“I am very happy with the result we have had this evening” @gareth_snell tells @afneil about the #StokeCentral by-election result #bbctw pic.twitter.com/5Br2y4RQox

— BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) February 24, 2017

Gareth Snell, Labour: 7,853 (37%)

Paul Nuttall, UKIP: 5,233 (25%)

Jack Brereton, Tory: 5,154 (24%)

Zulfiqar Ali, LibDem: 2,083 (10%)

Labour hold Stoke with a 2,620 majority. Nuttall beat 25 year old Tory no hoper Jack Brereton by 79 votes…

Gareth Snell’s sexist comments about women, first uncovered by Guido, have cut through to Stoke voters according to a focus group carried out by BritainThinks for the Guardian:

“He’s the one who says negative comments about women on TV and doesn’t like Janet Street-Porter,” said garage-owner Jamie, 48, when the group was shown a photo of Snell. (Snell described Porter as a “polished turd”.) “You can’t make flippant sexist comments and not have some sort of backlash from it,” said Lisa, a 38-year-old student.

Only three out of ten Stoke residents who voted Labour in 2015 told the focus group they would definitely do so again this week. Feelings towards Theresa May were “generally positive”, while Paul Nuttall was the candidate they most wanted to go for a pint with. If this is replicated across the constituency, Stoke is in play…

Labour’s Stoke candidate Gareth Snell apologises to all the women in his family following Guido’s stories…

The LibDems have written to the Labour Party and Staffordshire Police after it emerged a Labour activist has sent text messages to Muslim voters warning them to vote for Gareth Snell or “answer for this in the Grave and on the Final Day”. The LibDem letter:

I am writing about several text messages reported to us by members of the public which appear to be distributed in large numbers in support of your candidate and your campaign.

I am concerned by these text messages for two reasons, firstly about the Representation of the People Act 1983 and secondly about the ‘Guidance on political campaigning‘ issued by the Information Commissioners Office.

1 – I am sure that you realise that the religious nature of one of these messages could also be deemed to be covered by the ruling on “undue spiritual influence” in the matter of a mayoral election for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets held on 22 May 2014 when the Labour Party were the victims of such tactics.

2 – These text messages are clearly election material in support of your candidate Gareth Snell as they meet the criteria for an elections expense set out in section 90ZA (6) of the Representation of the People Act “In this Part and in Part 3 of this Act, any reference (in whatever terms) to promoting or procuring a candidate’s election at an election includes doing so by prejudicing the electoral prospects of another candidate at the election”. They are clearly aimed at stopping people voting for my candidate Dr Zulfiqar Ali as well as others.

3 – I am sure that you are aware that such text messages under the ICO guidance should only be sent where the individual has consented to contact of that sort from the organisation for those purposes. Therefore, we have serious concerns about the origin of access to these phone numbers and whether the necessary permissions and opt out procedures have been followed…

Yours sincerely,

Ian Horner, Election Agent

CC: David Mullington, Staffordshire Police; Fiona Ledden, Acting Returning Officer; Gina Jones, Electoral Services, Stoke-on-Trent City Council

As the LibDems say, this looks like Lutfur Rahman levels of spiritual influence…

Labour’s Stoke candidate Gareth Snell has been speaking about those tweets:

“They are 10 years old. You do a lot of growing up in your 20s. I have grown up and I have learned since then and I will apologise unreservedly for any offence that I have caused.”

This is a straight lie.

Snell did not send any of these tweets anything like 10 years ago. He only joined Twitter eight years ago. The infamous “slap” tweet was sent six years ago, as was the Janet Street-Porter tweet and the “stupid woman” tweet. His tweets about Corbyn supporting the IRA and Hamas were from the last 12 months. As were his tweets abusing Leave voters. The “10 years old” line is a knowing untruth – assume this demonstrable fib will get the same response as Nuttall…

Expect this one to be on UKIP leaflets by next week. Remember he’s calling himself the “local candidate”:

Guido is starting to feel sorry for Gareth. He really should have just deleted his account…