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…
