BLACK DOG: An F-word of warning, Nigel

By BLACK DOG FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

Published: | Updated:


If Nigel Farage ever achieves his dream of taking over a merged Ukip/Tory Party, he should pause before deciding on a new name. When Canada’s version of Ukip, the Reform Party, joined its version of the Tories, they chose ‘Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance’. Wags added the word ‘party’, giving it the unappealing acronym CCRAP. If Ukip ever adds the word ‘Conservative’ to its title, Dog has some advice: don’t start with ‘Federation’ – and be careful where you place the ‘C’.

Oh, ****: The very un-PC Farage had better be careful if he considers a name for a new united party

Oh, ****: The very un-PC Farage had better be careful if he considers a name for a new united party

To round off his week from hell, Nick Clegg was disowned last night by the best friend of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, Duwayne Brooks, who lost his seat as a Lib Dem councillor in Lewisham, South London, and his bid to be local mayor. Brooks, who was with Lawrence when he was murdered by racist thugs in 1993, said of the 7,000 people who did back him for the mayoral job: ‘Every single vote was a personal vote as the local party I was affiliated with was hated with a passion.’

Lord Oakeshott, the cack-handed plotter against Clegg, has invested some of his millions in the Town Of Ramsgate pub in Wapping, East London, which has a dark, bloody past going back four centuries. The nearest hostelry to Execution Dock, where pirates and traitors were hanged from a watery gibbet, it is also where ‘hanging’ Judge Jeffreys supped his last drink before being seized by a mob and jailed in the Tower in 1688. If only it was so simple now, eh Nick?

Looking tasty...MP's wife Karen on Twitter

Selfies: MP Simon Danczuk's wife Karen

Selfies: MP Simon Danczuk's wife Karen

The wife of outspoken Labour MP Simon Danczuk – who twisted the knife into Ed Miliband over ‘bacon butty gate’ by designing an ‘easy to eat’ sarnie sold in the family deli – has an arresting presence on Twitter. Karen, left – who at 31  is 16 years her husband’s junior – has posted a series of ‘selfies’ like the one above on the social messaging site showing off her, er… new dress. Dog almost dropped its bacon butty.

Andrew Neil caught Diane Abbott on the hop – admittedly not difficult  – when he asked the London Labour MP where in the country was Newark, site  of this week’s by-election. The BBC anchorman was greeted with a deafening silence. ‘Um, er… I know it is outside the M25,’ she finally responded. Just the sort of comment to win over Ukip-leaning voters sick of the out of touch metropolitan elite…

Patrick Mercer, forced to resign in disgrace as Newark MP, has become a political version of Harry Potter’s nemesis, Voldemort, ‘he who must not be named’ in the Tory guide to this week’s by-election.  He features in two photos with would-be successor, Robert Jenrick. Yet Tory chiefs removed all reference to Mercer by name.

Nadine's Streets ahead

Even frank and fearless Nadine Dorries has a vulnerable side. When the Tory MP was touting around the manuscript for her novel The Four Streets, she sent it to former colleague Louise Mensch’s agent. ‘He sent it back and told me to stick to the day job. For six months I couldn’t write a word,’ she says. The writer’s block didn’t last and the book has shifted more than 100,000 copies.

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