Tag Archives: CIA

Diary Blog, 19 August 2020

Self-help

When the State fails to protect the people, the people start to protect themselves…https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8641517/Migrant-20s-attacked-moments-coming-ashore-dinghy-Kent-beach.html

Britain’s moral collapse

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/family-slam-ghouls-who-filmed-22542104

The blacks emboldened by “Black Lives Matter” nonsense

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/elderly-man-sweeping-path-sucker-22538815

An egregious example, but I believe that there is a general emboldenment of the non-Europeans and especially the blacks, triggered by the “BLM” nonsense. Not only in the USA; Britain too.

From the horse’s mouth

Professor Nathan Abrams sheds light on how Jews transformed the British entertainment industries, creating some of the most iconic characters and images of the 20th Century, including James Bond, Doctor Who, Carry On, and many others. In so doing, British Jews infused their creations with hidden Jewish themes.”

I always wondered why some TV and film series are pushed more, in the msm, than others…

Of course the absurd “James Bond” fantasy meshes with the whole WW2 and post-WW2 SOE/OSS narrative. SOE [Special Operations Executive] was in reality a shambolic mess that (even from the Allied perspective) accomplished little (and got a very high percentage of its agents and its own officers killed), but you would not believe that from the huge msm industry of books and films that has grown up around it, especially in recent years.

SOE mentored the OSS, as did SIS/MI6. SOE was disbanded with almost indecent haste once Germany was defeated, but that fatal seed of amateur SOE bungling, once planted in the OSS, carried on germinating and then thriving in the successor to OSS, the CIA.

That seed of gung-ho paramilitarism, sown in the Second World War, has in fact been responsible for most of the CIA’s debacles, from the Bay of Pigs, through Iran-Contra, to the support for and then betrayal of the Kurds; other situations too, such as arming Osama bin Laden and other fanatics in Afghanistan during the time of Soviet or pro-Soviet rule in the 1980s.

You see it in Hollywood films too, the idea that secret intelligence is largely about blazing machineguns, firefights featuring operatives capable of using martial arts and (maybe even at the same time!) flying a plane and making safe the mechanism of a nuclear bomb (etc). Not that such films are always unentertaining, but “Jason Bourne” is not so much a “secret agent” as a superhuman ninja warrior gone West.

Tweets seen

The whole thread is well worth reading. To read it, click on the tweet.

A caution to the Jew-Zionists trying to censor Twitter and other online media platforms:

Image

More tweets

Not all of the inferior races (or, within those races, individuals) treat animals cruelly (and our own record is far from perfect), but it is a matter of degree: the Northern European peoples, though they are at only the start of their evolutionary journey (in big-picture terms), are at least on it, whereas most of the other racial and ethnic groups in the world are either static or are regressing, so falling into decadence and evil.

Slava!

A “chimp-out” in San Francisco. Think the UK, say London, Birmingham or wherever, is any different? Think again. Once the restraints are off, this is the result. You cannot have a civilized society without a civilized population. Fact.

What many find hard to accept, or understand, is that quite a high proportion of those at or near the top of this society are actually and even wittingly servants of evil, sometimes members of evil secret groups planning to reduce the civilized people of the world (and all the peoples of the world) to decadence and destruction.

If the mob in Portland and elsewhere are not soon mown down by police, National Guard or Army, then the white people of Oregon are going to have to prove that the “Constitution” they talk about so much actually means at least something, and that their much-vaunted “right to keep and bear arms” means something more than showing off weapons to their friends and shooting empty beer bottles off fence-posts in the boonies…

So where are the “alt-Right” wastes of space in Portland and elsewhere?

In fact, where is Trump? Where is the huge machinery of U.S. government repression? Unaware? No. Complicit? Maybe…

Where are the non-antifa white people in Portland, where are all the “guns” they value so highly? A mere few would be able to clear away those untermenschen. As Dietrich Eckart said, “the rabble need to hear the rattle of machineguns…to get fear into their pants!

