I respect Lord Pearson's strategy, but disagree fundamentally with it.

Malcolm Pearson is a very honourable man who has been arguing that Britain should withdraw from the European Union while I was still running around the playground playing footy at school. He is a true patriot and a man I greatly admire.

But I fundamentally disagree with the direction of which UKIP's General Election campaign has been going. In the past few days the only national coverage I have seen the Party receive has been on Pearson's decision to stand UKIP candidates down against certain so-called eurosceptics. I believe this to be a flawed concept in that it damages UKIP's credibility in the eyes of the electorate as a serious Party which seeks to form its own government, while confirming suspicions some may hold that UKIP is a single-issue Party concerned only with getting Britain out of the EU.

It seems absurd to me that so close to an election the Party Leader of UKIP should be spending time campaigning in constituencies for candidates of other parties. I find it even more absurd that we make ourselves look even worse when the sitting MP our Party Leader has gone out of his way to help doesn't even want to campaign publicly with him. Not to mention the fact that the Party's very tight election budget is being partly spent on posters and newspaper ads for the likes of Bob Spink who became a UKIP MP and turned around six months later saying he never even joined, making the Party look like a joke in the process.

I have deep reservations about some of the people we are standing down against too. Labour MP David Drew has an "issues" page on his website - the EU does not get a mention. Tory Gordon Henderson told The Guardian in 2008 that he didn't want Britain to leave the EU. Another Conservative candidate, Mark Formosa, also told The Guardian that he wants Britain to "renegotiate" with the EU. Perhaps the least credible of all Tory candidates that Lord Pearson wants UKIP to stand down from is David Heathcoat-Amory, a man who played a fundamental part in opposing the Maastricht Rebels and forcing the Maastricht Treaty through Parliament before being rewarded with the post of Minister for Europe. He was in that position, like all the rest, a staunch advocate of membership to the newly-created European Union.

All in all I along with many other UKIP members are not happy about this policy. However, Lord Pearson was democratically elected as Leader and for this election at least the decision has been made. One of the things I love about UKIP is that it is a Party of independent thinkers and me expressing my personal view will be welcome in the Party rather than frowned upon as I imagine it is in the three old parties.

The fundamental future of UKIP remains open though: will it remain a Party mainly focused on getting Britain out of the European Union, or do we want a Party focused not just on that issue but on education, jobs, crime, localism and tax? No prizes for guessing what side of the fence I'm sitting on.

Labour's Leader has turned his fire on the working class.

Okay, we all know that Gordon Brown is utterly hopeless and that the Labour Party he leads has been widely discredited. Yet I am still surprised about the sheer vanity and crudeness that Gordon Brown exhumed yesterday when he referred to a dear old lady, Labour all her life, as a "bigot" because she expressed concern over immigration. The lady, Gillian Duffy, did not just talk about immigration it must be stressed. She pressed Brown on the economy as well and came across as a woman representing the concerns of vast swathes of the electorate. A BNP obsessive type Duffy was not - just a mild mannered Labour voter.

Gordon Brown's response in private exposes not just him as a man who holds contempt for the very kind of people he should represent,  but exposes just what the Labour Party has become. Disconnected with working class values, concerns and issues and lead by a man who dismisses a voter who seems to have Labour values in such a disgusting manner. Labour truly have turned their back on the people they used to represent. That's not spin, its a fact.

Labour continue to betray the people they are meant to represent.

How nice it must be for Ruth Kelly to be able to afford to move to one of the poshest areas of London fresh off her career as an MP finishing so that her kids can go to one of the best state schools in the country. That's not being cynical, she took one of her sons out of state education for elite £15,000a year schooling so past form dictates that this is a cynical move-around from Kelly.

It astounds me how people like Ruth Kelly can live with themselves. They spend their whole lives trying to convince people that state education in Britain is improving under Labour, while sending their kids to private or the elite of state schools. The amount of Labour MPs who have got to where they are thanks to the grammar school system and not spend their lives denouncing it as "elitist" is the height of hypocrisy when they condemn millions of kids to an education they would never let their own children experience.

