The Tory candidate in ultra-marginal Ashfield is coming under fire for saying nuisance tenants should be evicted, forced to sleep in tents in a field and made to do a day’s work picking vegetables in near-by fields. Naturally, there’s hammed-up outrage from the left…

Guido thinks Lee Anderson – the local Labour MP’s former caseworker and ex-lifelong Labour supporter – knows what he is talking about. A simple Google search shows Ashfield has a chronic crime and anti-social behaviour problem:

• Fatal stabbing of a 42-year-old
• Man shot in the leg
• Drug dealing
• Loud noise
• Doors to blocks of flats being broken into
• Businesses broken into
• Troublesome council tenant finally evicted from property only after being locked up for assault and having a weapon

It’s also always worth listening to local residents rather than the opinions of the Westminster commentariat:

• “There was a chap in front of my shop the other day who got really angry and chucked his bike against my shop. It’s all drug related if you ask me.”
• “People have said to me that it’s the worst it has been here for 20 years.”
• “There’s always things going on here like drug dealing, screaming and shouting. Some people in the last month have been moved out but it’s still going on.

The truth is workers – by which Guido means people who get up every morning and go to work, not some idealised worker as imagined by middle-class Islington Marxists – do not appreciate anti-social neighbours who keep them awake all night after spending their unemployment benefits on drink and drugs. Actual decent working-class Labour voters detest those types, polling shows that they resent the anti-social freeloaders more than any other demographic. New Labour understood this which is why they were tough on anti-social behaviour. Last week Guido reported of a bust-up in the Labour candidate’s office between two activists. On December 12, it looks like the Tory candidate will successfully evict one nuisance tenant then…