With Douglas Carswell defecting to Ukip and forcing a by-election, but Ukip’s current candidate Roger Lord refusing to step aside, the electorate in Clacton have been left in enviable position of having two Ukip candidates not to vote for.
“This is a Tory safe seat,” one voter told us, “and I can’t see that changing, it’s just now we have two Ukip candidate to laugh at then ignore on the ballot paper.”
Nigel Farage has said he welcomes the competition in the party, as long as that competition isn’t for the position of leader.
“The Ukip supporters of Clacton now have a choice to make,” he told us in an interview from the smoking area of a pub.
“The split gives them the chance to decide whether they are on the swivel-eyed side of the party, or the looney side.
“It’s a good old British fight between acceptable racism and laughable, old fashioned racism.”
However, Roger Lord has said he doesn’t welcome his new rival saying he ‘isn’t one of us’.
“He may be Euro-skeptic and voted against issues around equal gay rights, but he has blamed floods on bad weather and not God, which makes him a liberal leftie in our book.”