The direction of travel is not clear.

"Sure, the Tories are not promising withdrawal from Europe. But the direction of travel is clear". Those are the words of Jonathan Isaby over at The Guardian in a typical self-indulgent Tory belittling of those silly little people thinking of voting UKIP. The direction is clear alright: he wants a Tory government that supports further EU enlargement with Turkey joining, and an abandonment of Michael Howard's Conservative commitment to repatriate powers of territorial fishing waters.

Nevertheless Isaby asks, do those thinking of voting UKIP want another five years of Gordon Brown or a new Tory government? Quite frankly, and I think I speak for most UKIP supporters here, I couldn't give a damn. The fact is I want withdrawal from the EU, grammar schools, flat tax and a whole bunch of other things that I don't get if Cameron or Brown are our next Prime Minister. If anything, Nick Clegg's hinting and support of a referendum on EU membership is far more a tantalising prospect than Dave in Number 10. 

Sorry Jonathan, but blue rosettes don't mean a damn thing to me. I'll be one of (hopefully) several million voting according to what I believe. If the best carrot you can dangle is five more years of Brown or Dave the game show host galloping into Downing Street, it really is clear that the Tories have nothing to offer voters like me to even consider switching. 

If UKIP standing costs Tories seat and lets Lib Dem or Labour candidates in, I really couldn't care less. We need a UKIP government and guess what, we're only ever going to get there by standing in elections. The Tories don't own those who have voted for them in the past. Maybe Cameron's pledge of "vote for change" might come into fruition after all.

Polly Toynbee urges Guardian readers to abandon principle.

Not that I am surprised, but Polly Toybee's rallying cry for Guardian readers not to vote for what they believe in but for what they are against is really rather silly. In fact it reminds me of the tactics of the BNP - vote for us because you hate the other lot.

Her reasoning sums up precisely the mentality of the Labour Party at the moment which is harming it so much, calling upon the "anti-Tory" brigade to vote according to that highly negative motivation. The very fact that Toynbee urges voters to vote based on what they are against rather than one single policy they are for sums things up very nicely in terms of where the left and Labour are today.

If the Labour Party want to survive for very much longer, they need to buy in to some set of principles and stick to them, as do the two other old parties. If we get Proportional Representation after the next election then the wasted vote argument goes out of the window. If the likes of Toynbee and Labour (as well as the Tories) are left with nothing to stop people switching to parties like UKIP and the Greens, they need to have a message and a cause far more powerful than "we'll keep the other lot out".

It is this tittle-tattle, ping-pong politics that is helping to cause a breakdown in confidence and interest in politics. People want policies and action they can buy into and support, not glorified slagging matches and negative campaigning.

What are Labour fighting for?

So John Prescott wants Labour to fight hard to stay in government. He wants a "strong government". But what about all of the working class people who have voted Labour for all these years and have suffered for it? What about those in Labour heartlands who now feel so disgusted and abandoned by the Labour Party that they are being driven to vote for a bunch of Nazis? Why can't they get a Labour Party that cares about the real fears in theor community about jobs, immigration and education?

The fact is that people like Prescott represent what is worst about Labour. I detest what New Labour stands for, but at least the likes of Charles Clarke criticise the terrible Prime Minister we now have and point out how worthless Labour have now become. Prescott is blind to the truth, like a robot that has only one function: to tell people to vote Labour. Why? It seems the only answer is "to stop the Tories getting in". Some vision for the future of a country that is on its knees. Maybe that's why they are now in third place getting a paltry 23% of the vote in the polls.

Could the TV debates help the "others"?

Now I'd obviously have rather Nigel Farage or Lord Pearson had been included in tonight's TV debate. But they haven't. However, could it be possible that tonight's TV debate actually boost parties like UKIP?


