The England Watch blog has been looking at the English Democrats' efforts in the London elections ... or rather the lack of effort.

The EDP have been desperately trying to find people to put themselves forward as a candidate:

... we need to stand over 374 candidates, so even if you wouldn’t be able to do any more than just put your nomination papers in, and would therefore stand just as a paper candidate, please do let us know if you would be willing to do this to help us to get a Party Election Broadcast across England

This time round the EDP are standing only one candidate in the super constituencies: former BNP member, Mark Twiddy.  Last time they put forward 13 candidates.  In 2008 they put up 24 London-wide candidates, this time they've got 8 - one is a former senior BNP member and another is an EDL supporter.  Last time they sort of had a candidate for mayor in Fathers4Justice leader Matt O'Connor who resigned from the party at the eleventh hour because of their dishonesty and chronic incompetence.  This time they have no mayoral candidate.  Last time they had a party election broadcast.  This time they couldn't even scrape together enough paper candidates to qualify for one.

But rather than try and make the best out of a pretty pathetic showing, their London campaign guru, Steve Uncles, is spending most of his time attacking UKIP on his English Pisspot blog.  He has even claimed that independent mayoral candidate, Siobhan Benita, is supporting the English Democrats complete with fabricated quotes and a dodgy photoshopped picture of her with the EDP candidates - surely a breach of Electoral Commission rules and possibly even a criminal offence under the Representation of the People Act 1983?  We'll soon find out, it's been reported to the Electoral Commission this morning and we've informed Benita's campaign manger.  Benita might not be very complimentary towards UKIP but she's yet another victim of the English Democrats' bungling incompetence and dirty tricks.