Shami Chakrabarti and Peter Whittle play the by-election blame game

Shami Chakrabarti and Peter Whittle would probably furiously deny playing by the same political rules. But this morning on the Andrew Marr Show, the Labour peer and Ukip politician were both using suspiciously similar scripts to try to excuse poor performances by their party leaders in Thursday’s by-elections.

First up, Peter Whittle on how Paul Nuttall managed to squander a golden opportunity in Stoke Central. Nuttall was on a trip, of the kind that apparently often happens after a by-election, so he couldn’t explain for himself. Whittle referred to personal attacks on Nuttall. There were plenty of those in the campaign, but these were merely ones that involved uncovering the truth behind various claims the Ukip leader had made, from where he lived to whether he had lost close friends in the Hillsborough disaster. He did concede, however, that perhaps it had been a mistake for Nuttall to stand in the seat:

‘If there was one mistake we made it was that maybe Paul shouldn’t have run so early.