I'm not questioning the fact that the debate tonight is probably going to see either Brown, Cameron or Clegg coming out looking better. But coming out looking better by being better presented and more likeable doesn't necessarily win votes if your policies aren't up the cop. Furthermore, I believe that the little difference between the three parties on issues that people really care about like immigration will expose and undermine all of them.


Could it be then, that while maybe Brown, Cameron or Clegg may come across better than the other two, many viewers may end the night feeling unimpressed by all three. Could it swing more people to look at the other alternatives? Could tonight's TV debate expose, rather than promote, the leaders of the three old parties?


Put it this way - I'm expecting Question Time later in the night with Nigel Farage to be a lot more meaningful.

UKIP need more bang for our buck.

I have previously told of my dislike of the UKIP policy to step down from contesting seats at the General Election against candidates from other parties who are anti-EU. While I do think it puts the Conservatives in a tough position and kills their argument of UKIP costing eurosceptic MPs their seats, I object mainly on the grounds that even if rival Party candidate is anti-EU they may still disagree with UKIP on issues like education, immigration and how we are going to get our economic recovery going.

However, it is a decision that has now been made and though I disagree I do understand Lord Pearson's reasoning. Apart from anything else, I understand it is already causing some chaos among the Tory ranks with some candidates wanting to jump on board and local internal disputes now being have over the issue of the EU.

But if this is really to be worth it then we need those UKIP are helping to be strong and steadfast. Labour MP David Drew's own website, has no mention of the EU under his "issues". And the few lucky candidates who are not yet MPs and are being given a free run by UKIP like Janice Small in Batley and Spen need to seriously buck their ideas up. A pro-EU David Cameron press release being your website's comment on Britain's relationship with the EU is not good enough.

Lord Pearson and UKIP have done these supposed anti-EU stalwarts from other parties a massive favour which may be the difference between them being an MP or not come May. They need to repay the favour massively and be strong anti-EU voices in return.

The Tories can't have it all their way.

Blogging will most likely be light today as I have been asked to drop into BBC Radio Norfolk for a chit-chat on blogging and young people in politics.

The story that has caught my eye this morning is the Conservatives' Jeremy Hunt complaining that the current First Past The Post voting system is unfair. I quite agree, and would indeed go further and say that it is hopelessly outdated and needs to be consigned to the history books.

But Hunt and the Tories don't want to replace FPTP, oh no. They want to keep it, but move the boundaries around to make things more "fair". In other words, draw the boundaries to give themselves more of an advantage just as Labour have.

Wouldn't it represent more of the "change" that David Cameron has promised if the voting system was switched to something entirely more proportionate? Instead of having safe seats and marginals, with the electorate of both receiving vastly differing degrees of attention from the parties, we should switch to AV+. This is a system where, in a nutshell, you retain constituency MPs while have a fifth or so of MPs elected regionally in top-up seats done via proportional representation.

Yes, that may be the UKIP line. But it's definitely the one that makes most sense to me. Perhaps one of the jewels of a hung parliament and a Labour/Liberal Democrat alliance could be such a reform. It is long overdue.

A measure of UKIP's progress.

Want proof that UKIP is a Party with a serious future? Then watch today's Andrew Marr interview where the BBC's flagship interviewer sat down with Lord Pearson.

The interview, in terms of policy, focused on UKIP's thirst for big cuts in government spending. And though Pearson of course mentioned the huge savings to be made by leaving the EU, he also discussed in length our desire to take a shotgun to government waste.

If people like Andrew Marr are getting it, then we as a Party are definitely progressing in the direction we need to. UKIP has single-handedly made the issue of EU withdrawal a topic that is viewed as credible and popular amongst the public. If we break the mould and make known our similarly radical approaches to cutting the deficit, taxation, education and so on, then the three old parties may just find they have a new big time contender at General Elections. Well, I hope so.

MPs should look at what Douglas Carswell has just pulled off.

