Tory MP Nigel Evans Arrested on Suspicion of Rape

Bloomberg Refused Second Slice of Pizza | The Daily Currant
No More Etonians | David Davis
Where is the Counter Insurgency? | Douglas Carswell
My Pint With Nigel | Chris Hope
I’d Go For a Pint With Nigel | Marina Hyde
Is Number 10 Trying to Undermine the Coalition? | FT
Councils Blow £43 Million on Translators | Express
A UKIP Revolution | Tim Stanley
Tories Need to Stop Attacking UKIP | Douglas Carswell
It Was the Spec Wot Won It | Speccie
UKIP Winning Twitter War | James Kirkup

SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013

Tory MP Nigel Evans Arrested on Suspicion of Rape

The deputy speaker has been accused of raping a man and sexually assaulting a second man between July 2009 and March this year. Police searched his Lancashire cottage yesterday.
The Mirror has the scoop…

Saturday Seven Up

This week 121,113 visitors visited 361,555 times viewing 603,977 pages. The top stories in order of popularity were:

• Bill Roache AKA Ken Barlow Arrested on Suspicion of Rape
• LISTEN: Ed Miliband’s World at One Car Crash
• Exclusive: What Really Happened With Priti Patel’s Dad
• This UKIP Candidate Definitely Not Racist or Homophobic
• Stuart Hall’s Lawyers Used Leveson to Threaten Media
• Shock as ComRes Poll Puts UKIP on 22%
• Chuka and His Comedy Over-Sized Watches

You’re either in front of Guido, or behind…

FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2013

Happy World Press Freedom Day

Aside from it being a breakthrough day for UKIP and a terrible one for the other three parties, today is also United Nations World Press Freedom Day. “Celebrating the fundamental principles of press freedom” and “defending the media from attacks on their independence”, the UN warn that“in dozens of countries around the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained”.
Guido is sure the likes of Evan Harris, Hugh Grant, Max Mosley, Brian Cathcart, Steve Coogan, Tom Watson, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, Oliver Letwin, Maria Miller, Stuart Hall and Rolf Harris will be celebrating…
UPDATE : Perfect timing:

Reality Dawns For Ed’s Friends

As the extent of Labour’s thoroughly underwhelming day becomes clear, Ed’s friends are turning on him. George Eaton at the Staggers encapsulates the feeling:

“After a troubled month, which saw the first hints of a Tory recovery since the 2012 Budget, Ed Miliband needed a strong set of results to give him some political breathing space. But while far from disastrous, his party’s performance will only revive the question: why isn’t Labour doing better? Its main centre-left challenger is locked in government with a right-wing Conservative Party, the economy has barely grown since 2010 and the Tory brand has been comprehensively retoxified. Yet Labour still appears incapable of generating popular enthusiasm among those who should be embracing it. Rather than assuaging Miliband’s malaise, today’s results will only deepen it.”

The Beeb’s projected national share gives Labour just a 6% increase since the dark days of Gordon in 2009. As Mark Pack shows, Labour are the biggest losers from UKIP’s surge…

Smart Money is on Matthew Goodwin to Get it Wrong

On Sky just now was a talking head “expert” who claimed “I was like every other analyst and everyone in the Westminster village”. Lorna Dunkley saw straight through him:
Whereas Guido will be enjoying a glass or two this evening after comfortably winning his bet – as tipped to blog readers – on UKIP to win more than 50 seats. Political academic and amateur clairvoyant Matthew Goodwin’s crystal ball was clearly faulty, despite the fact that he markets himself as an expert on UKIP. Inside UKIP circles he is widely detested, possibly because he writes punditry for the Guardian where he seeks to bracket UKIP with the BNP. Armed with his wealth of scholarly insight, Goodwin piped up and rubbished Guido’s tip yesterday:
Three days later and UKIP are set to win more than 100 seats. Goodwin is off doing the rounds of studios this afternoon talking about “UKIP, predictions and what happens next in British politics”. With pundits like him…

Dave’s New Line on UKIP

Last week they were clowns, fruitcakes and racists, now here’s Dave’s new position:

“It’s no good insulting a political party that people have chosen to vote for. It’s right that we show respect for people who supported them. We are going to work hard to win them back.”

