Gawain Towler, UKIP PPC for North Dorset, was mentioned in last night's post as having tweeted about the Paul Clarke case.

Constantly Furious wondered out loud if this indicated 'official' involvement from UKIP.

Mr Towler has just told CF the following:

"Just to let you know. Nigel Farage will be on the steps of Reading Court on the 18th.

He has supported me speaking to his constituent Mr Clarke from the start. The first meeting took place at the Merstham Home of our local constituency Chairman for example.

There will be more coverage of this, but I can assure you that Mr Clarke has the support of the entire UKIP leadership, both Batten and Pearson, and others for that matter.

Now that we know the details etc we will be prosecuting this case as loudly as we can. Trust me, this should not be a party political issue, but if the others cannot be bothered then we in UKIP will do all we can."

Well done the UKIP boys 'n' girls.

Just a reminder, Paul Clarke's MP is Tory Crispin Blunt. His website says precisely fuck all about Clarke's case and, unless CF is mistaken, he had made no public pronouncement on the matter.

What's your opinion on this, Crispin?

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One of the odd things about the Paul Clarke case to date has been the total lack of involvement from politicians. Of any colour.

Of course, we don't expect to hear anything from Gordon Brown - this isn't X-factor, after all, for fucks sake.

However, we might reasonably have expected to have heard from MP's closer to the case.

Not a dickie bird from our latest Home Secretary, on this (or indeed, on anything else).

Anne Milton is the local MP, but that Tory lady's website is silent on the Paul Clarke case too. Perhaps she doesn't know that one of her constituents is about to banged up for five years for, in his own words,

"trying to be a good citizen .. I thought it was my duty to hand [the gun] in and get it off the streets"

++UPDATE++  Several people have emailed constantly.furious@gmail.com to point out that Clarke's MP is not actually Anne Milton, but Crispin Blunt. He's a Conservative too, and his website says precisely fuck all about Clarke's case either. Even though his website 'strapline' is "Working for you". Clearly, that's unless 'you' are Paul Clarke.

CF's interest was piqued, however, to see a 'tweet' on Monday evening saying:

"#paulclarke Sentencing pushed back to Reading on 18th Dec. Be there to stop this misscarriage of Justice"

As far as CF (and his many ears 'n' eyes out there) knows, that's the first broadcast of that particular information.

And was this from an MP? Well, not quite, but it was from someone who'd quite like to be one.

It was from Gawain Towler, who describes himself as

"Middle age, middle class, middle brow. UKIP PPC for North Dorset"

Now there's nothing on the main UKIP website about this case, but on Mr Towler's own website he has blogged about the affair, again with the plea to "get down to Guildford High Court on December 11th".

Clearly, as soon as the date changed, Mr Towler felt obliged to inform all of Clarke's supporters, but still, the question is begged: how the fuck does he know that?

Who told Mr Towler about the changed date?

Given that UKIP leader Nigel Farage is Clarke's MEP, did he find out via UKIP?

Why is he campaigning for Mr Clarke? Is he doing this as a private individual, or as a UKIP member and PPC?

In short, have UKIP jumped in to fill the void left by the local MP's neglect?

We'd all love to know...


++UPDATE++  Holly Thompson, the reporter who was in court, has confirmed the change of date. But how did UKIP know before her?
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