The internet many say is good for discussion, but rarely wins votes and support. I would ask those who hold such a view to have a look at what Douglas Carswell has just done.

Both through appealing on his widely-read blog and via email for people to put up his posters in the constituency he is defending, Carswell apparently has hundreds of offers from people wanting to help him out. The respondents will apparently cover nearly half of all the streets in his constituency.

Now that is what you call internet campaigning. No need for costly advertising or flashy promo videos. Just an MP who blogs effectively and who has built up a respectful audience who are now going to back him. 

I wonder how many other MPs will get the idea? This is the future.

It is not just the BNP who have meetings cancelled.

I've heard of loads of stories that the BNP have spun of their meetings being cancelled last minute. They play the usual victim card, saying that they are being blocked from having meetings due to their views.

Interesting then that the Barking and Dagenham Post is reporting that the Stop the BNP Forum have had their meeting cancelled last minute due to its political nature.

The BNP's strategy is well-known to play the victim card time and time again as they believe this strikes a chord with white working class people who believe they are powerless victims as well. The fact that this anti-BNP meeting which was based in the Party's target seat was cancelled by the venue shows that the usual spin from Nick Griffin and his ragtag bunch of so-called nationalists. They are not victims, they are dealt with the same as everyone else, even those who oppose them.

The internet can be a dangerous place for a wannabe politician.

So Stuart MacLennan, a Labour candidate has been caught making obscene remarks on Twitter over a year ago. This is new age politics.

Just as the internet gives voters the ability for unparalleled insight into the political world, it is an accident waiting to happen for politicians who make the odd stupid remark. Lets be honest though, most people make stupid mistakes at some point or another.

Yet I imagine my generation will see increasingly more young candidates and political office holders make slip-ups that may go back years before they were official representatives of their Party, as in the case of MacLennan. Young people are now growing up through and with the internet, with much of their history visible to all who wish to do them harm or discredit them.

Times are a changing. And for those in politics, the internet can be both an extremely useful tool and a potentially damaging weapon to be used against you.

EDIT: MacLennan has been deselected by Labour. It seems his repeated tirades were too much. The first Twitter casualty of this election.

The reasons for not voting are wearing thin.

Those of us who have been involved in political campaigns will have no doubt come across those totally disgusted and disillusioned with politics. Indeed I have many friends who have confessed to me that they think all politicians are the same, that they won't be voting and that in their view voting at the forthcoming General Election is a waste of time.

Why is that, I ask them? Well, they tend to reply, because they dislike Gordon Brown and David Cameron. When I probe them further, the response is usually a generic dismissal of the two main Party Leaders along with the rest of the political system.

This lack of interest among the public annoys me almost as much as the generic rhetoric of the establishment parties themselves. It is no longer credible for voters, especially younger people, to moan that they don't know who to vote for or that all politics and parties are the same. They are clearly not and with the invention of the internet this can be clearly proven.

Voters now have the amazing ability to be able to go on YouTube and watch thousands of videos of most MPs, candidates and parties, both from official and unofficial channels. You can go on to the relatively neutral BBC website now and check out the policies of every major party in the country on every issue. Sites like Vote Match even now allow the electorate to answer simply "agree" and "disagree" to policy proposals to find out which Party their views are most closely associated to out of the parties contesting their constituency.

It is hard for me to imagine what politics would have been like ten, maybe fifteen or so years ago with minimal internet, virtually no multimedia and very little independent political commentary. But the internet now provides those who don't place faith in what the parties say themselves, what the TV channels are reporting or what the  newspapers say to do their own digging. There surely can never have been a time in our history where individuals themselves can make their own minds up about the different alternatives they can vote for at the General Election with so much info at their fingertips.

 It is up to individuals to have the impetus to get off their backsides and spend a few hours researching on who they agree with and who they want to vote for. If they can't be bothered then fine, but admit it and don't whine when the government does something you don't like. All the tools are out there for people now, they just need to be used.

