Loughton, for the next couple of weeks. I get the feeling the BNP support in Barking and Dagenham has peaked or gone past its peak (Barnbrook doesn’t seem overwhelmingly popular and the BNP group seems chaotic and divided), so it will require a fracturing of the non-BNP vote to get in. Going by what has happened in Loughton, this requires the non-BNP voters rallying behind the main opposition to the BNP and the other parties effectively suspending their campaigns and putting up paper or paperless candidates or putting up none at all (in Loughton, that required the Greens and LibDems effectively dropping out of the race). The problem is that the main opposition to the BNP – Margaret Hodge – doesn’t seem particularly popular, even within her own party. She is highly divisive and voters deserve a better choice – and I don’t think UKIP and the Christian Party would take away much support from the BNP. If this was a challenge to Jon Cruddas, LibDem and even some Tories would rally behind him because he’s basically a decent and good politician. A BNP win in Dagenham is a real prospect and would be sad, but not altogether a disaster.

What would it take to defeat Hodge? At least an 8% swing from Labour to the BNP, which would mean around one in four Labour voters switching to the BNP on top of the massive swing secured in 2005. It could be a tough challenge.

In Britain foreign workers are used to keep the wages down. If the country controlled its borders then the jobs would be taken by British people moving around the country. Obviously since they are not bum suckers they would join unions and demand decent council houses be built for them.

There are large numbers of jobs that ‘indigenous’ Brits simply don’t do. Security guards, office cleaning, low grade hospitality work, care home work etc, etc

I detect a strong odour of self pity / victimhood in your comment about being undercut by the eastern europeans. Instead of moaning about it why don’t you move on to something else? If I were your boss I’d have done the same. Any sane businessman is in it for profit rather than keeping his employees in ‘jobs for life’. We don’t live in the 1950’s anymore don’t you know?

Hodge has behaved consistently contemptibly even since she was granted that seat (essentially as a grace-and-favour for helping the Nu Labour aristocracy of Islington); her meddling has been one of various things that turned what used to be a fairly crap, smug and complacent (because of the lack of opposition) Labour council into a contemptible laughing-stock. She barely set foot in the constituency (let alone deigning to establish an office there) during her first two mandates…and now she has the nerve to criticise Cruddas (who at least has his feet on the ground in Dag) for “not taking the BNP sufficiently seriously” – which translates as, presumably, not lowering himself, unlike her, to mouth off a slightly watered down version of their policies while talking up their chances.

She should have been deselected, and humiliated. She is part of the problem in Barking, not the solution. She still has time to do the decent thing and step down before the election, so that someone more decent and honourable, and up to the job, and less keen on media grandstanding and talking nonsense, can take her place on the ballot paper.

And the whole political scene in the Havering side (and indeed in Elm Park where the scum were meeting yesterday) of the new Dag & Rainham seat is just plain weird. The National Liberal Party (ex-Third Way) and other affilliates and associates count for something there.

Well I’m white British, get up at 5:30 a.m. every weekday and am at my desk by 7 a.m. Not in Britain though, last time I worked there I had my contract cut short because the boss found a bunch in Eastern Europe to do the work more cheaply and I didn’t fancy rotting on the dole queue like I did as a youngster in the 1980s, being sneered at by public servants and other people who were lucky rather than clever.

What time do you get to work Jimmy? You do work for private industry rather than the public service don’t you? Silly man who knows nothing about the white British.

I don’t know where you live because you don’t say. The situation in B&D is that they are real threat because of a number of factors. In Barking ,three wards which had a very high Tory/ BNP vote have been added from Dagenham.

There is also the unpopularity of Hodge, the fact that she has deselected long standing Labour Cllrs and replaced them with, in some cases, Pakistanis in largely white wards, the possibility of some of the deselected Cllrs standing as Independents, the presence of the Christian Party and now the Greens who are definately standing.

A real mess which could ease Griffin into Parliament. I have posted elswhere about how the so called exposures have done neither he nor the party any harm at all