No time to blog at the mo, but in a rare act of cross-partisanship, I thought I’d make my new Ealing Southall button available to all. Subtlety is my middle name!

UPDATE: here’s the code if you want to add it to your page:

<a href="http://www.theliberati.net/quaequamblog/index.php?tag=ealing-southall" rel="nofollow"><img src='http://www.theliberati.net/quaequamblog/wp-content/litfuck.jpg' alt="Fuck up Ealing Southall" /></a>

Right. I’m off to Ealing Southall (notwithstanding a somewhat annoying detour to the office - meh). No sleep ’til close of poll! Well, not much anyway.

Blogging is hereby suspended until further notice. Of course, I will no doubt continue to Twitter.

At the time of writing, the Lib Dem buttons widget on the left is displaying four different animated buttons advertising the Ealing and Sedgefield by-elections. I thought it was a bit over the top on Sunday when there were just two.

Is that really necessary, guys? Less is more perhaps?

A video from the Labour Thug POV:

What genuinely confuses me is why Labour persist in thinking that these tactics of bullying and intimidation are good campaign techniques. Does anyone watch that video and think “Ha ha! They got Gideon Osbourne good and proper there!”?

You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, shake it all about…

There is a serious side to all this. The degree by which the Tory and Labour camps in Ealing Southall are attempting to manipulate the Sikh and other communities is truly breathtaking. More to the point, I’m not sure it is all that effective. Throughout the 80s and 90s all parties, but particularly Labour, tended to treat minority ethnic groups as handy block votes that could easily be bought and sold by offering the so-called “community leaders” morsels such as a community centre here, a link with (read: money siphoned off to) a school in Kashmir there, etc. etc. It was the height of cynicism, but it generally worked and the minority ethnic communities themselves were the worse for it because they found themselves in a perpetual state of ghettoisation, with individuals emerging as major power brokers simply because the political class felt they were useful.

This has been slowly changing however. The Iraq War was a major corrective, at least as far as Muslims were concerned, but there have been broader generational shifts. Over the past couple of years there have been a growing number of initiatives designed to counteract this corporatist approach, such as the New Generation Network.

What I seem to be seeing in Ealing Southall is Labour coming a cropper of years of adopting the old approach. The Tories’ response however seems to be to walk into the same trap at precisely the time when it ceases to be useful. How impressed will Southall’s young second and third generation Sikhs be with all these shenanigans? Tony Lit started by trying to present himself as something new and fresh, but has spent the last week embracing the old guard. This tactic would surely be useful if the Sikh community was a homogenised block, but is that true?

More to the point, is the Sikh vote that important? In Southall, sure, but across the constituency they make up just 18% of the population. Are the Tories banking on the Hindus and Muslims (who, combined, make up another fifth) following in line with their turbaned neighbours? If so, then they are dafter than I thought. And what is the majority white population making of all this effervescent silliness that the Tories seem obsessed with?

We shall see, we shall see. But I can’t help but suspect that for all their noise, the Tories may end up in not that much stronger a position in the constituency after the election than they were before it. Either way, they will have a long term price to pay.

Can someone sort this out for me. Earlier today, Pravdale was claiming that the Tories had claimed another Labour scalp in Ealing, but Comical Tommy is claiming this is balls. Yet Pravdale still hasn’t issued a correction - which in fairness to him he usually does do relatively promptly. Either way, this potentially explosive story doesn’t appear to have had the same impact as Shappgate, which is odd.

So who is telling the truth?

In some respects, this is entirely understandable. I can’t tell the difference between Tories and Labour at the best of times these days, yadda yadda yadda…

Pravdale has intervened in Shappgate:

This all seemd a bit odd to me so I went to the horse’s mouth and have got a categoric denial that Grant did anything of the sort. It appears that he had a very easily guessable password on his Youtube account (it was 1234 !!!) and someone hacked into it.

Phew! That’s a relief! And - ha ha ha! - “1234″? Who’dathunkit? More sinisterly, a CCO spokesperson states:

We will be monitoring the account carefully and can’t rule out the activities of our opponents.

You see? It’s all a plot by the Lib Dems. That’s right - we’ve got a mole out there who is going around typing comments on blogs and YouTube (I would refer you again to the resemblance of GrantShapps’ comment and “Des Gray“) claiming we can’t win.*

In any case, it can’t be true that Pravdale and Tim Ireland have been in contact with Grant Shapps today as he is clearly too busy. I emailed him more than 24 hours ago about his activists admitting to stealing out of Ealing residents’ letterboxes and he hasn’t replied yet.

Simple question dear readers: does this explanation sound remotely credible?

Just assuming it is true though, would you trust a man who uses “1234″ as his password with running an election campaign? For that matter, would you trust a man who uses “1234″ as his password to tie his own shoelaces?

* Seriously, don’t you think the Tories would have got tired of making unfounded allegations by now?

Strangely, Grant Shapps hasn’t replied to my email yesterday. Possibly this is because he is busy posting fake messages up on YouTube.

Spot the difference:

Okay, realistically we’re not going to win though. Especially since the Tories have just received 5 defecting Councillors from Labour. Don’t quite know how they’ve done it, but the Tories have stolen a march on us this time. (GrantShapps)

And they didn’t switch to us? Let’s admit it, guys, we’re not going to win this one (Sedgefield maybe?). This contest is, sadly, between Labour and Tony Lit (the Tory chap). It’s certainly put me off from going there. Who’s running our campaign? (”Des Gray“)

I thought Grant Shapps took a hard line against “dirty tricks”?

Meanwhile, and at the risk of sounding like a Childrens’ TV presenter, one of our viewers sent us this picture:

Leading Romford Conservative activist Billy Taylor and personal friend of Greg Hands MP has been bragging about stealing (sic) election literature:

6 Romford Tories were out delivering leaflets today (Sunday 8th) in Ealing and managed not just to deliver a whole polling district, but we managed to steal over 150 Lib Dem leaflets and 20 Labour out of letterboxes!!! (my emphasis)

Surely theft is illegal? Where do the Tories dig up these criminals?

The comment has now been taken down from the Facebook group “Ealing Southall by-election Broughton Road Sector office” (an admission of guilt?) but - funnily enough - I did have the wit to make a screen grab at the time. Evidence of his posting can also still be seen on Billy’s profile.

Conservative campaign organiser Grant Shapps has taken a high minded view against ‘dirty tricks’ on this campaign so far. I will be writing to him to see what action he will be taking in light of this evidence.

Good to see you can’t teach an old dog like Kaiser Fremp new tricks!