As I have always said, most of the “nationalist” elements, in the US and UK too, are a waste of time and space. That particularly applies to the “alt-Right” and other wastes of space.

In fact, the multikulti or cultureless items of detritus on the streets are merely an unpleasant symptom. The disease is seated elsewhere, behind the camera, behind the reporters’ notebooks. The “journalists”, editors, owners of TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, Hollywood studios. These are the ones harbouring the disease.

Note that a female “Black Lives Matter” bully shouts continually at the old lady, “PUT YOUR MASK ON, BITCH!, PUT YOUR MASK ON!“. Could the reasoning (the real reasoning) behind the facemask-wearing nonsense be made any more clear? It is a bullying of the individual, to intimidate the individual, forcing that person to conform, to do what the mob demands.

For myself, I just wish that someone had protected that old lady, and the best way of doing that would have been to shoot the mob down, starting with the black shouting in her face, then next prioritizing those cowards filming and photographing the horrible scene, followed by the shouting woman in the background. Then the rest of that mob. Then moving to those who are triggering all this by buying TV ads to support it, by reporting on it favourably, and also those bending the knee in sign of fealty or surrender to it all…

What starts on the West Coast of the USA often arrives next in the UK, after a year or two. Be warned. Be ready.

The BBC?! Ha ha! I support public service broadcasting, but the BBC trashed that years ago. The BBC now is almost akin to Soviet TV and radio. The BBC news broadcasts on TV have become unwatchable, just government propaganda lies, especially about “the virus” etc. Endless boring “interviews” on Skype with people droning on from their homes. I often wonder how many people now watch BBC News at all. Few, I think. It has become hugely boring. Not that that matters much to BBC staff who, like their 1980s Soviet counterparts are hugely overpaid for not rocking the boat…Meanwhile, the public is forced to pay for it all.

It will end in tears, with BBC staff forced to clean the pavements with their toothbrushes.

When things really (to use the contemporary phrase) “kick off” in the USA, UK, across mainland Europe, those who think that they can control the agenda and events because they —now— gang up on and denounce people to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, the police etc, will find no hiding place themselves. Their Lilliputian binding ties will no longer protect them.

“Protect the NHS”? How about “Protect the patients of the NHS”?

Beaver re-introduction

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/beaver-trust-mammal-river-wild-otter-devon-law-native-species-a9674246.html

Britain and inventors

Saw this:

Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries has not much honoured its inventors. Sir Christopher Cockerell belatedly got a knighthood (surely the most devalued honour?) and a prize of £5,000 (worth ?£500,000 today) in the late 1960s for inventing the hovercraft.

How sad that hovercraft are now built in places like China, but not, as far as I know, the UK, where they were invented and also first built and first used as passenger transport.

Hovercraft are still being updated and built in China and elsewhere. A story repeated a hundred times in the past. Is there any need to repeat a long list? The man (British) who invented the wind-up radio, not the most stunning invention but extremely useful all the same [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Baylis] made lists of all the inventions invented by British people in Britain, but which had then been exploited mostly by others, whether in the USA, Germany, or latterly in China.

British people are often poor at blowing their own trumpet. From the World Wide Web to DNA and DNA fingerprinting, the hovercraft, the jet engine, radar. Just hundreds of things.

People will say, “well, what about Dyson?” and it is true that, if anyone has had the benefit of his own ingenuity, it is Dyson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dyson] but he is one inventor out of many; also, it is sad that he prioritized profit over continuing to manufacture his products in the UK, though I should not want to be too churlish: Dyson has ploughed back some profits into research and education.

Tweets seen this evening

Pity about the decommissioning of those cross-Channel hovercraft. They would have been useful in dumping the migrant-invaders back on the beaches of the Pas de Calais. The invaders could be kept in the hold for the 40 min crossing, and hovercraft need no port facilities, just a suitable beach. Out you get!

