At his leadership campaign launch Balls was asked the killer ultra-marginal question:- why should Labour supporters back him to beat the Tories when his own personal vote went down. He claimed that he faced in his constituency “the largest BNP membership in the country”. Simply not true.

In reality he had a 9.3% swing to the Conservatives in his constituency against a national swing of just over 5%. The BNP went from 7.8% of the vote down to 7.2% of the vote in his constituency.  The BNP actually lost ground in his constituency and the issue  of immigration had nothing to do with him turning a safe seat into an ultra-marginal.  That piece of spin is complete and utter balls….

UPDATE : Have just given the listeners to BBC Leeds the benefit of Guido’s analysis of the Labour leadership campaign so far, advocating in all honesty as preferred candidate “Ed Balls, but then I don’t like the Labour Party”.