UKIP Tendring councillor fights off knifeman

UKIP Tending councillor, Mohammed Khan, has disarmed a knife-wielding suspected robber at his shop in Clacton.

The man threatened Cllr Khan with the knife but didn't ask for anything. When Cllr Khan managed to wrestle the knife from his hands he racial abused him and then ran off.

Clacton police are appealing for information on the suspected armed robbery.

UKIP win in Clacton

UKIP successfully retained a seat it gained in this year's May local elections in Clacton last night.

In the Rush Green ward of Tendring District Council, UKIP candidate Richard Everett took 38.5% of the vote to win the seat.

Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Richard Everett	UKIP	338	38.5%
Danny Mayzes	Conservative	290	38.5%
Samantha Atkinson	Labour	213	38.5%
William Hones	Independent	36	38.5%
Turnout: 24.8%

UKIP - The Great Realignment Of British Politics Finally Begins

It is difficult to know what to celebrate the most - Douglas Carswell's fantastic victory in Clacton or John Bickly's very close second in Heywood and Middleton.

What is now absolutely clear is that the great realignment of British politics, so long prophesised, is finally underway. 

Some quick points:

• UKIP is rapidly becoming the party of the indigenous working class, displacing working class Toryism in the south of England and challenging Labour supremacy in the north.
• Both Conservative and Labour are retreating deeper and deeper into their regional heartlands and can no longer really be called national parties. Labour's vote evaporated in Clacton, as did the Tories in Heywood and Middleton. 
• UKIP is now surely the only serious challenger to Labour in it's post-industrial heartlands.
• The Labour vote is now realigning in tune with the modern party's middle class leadership and Metropolitan obsessions. Labour has sucked up a very large proportion of the previous LibDem voting middle classes at the same time as losing large amounts of working class supporters to UKIP.
• Despite our advances deep into Labour territory, thanks to the huge public sector vested interests and the dependency culture deliberately created by Gordon Brown, the Labour vote remains very strong in their core areas and will be difficult to break down. After all, after the Rotherham revelations a party with Labour's track record should quite properly cease to exist, and yet it is still winning by-elections in the kind of places similar to those badly affected by such terrible scandals.
• The LibDems are destroyed as a national party, doomed to total humiliation except where they have strong local incumbency factors in their favour. They will lose hundreds of deposits at the next general election. However they may well still hold the balance of power afterwards because of their still strong localised concentrations in support.
• Judging by the idiotic comments and spin from the LibLabCon parties after tonight's debacle, of which the victory address by Labour's Liz McInnes was the most ridiculous, the political class (a) continues to treat the voters with contempt by insulting their intelligence and (b) still doesn't know what has hit it!

Douglas Carswell is UKIP's first elected MP

Douglas Carswell has won the Clacton by-election for UKIP by a huge margin, increasing his majority and becoming UKIP's first elected MP.

John Bickley came unbelievably close to unseating Labour in the Heywood & Middleton by-election, falling short by just over 600 votes after a bundle check.

Carswell's victory for UKIP in Clacton represents a 44% swing from Conservative to UKIP and is the largest winning vote increase for any party in history whilst Bickley's close second in Heywood & Middleton will mortify Labour who almost lost the safe northern seat that they have held since it was created 21 years ago.

When I joined UKIP six years ago the party was very much the underdog, barely registering on opinion polls and tanking in elections. How things have changed. UKIP has replaced the Lib Dems as the number three party in the UK and is challenging both the Conservatives and Labour. The courage that Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless have shown in defecting from the Conservatives and resigning their seats to get a fresh mandate for UKIP is a rare display of principals that hadn't been seen since Churchill crossed the floor twice when his party failed to represent his beliefs. But we must also recognise the role of Nigel Farage who has devoted his life to turning UKIP into a serious political force for good at great personal expense. There is no doubt in my mind that UKIP's success over the last couple of years, culminating in yesterday's historic first ever Westminster by-election win would not have happened were it not for Nigel Farage's leadership of the Peoples' Army that he has created.