Hitchens is right. For one thing, the number of deaths from or even “with” Coronavirus has been massively inflated. Even the government of clowns’ own advisers have admitted that (though still claim 40,000+). Secondly, direct civilian casualties in the UK from bombing and other enemy action during WW2 numbered around 67,000, so Piers Morgan is mistaken even in that respect, even taking the official, very inflated, “Covid-19” statistics as correct.

Piers Morgan is just a System mouthpiece.

As I have blogged earlier, both today and on other days, the BBC News on TV is pretty much unwatchable now. Bias and boredom. The “bias and boredom corporation”?

I think that that article would be well worth reading, but it is behind a paywall.

My little evening excursion

I went out to get fish and chips, something I do only once every couple of months. There is a shop on the rural/suburban A-road not far from me, about half a mile away, in a strip, or what an older generation called a “parade”, of small shops. While waiting for the fish to be fried, I bought a few Thunderball tickets at the nearby convenience store (there are about 6 or 7 small shops there, 3 of which sell takeaway food).

I noticed that the florist shop was closed up, with what I took to be (did not go to read it) a legal notice pasted on the window. The little video rental shop was also closed and dark (though it was always open at 7 in the evening), so it looks as though that has, in the old phrase, also probably “gone West”, as has, I suspect, a shop which sells, or sold, curtains and other soft furnishings. So out of about 7 shops (I think that another one closed a while ago), only 4 are still operating: fish and chips, a Chinese/Malay takeaway, an Indian takeaway, and the convenience store (part of a nationwide chain).

The economic depression (using the term in a lay sense) caused, not by “Coronavirus”, but by government action and stupidity has not yet fully hit. The effects are beginning to be seen, however. Dire. The headlines scream about Marks & Spencer or Debenhams sacking thousands of workers, but the real story (or another real story) is the above, but multiplied countless times across Britain. Small shops and other businesses closing down, probably forever.

What is the betting that, when unemployment soars into the many millions, it will be the mask-wearing fanatics, and the “lockdown” enthusiasts, and the typical Twitterati mob, that will be screaming about how the masses are suffering from low pay, no pay, low benefits, lack of decent housing (as the migrant-invaders flood in) and an NHS which is allowing untold thousands to die because undiagnosed and untreated?

Midnight music

Diary Blog, 8 June 2020

So I propose this deal: we hand over Andrew to the US for a third degree interrogation, in return for the US giving us that CIA bitch, Sacoolas.

The British Royal Family is largely an embarrassment. I was watching Charles being interviewed about Coronavirus and the environment yesterday. John Cleese without the forced humour. Painful. I am sure that he means well, but is that enough?

Tweets seen

Look at the major msm newspapers; not the scribblings of the journalists, but the readers’ comments. In the Daily Mail, one of the most-read of the public prints, opinion is running about 99:1 against the “protesters”/rioters/rabble (in the UK).

My view? A rattle of police machinegun fire (as recommended after WW1 by Dietrich Eckart) in Whitehall would have cleared the “protests” pretty effectively. The same in Bristol.

The vast bulk of the population does not support this extreme black/brown discontent, but it is significant how many traitors lurk in places like newspapers, the BBC, Sky News etc, as well as in Parliament.

This (above) is the Common Purpose police drone I was blogging about yesterday. Typical of the police today. Don’t expect his type to defend the walls of our culture and civilization against the untermenschen. Disgrace.

Ah. This is the waste of space’s Twitter profile:

Supt Andy Bennett @abennett_police I am Superintendent Andy Bennett Neighbourhood and Partnerships and the Bristol Police Commander. I am also the force lead for Hate Crime.

Well, there it is. His tweets from 2018 and 2019 (no recent tweets) are enlightening, by the way…

A few (thousand) people have been tweeting about Superintendent Waste-of-Space:

This is what the waste of space himself said:

Would he mind dropping a line to his London colleagues, in case I want to “make a point” by pulling down the statue of the terrorist, Mandela, and chucking it in the Thames?

The tweets supporting him come mainly from black/brown pressure groups, Jew sociologists and idiots like that overpaid porcine bore, James Corden.

