Jury Team, the new internet-based party set-up by Paul Judge to bring independent candidates with clean hands into politics, is making waves by running American-style attack ads in Jacqui Smith’s constituency – they will run online in Redditch local newspapers from tomorrow morning.

The advert is not that aggressive by American standards, by British standards it is, so much so that the newspapers in which it is running took legal advice before accepting the advert.

Iain Dale underestimates the anti-political climate that they are trying to tap into, anyone can stand in the party’s primaries. They are a small party but the internet means they can grow fast.  The Italian mani pulite movement in the early 90s started small and led eventually to the demise of the corrupt First Republic and the collapse of the old party structures.  When you have David Cameron proposing parliamentary reforms which will result in MPs pocketing more taxpayers cash you really wonder if these mavericks could go mainstream.  It happened in Italy…