My top 5 seats to watch for UKIP.

So Gordon Brown has officially fired the starting gun on what looks like it could be the closest election in Britain since I have been alive. Of course the big narrative is going to be focused on Brown vs. Cameron, Labour vs. Conservative and whether or not the long anticipated Conservative victory is going to come into fruition.

However, there are several interesting sub-texts aside from that at this election. The Greens will be targetting a win in Brighton Pavillion and Norwich South where I live while the BNP will be going for broke in Barking and Stoke. Respect may also have an outside chance of a seat, the best bet being Salma Yaqoob in Birmingham as well as the Party defending Bethnal Green and Bow minus George Galloway.

UKIP meanwhile will be demonstrating how it is by far the biggest cat on the "fringe" of British politics by standing over 500 candidates and having key target seats in every region. From talking to people in the Party, here are my top 5 seats to watch for a solid UKIP performance. These are not necessarily not the 5 seats I feel we will do best in, but ones that I will be watching with particular curiosity on election night.

1 - Buckingham. Of course Nigel Farage's challenge for the Speaker John Bercow's seat could win UKIP some major headlines on the night. If Farage is to be UKIP's first ever elected Member of Parliament then he will have turned over the largest numerical majority in the election. Seats didn't come any safer in 2005 than John Bercow's Buckingham constituency, yet sources have told me that we may be set to shock the political establishment here. One thing is for sure, if David Cameron does secure a tiny majority or has to form a coalition government, there is no one else he would surely fear more to raise merry hell among his own Tory backbenchers than Farage who is a masterful political operator.

2 - Bootle. Yes, the seat where Labour received 75.5% of the vote in 2005 and UKIP received 4.1%. Yet Bootle is once again being contested by the man who is now UKIP Chairman and an MEP in Paul Nuttall. Nuttall has been overseeing major developments in the constituency in terms of local election results and we are almost guaranteed to take seats on the Council on the night too. I expect Labour's vote to totally collapse and a serious push from UKIP here could definetly see a second place finish creating a UKIP marginal for the election after.

3 - Newcastle-under-Lyme. The constituency where as far as I know UKIP have more elected Councillors than any other in the country, including three County Councillors. I don't have much first-hand knowledge of the constituency but again it is a Labour seat where the vote will be up for grabs and where in the past UKIP have proven to be attractive to the locals. A very solid local Councillor base could be the makings of a fantastic result here.

4 - Barking. Frank Maloney, the man who managed boxing legend Lennox Lewis to several World Titles, is stepping forward to do battle with Labour's Margaret Hodge and the BNP's Nick Griffin in East London. Maloney is a well-known face and is a self-made successful businessman who has been running a serious campaign that may produce a result unexpected by many. Certainly it is no secret that the BNP were irate when they found out UKIP planned to stand such a high profile candidate in the constituency. Hopefully by providing the good people of Barking with a candidate who takes the problems of uncontrolled immigration seriously but does so from a strictly non-racist stand-point, the BNP will be denied a seat and UKIP will put down a respectable marker.

5 - Norwich North. After going from 2.4% in 2005 and then getting 11.8% in last year's by-election, Norwich North's swing of 9.4% for UKIP gives local man Glenn Tingle a great opportunity to get an even better result this time round. Many in the constituency during the by-election didn't see UKIP as having a chance of getting a decent result and saw us as a "wasted vote" while the BBC gave massive coverage to the Greens as the chief "other" and not UKIP. Had Tingle been included in the BBC's televised debate and not the Green Party's Rupert Read then a third place finish would have been on the horizon. This time around, it well may be.