Clacton

Candidate	Party	Vote	%
Douglas Carswell	UKIP	21,113	59.7%
Giles Watling	Conservative	8,709	24.6%
Tim Young	Labour	3,957	11.0%
Chris Southall	Green	688	1.7%
Andrew Graham	Lib Dem	483	1.3%
Bruce Sizer	Independent	205	0.6%
Alan "Howling Laud" Hope	Loony	127	0.4%
Charlotte Rose	Independent	56	0.2%

Heywood & Middleton

Candidate	Party	Vote	%
Liz McInnes	Labour	11,663	40.9%
John Bickley	UKIP	11,016	38.7%
Iain Gartside	Conservative	3,496	12.3%
Anthony Smith	Lib Dem	1,457	5.1%
Abi Jackson	Green	870	3.1%

Who are Clacton voters backing next week?

Tory activist and half of Guido Fawkes, Harry Cole, went to Clacton with a video camera to find out who people there are intending to vote for. I don't think he was expecting not to find a single person intending to vote Conservative ...

Two Conservative councillors defect to UKIP

Two Conservative councillors in Clacton have defected to UKIP.

Cllrs Dawn and Michael Skeels have both resigned from the Conservatives and joined UKIP after Douglas Carswell's principled decision to move in the same direction.

Dawn Skeels said:

We have decided to make the change with Douglas. We both feel like the Conservative Party is increasingly the private property of people like Matthew Parris, rather than local people. Douglas has always been a brilliant MP and we are proud to join him in UKIP.

Roger Lord defects to the Lib Dems

The UKIP PPC for Douglas Carswell's now-vacant seat of Clacton has resigned from UKIP and joined the Lib Dems.

Roger Lord, who is also an Essex County Councillor, is miffed at Douglas Carswell being selected as UKIP candidate for the by-election caused by his own resignation which is understandable but his reaction is quite unreasonable.

Douglas Carswell is going to win the by-election. He is immensely hard working as an MP and is defending a 22,000 vote majority. The opinion polls show that he is going to thrash the Tories and Labour and that it is down to both liking UKIP and liking Douglas Carswell. With the best will in the world, Roger Lord couldn't command the support that Douglas Carswell can in Clacton and so selecting Carswell to defend his seat was, without doubt, the right one.

The party rule book says that someone other than the selected PPC can be chosen by the NEC to contest a parliamentary by-election. Lord should have known this before he stood as a PPC as it's the sort of question that can come up in the assessments. Carswell standing in the by-election doesn't mean that Lord is no longer the adopted candidate for next year's general election. I would have been amazed if the branch hadn't deselected Lord and selected Carswell instead but that would have been a democratic decision of the branch membership as provided for in the party rule book. If they hadn't done so then no doubt the NEC would have taken the more draconian step of imposing Carswell as its own candidate which, again, is absolutely within the rules. Rules which Roger Lord would have known about as part of his revision for the assessment process.

If we were only 3 months away from the by-election and a great deal of money had been spent on it then I would be more sympathetic but the campaign had barely started. The decisions to select Carswell as the candidate for the by-election was the right one for the party and if the branch needed to be overruled to deselect Lord and select Carswell as the candidate for next year's general election then that too would have been the right decision for the party. We don't really do party politics in UKIP (hence not having a whip) but when you join a party you surrender a little bit of your loyalty to the party and if that means standing aside as a candidate for someone who is frankly head and shoulders above you in terms of electability then that's what you do.

As for his decision to join the Liberal Democrats ... well, good luck helping to reorganise the deckchairs on that Titanic, Roger!

Survation poll for Mail on Sunday predicts "UKIP by-election bloodbath" in Clacton

Tomorrow's Mail on Sunday has the results of some astonishing Survation polling in Clacton following the defection of Tory MP, Douglas Carswell.

With the headline "Cameron faces UKIP by-election bloodbath" the Mail reports that 64% of voters in Clacton intend to vote UKIP and 91% of those because they like UKIP or Carswell. The Tory spin that voting UKIP will let Miliband become Prime Minister has failed to resonate with Clacton voters with 69% saying it makes no difference to their voting intentions.

Ladbrokes, Paddy Power and William Hill all have UKIP and Douglas Carswell odds on favourite to win the Clacton by-election:

Ladbrokes: UKIP 1/10

Paddy Power: UKIP 1/7

William Hill: UKIP 1/4

The full results in tomorrow's Mail are as follows: