The deputy speaker has been accused of raping a man and sexually assaulting a second man between July 2009 and March this year. Police searched his Lancashire cottage yesterday.

The Mirror has the scoop…

It’s what everyone has been on the edge of their seats waiting for: Adam Afriyie has had his say on today’s results over at ITV:

“No-one can deny that the Conservative party had a bad night in South Shields and as I write, it looks like we are also going to lose a substantial number of local council seats.

It’s clear that many Conservative voters have stayed at home or, in many cases, voted UKIP.

Either we are not yet effectively communicating our national policies or for whatever reason people are no longer hearing or believing what we have to say.

Sometimes nobody can help that – especially mid-term when we need to cut the deficit and take tough actions.

People are rightly concerned about things like Europe and immigration and that is reflected in the gains made by UKIP.

They are making gains because they only have two issues but they are the issues which chime in rough times – Europe and immigration.

But I am hopeful that we can turn things around and win a majority at the next general election.

But only if we acknowledge how people feel; recognise that they didn’t vote for us because mainstream political parties are failing them.

We need to understand that ignoring UKIP isn’t going to make them go away.

It seems to me that things would be rather different at these elections if people knew that economic growth had restarted, Conservatives had put in place the legislation for an in-out referendum and immigration was already falling further because we had implemented bold but sensible solutions.

I know we can get there and continue to build a bright future for Britain as a world-leading nation once again.”

“His views do not necessarily reflect those of ITV News.” Or the Conservative Party…

The Tory and Labour spin machines are out in force this morning. You don’t need to watch the TV, Guido has their lines to take.

Tories:

We’ve lost some excellent councillors last night, and we’ll lose more today. 

However, only a handful of councils have declared so far, and we’re still in the dark about the majority of results.

 

Of course we understand why some people didn’t vote for us – we need to focus even more on the things that matter to hardworking people: turning the economy around, fixing welfare, helping with the cost of living and controlling immigration.

 

We’ve always been straight about the scale of the task facing this country: there are no easy options, and there’s still a long way to go. But on the issues people care about we are on the right track. The deficit is down by a third. Crime is down. Net immigration is down by a third. And we’ve capped welfare.

 

As we move towards a General Election – the true choice will be between a Conservative Government that will deal with the deficit and control welfare and immigration – and the same old Labour Party who want more borrowing, more spending and more debt.

 

Over the next two years we are even more determined to continue to change this country to put hardworking people at the centre of everything we do.

One Nation Labour is making good progress. Ed Miliband is determined to ensure Labour keeps changing, keeps working hard, listening more and doing politics in a different way. This is obviously a damning verdict of the Tories and Lib Dems and their failure in Government – they say this morning that they “get it”, but they only offer more of the same.

In South Shields we’ve had a strong result with over 50% of the vote. Council results will take time to come in but Labour’s seen good progress overnight. Winning battleground seats that are crucial for 2015: topping the poll and returning Labour councillors in Harlow, Stevenage and Hastings as well as making 4 gains in Cannock.

Picking up some surprise gains including 5 gains in Weymouth in Dorset and 5 gains in Gloucestershire. Across the country UKIP has taken significant votes from the Tories. The Tories have lost control of heartland councils like Lincolnshire, where UKIP have gone from none to 16 councillors overnight.

UKIP have pushed the Conservatives into a distant third in South Shields. If the Tories lose more than 244 seats they will have seen all the gains they made in 2009, when these seats were last contested and Labour had its worst result in decades, wiped out.

This has been a bad night for the Lib Dems, with their worst ever by-election result in South Shields, coming seventh with less than 2% of the vote. They’ve also lost 5 seats in Hampshire to UKIP.

Defeated Tory councillors are already laying the blame firmly at Dave’s door this morning. Lifelong Tory and now former Hampshire councillor Alexis McEvoy has written a scathing attack for the Telegraph:

Expect more of the same throughout the day…

Good news reported in the Sun this morning: Dave is ditching the nannying plans for plain cigarette packaging. Like minimum pricing, it was probably doomed from the start; plain packs would have cost the Treasury billions, alienated the half a million who said “hands off our packs” and was opposed by MPs of all parties. March’s Guardian scoop on the subject, will remain an exclusive…

It takes something pretty special to unite the Tories and the Guardian, and then have UKIP and the New Statesman team up against them. UKIP candidate Dick Delingpole’s photoshop of himself with Hitler and subsequent Telegraph blog “confessing” to a non-existent Nazi past were so obviously a joke surely no one could fall for it. Step forward Simon Geraghty, Delingpole’s Tory opponent in Worcester, to bore us all with a cringeworthy sense of humour bypass:

“I find it absolutely sickening and abhorrent. I think the vast majority of British people will find this shocking – it’s not funny at all, it’s dreadful and I can’t believe he’s done it.”

