How will Ukip play the Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election? As a Labour seat with a relatively large majority (Sebastian profiles the constituency here), it’s a perfect location for Nigel Farage’s party to underline its claim that it can steal discontented voters from Labour just as easily as it does from the Tories. Labour is already nervous enough to be testing out special anti-Ukip leaflets arguing Farage is not on the side of the working class.
It might have seemed a natural seat for the party’s Deputy leader Paul Nuttall to stand in. He gave a strong speech at the party’s autumn conference on how the Labour party no longer understood the working classes and that Ukip could find a natural constituency in the North (but had what even party insiders accept was a bad night on Question Time two weeks ago).
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