The dirty tricks begin; the Corby byelection is clearly getting started

This morning I had the pleasure of visiting the UKIP Corby campaign office during the week rather than over the weekend in order to meet our candidate to discuss local windfarm issues.

Margot Parker, our candidate, is rather brilliant but this morning I was particularly impressed. There is quite a bit of media in town today; Margot is about to be interviewed by the BBC regarding Kettering hospital and Andy Sawford’s lies and this morning she had a visit from a Reuters reporter who was doing the rounds of the various candidates.

The reporter was charming and all was going well but as he and Margot made their way back to the office they were rudely accosted by a belligerent socialist lady who seriously had it in for Margot. To cut a long story short, the woman screamed at Margot for being a racist because someone over twitter, an apparent BNP member, had wished her luck. Now, UKIP are the only political party who have an outright ban on current or former BNP members. Margot, a candidate in a marginal seat running a very intense campaign, hardly has the time to vet every twitter follower and block all with dodgy political views. But why let reason stop you yelling in the street?

Realising she was losing this argument, the wailing beast then turned her fury on Paul, another colleague, to accuse him of “spin” for rightly declaring that Corby’s Labour run council had allowed a £12 million overspend on the Corby Cube. Paul had been asked by a passerby if he had any details and he promised to dig up a bit of info but in the meantime advised that she could cross over the road to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau for their other query (disability ramps). Cue more abuse from the woman who then ranted at the nice chap from Reuters for a good fifteen minutes after his interview with Margot had finished. To his credit, Paul – who is not even a UKIP member – put her throughly back in her box, although a cage would have been more appropriate, much to the amusement of the onlooking reporter.

I, too, watched this unfold with a certain degree of amusement and had the woman in question been a Corby resident then I would not be writing this with such a tone of utter disdain. But something didn’t quite sit right so when she finally released the poor journalist I followed the terrible woman, in an entirely non-creepy fashion, to see her walk straight through the door of the Labour campaign office and up the stairs. A Labour plant, designed only to disrupt Margot’s interview.

It looks like Labour might be playing their favourite trick with postal votes too but more on this when I have evidence.

The first stones have been thrown and for once by Labour not the Lib Dems.