What sort of police force? One riddled with political correctness, Common Purpose infiltration and Zionist backstairs influence. It was Avon and Somerset police who, several years ago, failed to protect photographer Jo Stowell from malicious Jew-Zionist bullies and harassers, all members of the malicious and pro-Israel group called “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [CAA]. The Bristol police even demanded that the victim, Jo Stowell, herself attend a police interview!

[above: photographer Jo Stowell]

Bonnie Greer and Nick Griffin

Saw this from “Auntie Tom”:

Bonnie Greer, an American black woman from Chicago, who has written a few radio plays etc (the sort unknown to most people) was appointed to the boards of the British Museum, the Royal Opera etc. Why? One wonders who decides such matters, and why…

What is really behind it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_Greer

I have no idea, of course, whether there really was a “young white guy” who decided not to vote BNP because of the 2009 Question Time ambush and who approached Bonnie Greer in the street. Maybe, maybe not. Still, someone influential must have liked her performance. She got an OBE in the 2010 honours farce.

Cressida Dick? Oh, probably talking to her Jewish friends in the police and from the malicious “Campaign Against Antisemitism”…

[Cressida Dick, Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, talking to Gideon Falter of the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” pressure group]

Freemasonry in the UK

Interesting newspaper feature from about 5 years ago:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3329854/Freemasons-fixed-inquiry-sinking-Titanic-allow-Establishment-figures-escape-blame-claims-secret-archive-reveals-scale-Masonic-influence-levels-society.html

A few tweets recently seen

The System repression and censorship intensifies. Place your hopes not on the Internet and not on the “democratic” Parliamentary road.

These figures are absolutely stunning. Only about 1,300 people (possibly fewer) in the UK have died purely from “Coronavirus”/”Covid-19“! Not today, not in the past month, but in total!

That is about 1 person out of every 50,000 in the UK population!

The problem is that the masses have been told that XYZ is so (re “the virus”), so that that nonsense is now embedded in the public mind: that the virus is deadly, hugely infectious, and can only be combatted by extreme “lockdown” or shutdown combined with Kafka-esque policies such as not allowing people even to drive in sealed cars or ride motorbikes through the countryside.

Much of what people think about this situation is nonsense backed by drivel, but it has gone way past the intellect, and is now embedded in feeling and will. You see it in the way people swerve around oncomers in supermarkets, trying to leave 5, 6, 7 feet distancing. You see it in the occasional poor rabbits wearing homemade face coverings (I laugh almost openly at them). You see it in the fixed belief that “lockdown” prevents “the virus” being transmitted etc.

Similar nonsense was given out in 1939 as part of the warmongering propaganda. Vast numbers of companion animals were put to death (taken to vets by the “owners” of the animals) in September 1939 for reasons that included “there would be no food for them” (there was: meat not quite OK and marked with dye) or that the Germans would invade and then (for some unknown reason) be cruel to people’s pets. I expect that a Jew was behind much of all that.

Another fixed idea put into the heads of the population by “experts” and “government scientific advisers” in 1939 was that, as soon as war came, the Germans would bomb London and other cities, killing at least 100,000 in the first week!

In reality, there were no civilian casualties in the UK from German bombing in the first week, and scarcely any in the first year. In fact, the usual estimate for British deaths by German bombing during the whole war (1939-1945) is about 60,000 (about a tenth of the German losses from Allied bombing). The main German bombing campaign against British targets was from September 1940 through 1941.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II#Casualties

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II

If you see British newsreel footage from the first year or so of WW2, you note that civilians as well as those in uniform all carry tins with shoulder straps: gasmasks, to protect the wearers from gas attacks that were never envisaged by German forces, and never happened. Yet millions in the UK were convinced that gas would soon attack them; the “experts” and government had told them…

In a sense, now that the Coronavirus has been and almost gone, the arguments about whether “lockdown” (the closure of most of our economy and society) helped to stop the virus spreading, made it worse, or had no effect either way, are almost without point. It happened, and we as a “nation” (supposed nation) are about to find that the result is that the UK is, in colloquial language, well and truly screwed…

General Election 2017: Stoke-on-Trent North

Background

Stoke-on-Trent North constituency was established in 1950, since which time it has been a safe Labour (or Labour Co-op) seat. Only since 2015 has its status been considered to have become marginal.

