On the road with Ukip in the ‘Common Sense’ battle bus

Ukip’s campaigning team has been working so hard to make it into second place in Wythenshawe and Sale East that when I arrived at their very purple shop in Sale town centre yesterday, the big panic was not so much a shortage of leaflets as a shortage of clean pants. One of the staffers has had to dash out to a nearby clothes shop as he’s spent so many hours working on the by-election that he hasn’t had any time to do any laundry.

In the shopping street outside, a man in a fluorescent yellow tabard and a Ukip rosette hands out campaign leaflets. Round the back is a purple and yellow van that warns onlookers ‘Here comes Common Sense’. Inside an organiser is on the phone, complaining that one region hasn’t sent enough volunteers to knock on local doors and that the party will only ‘scrape’ into second if they don’t pull their socks up.