Those are my tips for those wanting to monitor how UKIP does on election night. Of course, if we get just one seat it would be a truly historic night for the Party. Yet that is not the be-all and end-all. UKIP secured just over 600,000 votes at the last General Election, or 2.2%. This time breaking the million vote barrier is the definete target for some, but I think we could do even better than that. 1,500,000 is more the magic number for me right now. If UKIP, a supposedly fringe Party, could get votes at a General Election on that scale then the taste of disappointment even if we don't get an MP on the night would be that much easier to take. Building a nationwide political movement is not for the impatient.

Johnson Beharry is a great man.

I have always been of the view that actions speak louder than words. And from speaking to friends I have in the army, Labour have helped decimate our armed forces, sending them into war on a peace time budget. This is not partisan hyperbole, but the reality for many young people I know personally who have complained that compared to their counterparts in America, the funding they receive is an insult. Of course, they are not allowed to talk about such matters in public. Their disgust and contempt must be held privately as they continue to risk their lives doing their jobs.

Johnson Beharry is a man I have much admiration for. The first man to win the Victoria Cross for decades, he is a war hero and saved many of his comrades in Iraq in an exchange I don't think written description could ever do justice.

He has today revealed that he snubbed Gordon Brown at Rememberance Day last year, disgusted at Brown's "disrespect" of the armed forces. I find it deeply touching that a man as respected and well-known as Mr. Beharry, a man now rubbing shoulders with the likes of Gordon Brown, still has the character to stand up for what he believes in. Too many in this world get dazed by the bright lights and taken aback with starry-eyes once they have any sort of public profile, but Beharry has done himself and his many comrades in the army proud by giving Brown a real taste of just how held in contempt his government now is.

The government may be able to blag to the public that they are funding the army properly, but our boys and girls who are serving know the reality. How proud I am that UKIP has put a massive emphasis in its manifesto on defence spending, one of the few areas where we would increase government spending. It is badly required.

It is little wonder that the British Army is still the finest in the world when you consider men like Johnson Beharry are among its ranks.

Lets get things into perspective.

No doubt opponents of UKIP will be do everything they can to whip up a giant storm about the fact that Party Leader Lord Pearson and MEP Stuart Agnew have been caught by the Sunday Times giving advice on how donors can remain anonymous. Was it wrong? Yes. It was wrong because it creates the wrong impression to the public and UKIP need to be as transparent as possible in everything we do.

Yet donors wanting to give money anonymously to political parties is somewhat understandable. Those with jobs where they cannot be seen to be actively involved in having a strong political affiliation, or those who do want to disclose the fact that they earn x amount of money, I do have sympathy with. I can imagine if I was a rich businessman I would be somewhat reluctant for my dear old wife to see how much I was handing over to the Party! Perhaps a better system would be for people to be able to opt-out of having their name released publicly, but with the Electoral Commission still getting the info in order for them to ensure everything is above board.

So lets be very clear. While I'm sure The Sunday Times are delighted with their smear operation, this is nowhere near the same level as what has been going on in Westminster with those who have been selling their influence or abusing taxpayer's money. If giving information to help those who want to donate to political parties but remain anonymous is the worse UKIP can be exposed of doing, we're doing pretty well. Especially in the current political climate.

Should UKIP stand for the legalisation of drugs?

Nigel Farage put in a trademark solid shift on the BBC's Any Questions on Radio 4. Interestingly though, Nigel highlighted his personal belief that we should seriously look at legalising drugs after decades of the war on drugs failing. As Farage pointed out, year on year the cost of anti-drug policing is going up and up, as is the consumption rate by young people.

At the end of the day, most young people I know who want to take drugs do so anyway. But the money they pay is going into the back pockets of dealers when it could quite easily be going to the government who could then invest in policing the criminal element. It is also drugs that are the real motivation behind a lot of the stabbings and shootings up and down the country as people from deprived backgrounds find they can make a lot of money by dealing drugs in comparison to their other job opportunities.

I don't think it would be healthy to simply legalise drugs overnight. Personally, I would get an independent projected cost/benefit analysis done and if the numbers added up as I believe they would, go ahead with legalising cannabis alone for a period of three to four years. Based on the results of legalising weed alone, I would then look into legalising other drugs.