For the first 29 years of the existence of the constituency, the Labour vote did not dip below 60% and was often above 70%, peaking at 75.49% at the 1953 by-election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections.

Only in 1970 did Labour fail to secure over 60% of the vote, coming in with 59.36%. That was also the first election at which 4 candidates stood. In fact, only occasionally before the 1980s were there more than 2 candidates: in October 1974, Lab, Con, Liberal; in 1979 the Labour, Conservative and Liberal candidates were joined by one from the National Front (the NF lost their deposit, securing less than 1% of the vote).

In the 1980s, there were commonly 3 parties in contention, but from 1992 others joined the fray. There were 7 candidates in 2005, 5 in 2010 and 7 in 2015.

Joan Walley, the MP for 28 years (1987-2015) had vote shares above 50% and even 60%, peaking at 65.2% in 1997. Her final election, however, in 2010, was achieved on a lower level: 44.3%.

The MP from 2015-2017, Ruth Smeeth, was elected on a vote share of only 39.9%, the lowest Labour vote share ever in Stoke-on-Trent North. There may have been a number of causative factors: long-term decline in the Labour vote; also, the number of candidates contending (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green Party, UKIP and 2 Independents). The Labour candidate herself may have been another factor in the lacklustre Labour performance.

Ruth Smeeth

Ruth Smeeth is not from the West Midlands. Her origins (as far as the UK is concerned) lie in Edinburgh and London. Her Jewish mother came from a background in East London where her immediate family members in the 1930s were engaged in crime and gangsterism: the era of razor gangs and the like. They were violently opposed to the English people who supported Oswald Mosley, and were engaged in streetfighting or worse.

Ruth Smeeth has described herself as “culturally Jewish” and worked for years for the “Britain Israel Communications Centre” [BICOM], a public relations or propaganda outfit working on behalf of Israel and Zionism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_Israel_Communications_and_Research_Centre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Smeeth#Early_life

In 2009, Bradley Manning, the American whistleblower, made available to Wikileaks a cable in which the American Embassy described Ruth Smeeth as “a source” whom the Embassy staff should “strictly protect”. It is largely a question of definition whether such a person is called “a confidential contact”, “an agent of influence”, more simply “an agent” or (brutally? unfairly?) “a spy”. The diplomatic cable simply used the words “a source”.

Despite the above, the Labour Party machine was determined to get Ruth Smeeth adopted as the candidate for Stoke-on-Trent North and she was, after an all-women shortlist was imposed on the selection procedure. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), her activity for the American and Israeli governments seems not to have barred her from becoming the candidate.

As an MP, Ruth Smeeth has taken part in some minor campaigns (see the Wikipedia article, above), but has also spent much time attacking the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn; she has been vocal (on occasion, near-hysterical) about alleged “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party and generally.

Analysis

Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green Party are all putting up candidates. The obvious absentee is UKIP. In 2015, Labour’s vote was 39.9%, Conservative vote 27.4%, UKIP 24.7%, the LibDems 2.9% (down from 17.7% in 2010 and 14.8% in 2005); Green Party secured a vote share of 2.8%.

The constituency voted about 60%-40% for Leave in the EU Referendum.

It would be too easy to add together the 2015 vote shares of the Conservatives and UKIP (combined, 52.1%) and assume that UKIP votes will be transferred to the Conservatives. The chances are that a high proportion will either not vote or will go elsewhere than to the Conservatives. However, we can probably guess that half of 2010 UKIP votes will be gathered in by the Conservative candidate (particularly bearing in mind Brexit etc), making a possible Conservative vote share of perhaps about 40%, possibly several points higher. Then there is the (open) question of how many 2010 Labour voters will go Conservative.