What a difference an election makes…

Afriyie Has Spoken

It’s what everyone has been on the edge of their seats waiting for: Adam Afriyie has had his say on today’s results over at ITV:

“No-one can deny that the Conservative party had a bad night in South Shields and as I write, it looks like we are also going to lose a substantial number of local council seats.
It’s clear that many Conservative voters have stayed at home or, in many cases, voted UKIP.
Either we are not yet effectively communicating our national policies or for whatever reason people are no longer hearing or believing what we have to say.
Sometimes nobody can help that – especially mid-term when we need to cut the deficit and take tough actions.
People are rightly concerned about things like Europe and immigration and that is reflected in the gains made by UKIP.
They are making gains because they only have two issues but they are the issues which chime in rough times – Europe and immigration.
But I am hopeful that we can turn things around and win a majority at the next general election.
But only if we acknowledge how people feel; recognise that they didn’t vote for us because mainstream political parties are failing them.
We need to understand that ignoring UKIP isn’t going to make them go away.
It seems to me that things would be rather different at these elections if people knew that economic growth had restarted, Conservatives had put in place the legislation for an in-out referendum and immigration was already falling further because we had implemented bold but sensible solutions.
I know we can get there and continue to build a bright future for Britain as a world-leading nation once again.”

“His views do not necessarily reflect those of ITV News.” Or the Conservative Party…

Friday Caption Contest (Look Over Your Shoulder Edition)

WATCH: Cabbie to Farage: “Go Nigel Go!”

Taxi for the other three leaders…

Tory and Labour Spinners’ Lines to Take in Full

The Tory and Labour spin machines are out in force this morning. You don’t need to watch the TV, Guido has their lines to take.
Tories:

We’ve lost some excellent councillors last night, and we’ll lose more today. 

However, only a handful of councils have declared so far, and we’re still in the dark about the majority of results.

 

Of course we understand why some people didn’t vote for us – we need to focus even more on the things that matter to hardworking people: turning the economy around, fixing welfare, helping with the cost of living and controlling immigration.

 

We’ve always been straight about the scale of the task facing this country: there are no easy options, and there’s still a long way to go. But on the issues people care about we are on the right track. The deficit is down by a third. Crime is down. Net immigration is down by a third. And we’ve capped welfare.

 

As we move towards a General Election – the true choice will be between a Conservative Government that will deal with the deficit and control welfare and immigration – and the same old Labour Party who want more borrowing, more spending and more debt.

 

Over the next two years we are even more determined to continue to change this country to put hardworking people at the centre of everything we do.

Labour:

One Nation Labour is making good progress. Ed Miliband is determined to ensure Labour keeps changing, keeps working hard, listening more and doing politics in a different way. This is obviously a damning verdict of the Tories and Lib Dems and their failure in Government – they say this morning that they “get it”, but they only offer more of the same.
In South Shields we’ve had a strong result with over 50% of the vote. Council results will take time to come in but Labour’s seen good progress overnight. Winning battleground seats that are crucial for 2015: topping the poll and returning Labour councillors in Harlow, Stevenage and Hastings as well as making 4 gains in Cannock.
Picking up some surprise gains including 5 gains in Weymouth in Dorset and 5 gains in Gloucestershire. Across the country UKIP has taken significant votes from the Tories. The Tories have lost control of heartland councils like Lincolnshire, where UKIP have gone from none to 16 councillors overnight.
UKIP have pushed the Conservatives into a distant third in South Shields. If the Tories lose more than 244 seats they will have seen all the gains they made in 2009, when these seats were last contested and Labour had its worst result in decades, wiped out.
This has been a bad night for the Lib Dems, with their worst ever by-election result in South Shields, coming seventh with less than 2% of the vote. They’ve also lost 5 seats in Hampshire to UKIP.

This is what you will be hearing from the Tory and Labour MPs touring the studios today.