The Guardian‘s Nick Watt even managed to bring himself to write the non-story up in full high-minded glory, apparently using the headline “Ukip in fresh Nazi row after candidate Photoshops Hitler image” without irony. You knew the whole thing had reached farcical proportions when the Staggers came out in defence of Delingpole this afternoon. CCHQ, a Tory candidate and the Guardian versus UKIP, the Staggers and a Delingpole – roll on Friday.

24 hours after Guido reported that Ken had blamed America for the Boston bombings on Iranian state television, and still he has escaped reprimand. Tory MP Brooks Newmark has now written to Ed demanding he be sacked from Labour’s NEC:

“I find it wholly reprehensible for Mr Livingstone to link the Boston bombings to Western intervention in the Middle East. In doing so, he suggests that the actions of the two Boston bombers were justified and excusable. I am sure that both you and the Labour Party agree that terrorism, which in this case killed three innocent people and injured many others, is never justified and never excusable.

He also intimates that America itself was responsible for the bombings. I am sure that you will also agree with me that the only two people responsible for the bombings were the terrorists themselves.

As a member of Labour’s NEC, Mr Livingstone has been placed in a position of responsibility and influence within your Party. As leader of the Labour Party, I call on you to condemn these disgusting remarks and remove Mr. Livingstone from your NEC. I know you will want to do so as soon as possible to make clear that neither you nor the Labour Party condones such beliefs.”

Your move, Ed…

Tory strategists could be forgiven for worrying that after three years of little or no growth and a £120 billion spending black hole this year alone, Dave and George’s reliance on blaming Britain’s economic slump on the last Labour government might be wearing thin with voters. Apparently not.

A study by media agency OMD of over 2,000 adults from across the UK has found that 53% still blame the previous Labour government for Britain’s ongoing economic problems, compared with just 39% blaming the coalition. 39% say Gordon is the main culprit, with just 27% fingering Cameron and 23% Osborne. Numbers Downing Street will be clinging onto…

Priti Patel's dad standing for Ukip, Farage announces—
James Forsyth (@JGForsyth) April 30, 2013

So Priti Patel’s father was publicly a candidate for UKIP for approximately an hour and a half today before it was announced he was standing down. So what happened?

Sushil Patel – dad of Tory MP Priti Patel – tells @Sun_Politics that he is standing down as a UKIP candidate….—
Sun Politics (@Sun_Politics) April 30, 2013

Needless to say that senior UKIP figures were rather excited about securing Mr Patel as a candidate, so much so that one of their senior comms people couldn’t help but cough it to a BBC journalist in the Marquis of Granby, Westminster last night. Unfortunately for the spinner he failed to check who said Beeboid was drinking with – a government special adviser – who promptly went round the corner and immediately called the story in to CCHQ. By the time it broke this afternoon, the Tories were well prepared to kill it and the rest they say is history…

UPDATE: He’s still a candidate say UKIP:

Mr. Patel remains the UKIP candidate for the Bushey South Division in the Hertfordshire County Council elections. He is currently convalescing from a recent serious operation and is unable to conduct any further interviews. Mr. Patel said,  “I am proud of being a UKIP candidate and very proud of the achievements of my daughter who represents the people of Witham in an exemplarily fashion.  My views are my own and I am astonished that there has been quite so much interest in my candidacy”.

UPDATE II: UKIP sources keen to stress no names mentioned in pub and pressure from CCHQ on Mr Patel only came this afternoon, after James Forsyth’s Tweet. Phone call came during photoshoot, there was a minor wobble but Sushil Patel is on ballot and is a candidate.

Lord Tebbit has accused the BBC and CCHQ of colluding to smear UKIP. While that is going a bit far, his words for Cameron are worth the box office treatment. Writing on his Telegraph blog, Norm has given Dave both barrels:

“The intentions of many one-time Tory voters will have been reinforced by Ken Clarke’s singularly ill-judged rant calling them “clowns”. That has to be as stupid a way of persuading defectors to return to the Conservative fold as Cameron’s rant about closet racists and fruitcakes. If Thursday is a bad day for Mr Cameron, he should have no doubt where the responsibility lies. Certainly, the rest of us will all know who to blame if  it is an even worse day for the Conservatives that it need have been.”

Tebbit points out that he will be voting Conservative on the basis of his local council’s record, but is very sympathetic to those without an excuse:

“Of course it may well be that many former Conservative voters are so fed up with the Cameron Coalition that they will turn to Ukip as the party which comes closest to a traditional Conservative agenda, and a reasoned position on the European issue. One can hardly blame them for that.”

You can tell the truth when you are above the law.