Labour is unlikely to do as well this time as it did in 2015 after five years of Conservative-led coalition government. Any persons who support Labour generally but are anti-Israel (or anti-Zionist or, indeed, “anti-Semitic”) will not vote for Ruth Smeeth and will probably either vote Green or even LibDem, or just stay home, “voting with their feet”. Likewise, any Labour members who are strongly pro-Corbyn may well decide that what they have to do is abstain or vote elsewhere, simply in order to get rid of Ruth Smeeth and then get a more suitable Labour candidate for next time.

Realistically, only Labour and Conservative have a real chance. That means that the LibDem and Green votes, even if as small as they were in 2015 (under 3% each) are of importance.

Prediction

Both Labour and Conservative candidates are likely to be in the 35%-50% range, with the Liberal Democrats and Green Party contending for the remaining 10% or 15% of votes.

I assess the likely outcome as follows: Conservative Party to win Stoke-on-Trent North for the first time over Labour, with the Greens (possibly) third and LibDems (perhaps) bringing up the rear.

Press Coverage

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/general-election-2017-stoke-north-13066893

Bookmakers’ Odds

At time of writing, the Conservative Party is odds-on to win:

https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/stoke-on-trent-north/winning-party

Update, 2 March 2019

Well, I was wrong in my tentative tipping of the Conservative Party to win Stoke on Trent North for the first time ever. The Labour candidate, the Jewish Zionist, Ruth Smeeth, won the seat with 50.9% of votes cast, Labour’s best result here since 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_of_the_2010s

Under Britain’s FPTP voting system, there are no prizes for coming second, but the Conservative candidate in 2017 (same person as in 2015) achieved 45.3%, which was the best result the Conservatives had ever had in Stoke on Trent North (2015 had been 27.4%, 2010 was 23.8%, and 2005 only 20%).

Labour’s majority in 2017 was by far the smallest in the seat since it was formed, both in percentage and in absolute terms.

In retrospect, it is clear that Ruth Smeeth benefited from the Corbyn effect, ironically, despite the fact that she has been one of those most involved in Israeli-Zionist attempts to unseat him as Labour Leader. Life is rarely “fair”…

There is also the point that, arguably, speculatively, most Stoke on Trent voters were and probably still are unaware of Ruth Smeeth’s criminal family background and/or her links with secretive Israeli and other Jewish organizations (not to mention her links with the American Embassy in London).

Update, 28 May 2020

Ruth Smeeth is no longer an MP (yay!), having been unseated at the 2019 General Election by the Conservative Party candidate, Jonathan Gullis, a not-very-interesting “free market” former schoolteacher aged (now) 30.

The Conservative Party candidate got 20,974 votes (52.3%) to Ruth Smeeth’s 14,688 (36.6%). A convincing win.

The reasons for Ruth Smeeth’s defeat were probably:

  • the general move away from Labour, nationally;
  • more knowledge in the electorate in 2019 than had been the case in 2015 and 2017 about Ruth Smeeth’s secret links with American and Israeli intelligence (also about her criminal family background);
  • perhaps the realization that Ruth Smeeth is not a very nice person anyway.

Of the above, the most important was probably the national move away from Labour, and the hostility to Jeremy Corbyn. Ironically, Ruth Smeeth had herself played a major part in the Jew-Zionist attack on Corbyn and Labour since 2015. Her treachery was suitably rewarded by her being dumped by the electors of Stoke-on-Trent North.

Stoke Central By-Election: Final Word before Polling

I have blogged twice previously about the upcoming Stoke Central by-election:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/stoke-on-trent-central-preview/

and

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/stoke-on-trent-central-by-election/

in which I predicted a very close race. In the latter post I suggested that UKIP and Paul Nuttall could finally crack it and defeat Labour in a former Labour heartland. That post was written on 26 January, since which date Paul Nuttall and UKIP have run one of the least impressive campaigns seen for a long time. Labour is now  (21 February) 8/13 odds-on favourite, with UKIP out at 9/4, having been at one point 10/11 favourite.