Of course, this is a view not shared by many, probably the majority, in UKIP. And I do accept the argument that it would be hard to sell the legalisation of drugs to some people on Council estates where drugs have ruined communities. Yet at the same time I believe it would radically change criminal behaviour across the country and would actually make drugs less of a tempting prospect to many young people.

Whatever your personal view though, I think their can be little doubt that at least looking at the prospect and seriously considering it in an adult way does need to be done. Note that the government have recently lost some of their drugs advisor because they have ignored what they have said about banning drugs. And those are the people who should ultimately be listened to more.

Mutton dressed as lamb.

I genuinely thought like most sane people that the European Union's plans for an epic 80-minute poem including music, dance, lights and God knows what else based around its Charter of Fundamental Rights was an Aprils Fools.

Apparently not though. That's right, the EU really is going to tip thousands and thousands of pounds of taxpayer's cash down the drain celebrating its Charter of Fundamental Rights. This is the Charter which only came through thanks to the collective blocking of referendums on the Lisbon Treaty across Europe by the EU and member state governments.

Of course it being the EU, the opportunity to indoctrinate young children is not being missed. A poem competition for kids is being held as they say what the Charter of Fundamental Rights apparently means to them. Oh how I would love to enter.

Hat tip to Gawain.

No, Gordon, immigrants do not have to honour or respect British values.

Gordon Brown's call for immigrants coming in to Britain to honour British values is alarmingly like his faux call pledge of "British jobs for British workers". A nice idea but totally undeliverable for a Labour government that has turned its back on the working man.

The problem is that the UK is clearly gearing up for an even more discriminatory policy for those outside of the EU, while totally open-borders remain within the EU. It's pretty sick to think that those outside the EU must honour British values to be able to live and work in our country, but those inside the EU do not.

What's more it is totally disingenuous for Brown to purport that this is the way things will now be. No they won't. Because Brown, Cameron and the rest of the political establishment seem to have turned their back on the idea that the people who want to live in our country should be allowed to on merit and need, and not simply their place of origin. What a sad state of affairs.

Could the internet change the way people vote?

A lot has been said recently about how the internet is going to change politics. It allows those in positions of power to communicate with the wider public with a great degree of ease and for stories that the mainstream news outlets interested in, to be broadcast worldwide on YouTube.

One thing that I don't think has been considered so much is the potential for the internet to change the way people vote. I'm not talking about political parties viral online campaigns, but via neutral sites like Vote Match that match voters views up with the Party most represented by them.

Damian Thompson has already noted one example of a devoted Labour supporter finding out they are actually UKIP. I suspect for the undecided the use of such sites could be what influences their choice at the ballot box.

One thing is for sure. People undecided on who to vote for no longer have to be fed crap by the parties directly. The development of relatively neutral sites like Vote Match greatly empower the electorate. And more worryingly for the main old parties, the "fringe" parties are given equal billing and equal opportunity to put their policies and ideas forward.

As for me, I was naturally a UKIP supporter. And the Party I'm apparently second closest to? The Liberal Democrats. Perish the thought!

If that's how Labour feel, they should have got shot of Gordon Brown.

News that some 93% of Labour election materials from a random sample did not include a picture of Gordon Brown, with 86% not even mentioning him, says all you need to know.

Gordon Brown may be the man representing Labour's candidate for Prime Minister and is going to be their representative on the Prime Ministerial Debates, but he is seen as more of a hindrance than a help by most Labour members, it would seem.

In an age of media politics, the Party Leader is the main man or woman. They must have support from their members who can then help to sell that person and the Party's vision to the public. What confuses me is the lack of faith the Labour faithful actually have in Gordon Brown being a weapon for them.

If they lack support for Gordon Brown to such a degree, then why is he still the Leader of their Party? If the Party isn't right at the top, it can never really be right at the grassroots.