Tory PPC for Dudley North tries to recruit EDL to campaign for him

The Conservative candidate for Dudley North, Afzal Amin, has been suspended after trying to get the EDL to fake a protest in Dudley and break election law by paying EDL supporters to campaign for him.

Amin met with the leader of the EDL, Steve Eddowes and former leader Tommy Robinson on several occasions. During these meetings he asked them to announce a protest in Dudley that would never happen so that he could claim to have convinced them to back down and look good to voters. He also said he wanted to pay Tommy Robinson to get EDL supporters to campaign for him which is illegal.

The prospect of another EDL protest so soon after the previous one which resulted in a number of arrests of far left thugs from Unite Against Fascism would have inflamed racial tensions and spread fear far beyond Dudley. Amin clearly gives no thought to the effects of his dishonest scaremongering and only cares about winning the election, even if he has to break the law in the process.

Dudley North is a key marginal currently held by Labour's Ian Austin MP and a UKIP target seat. Polls show that UKIP's Bill Etheridge MEP is drawing level with Austin with the Tories a distant, vote-splitting third. They had very little chance of winning Dudley North before this story, they won't even be coming close now. The best thing the Conservatives can do to prevent Labour winning is sack Amin and not bother replacing him because a vote for the Conservatives in Dudley North is a vote for Ian Austin and Ed Miliband.

UKIP second and third in Grimsby and Dudley

Another two of Alan Bown's constituency polls have been published by Survation showing UKIP in second place for Great Grimsby and a close third for Dudley North.

The first of these polls showed that UKIP is the only party that can beat Labour in South Thanet.  These two polls aren't as close but they show that UKIP's vote is consistently holding up in key marginals and that UKIP is as big a threat to Labour as it is to the Tories.  In all three cases, the Lib Dems are an irrelevant smudge at the bottom of the graph.

Great Grimsby and Dudley North are 9th and 10th on the Conservative Party's list of most winnable seats which would suggest a drubbing for the Tories at the next election.  What is really interesting is that 70% of people who said they would vote UKIP in the next general election didn't vote Tory last time.  The claim that UKIP only attracts Tory voters and that voting UKIP lets Labour win is just nonsense as these polls are showing.