The latest polling seems to suggest, however, that UKIP and Labour are neck-and-neck in the affections of the voters:

http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/survey-predicts-tight-result-in-stoke-on-trent-central-by-election/story-30149927-detail/story.html

As the Stoke Sentinel report says, turnout will therefore be key. UKIP voters tend to be older, tend to vote, tend to be more motivated politically than Labour voters now are. Those factors favour UKIP strongly. Against that, the NHS is a major issue, which favours Labour (especially because Nuttall seems to have flirted with market forces in the NHS, albeit some years ago). Immigration, race, and culture is probably a combined major issue under the surface, something which is often obscured in polling by reason of the pervasive political correctness.

All weather forecasts are showing that Polling Day, Thursday 23 February 2017, will be a cold, wet and windy day across the country, featuring “Storm Doris”. That will depress voting numbers in Stoke Central, which is already one of the least-voting constituencies in the UK (in 2015, the turnout was 49%).

On the face of it, Paul Nuttall seems a poor candidate and UKIP a bit of a joke. However, it was revealed during the campaign that the Labour candidate, Gareth Snell, is a spotty and rather unpleasant Twitter troll, who posted, only a few years ago, some juvenile-level insults about women. He also grievously insulted EU Referendum Leave voters, in one of the most Brexit-friendly parts of  the UK.

In addition, Gareth Snell seems not to have had a job outside local Labour and connected union politics, living off his council allowances and expenses.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4219874/Labour-s-election-candidate-caught-sexist-rant.html

One has to ask whether Stoke Central voters want to be represented by such an unpleasant person. We shall see.

Prediction

It may be foolish to predict anything now that the race seems so close, but I am still inclined to think that UKIP might crack it despite everything that has happened. In the end, if Labour wins, Stoke Central gets another and particularly useless Labour MP, whereas if UKIP wins, Stoke Central really is on the map.

The main indicators still look good for UKIP:

  • turnout
  • voter motivation
  • voter age profile

as against which Labour has on its side

  • traditional Labour voting pattern
  • Muslim voters [6%+].

Conclusion

This looks bad for Labour. Either Labour loses to UKIP or Labour scrapes a pathetic fingertips win. If the former, Labour will go into a tailspin and its MPs will be lining up to find new jobs after 2020; if Labour “only just” wins, then Labour’s decline continues anyway.

As for UKIP, only a win will do. A win keeps the UKIP train clattering along its rusty rails. If UKIP loses here, then that is derailment or the end of the line, whichever metaphor might be preferred.

Update, 14 July 2025

Well, in the end, Gareth Snell won the by-election for Labour with 37.1% of the vote. UKIP’s Paul Nuttall got 24.7%, and the Con Party candidate, Jack Brereton (who was later elected MP for another seat, Stoke on Trent South, 2017-2024), got 24.3%.

Snell was re-elected at the 2017 General Election, but was unseated at the 2019 General Election by the Conservative candidate, Jo Gideon, who however stood down before the 2024 General Election (she was then 71: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Gideon). Snell was then returned as MP at the 2024 General Election.

Paul Nuttall eventually resigned from UKIP, which became more or less dormant after that, or co-incident with that. Nuttall thereafter faded from political life until (surprisingly) he made a comeback, having been appointed Deputy Chairman of Reform UK in early July 2025. He therefore is (again, surprisingly), not necessarily washed-up, politically. He is still only 48. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nuttall#UKIP_Leadership.

So there it is. At time of writing, Snell is still the MP, though it is an open question as to what will happen at the next general election. Reform UK may clinch it.

Arguably oddly, in May 2025 Snell married Ruth Smeeth, now also “Baroness Anderson” and a Labour peer (as well as Israeli agent and former informant for the U.S. Embassy in London). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Smeeth.