Can a Ukip cop give Miliband a shock in his own backyard?

EDITOR'S NOTE posted at 2.45 pm, Friday 31 October: Since this article was posted, Labour has won the South Yorkshire PCC by-election, gaining a fraction over 50 per cent of the vote. Turnout was just under 15 per cent. A Labour spokesman said: "We took on Ukip and won. Let's see if Cameron can do the same in Rochester and Strood."

Nigel Farage’s constant boast that he can take on Ed Miliband in Labour’s northern heartland will be put to the test in a by-election tomorrow.

It’s to elect a new police and crime commissioner (PCC) for South Yorkshire - a sprawling region that includes not only the Labour leader’s own seat but that of the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

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Buoyed by new national polls showing their support as high as 19 per cent, and with the upcoming Rochester and Strood by-election looking likely to give them a second MP in the Commons, Ukip are in a two-horse race with Labour in South Yorkshire.

Their candidate is Jack Clarkson, a retired police inspector. He’s up against Labour’s Rev Dr Alan Billings, a clergyman who was deputy leader of Sheffield Council under David Blunkett in the 1980s.

At first glance, Ukip’s boast has some substance. The by-election was caused by the resignation of Shaun Wright, the former Labour PCC, after an independent report found that at least 1,400 children had been the victims of grooming by Asian gangs in Rotherham since 1997. Wright had been head of children’s services in Rotherham between 2005 and 2010.

Ukip made child abuse - in Rochdale rather than Rotherham - a central issue in the recent by-election in the Greater Manchester seat of Heywood and Middleton and came within 617 votes of winning it from Labour.

Now, despite accusations of exploiting the suffering of so many young victims, Ukip are making the most of the Rotherham scandal, displaying a poster across South Yorkshire showing a young white girl with the headline ‘1400 Reasons to vote’.

Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, who has campaigned to expose child sex abuse, denounced Ukip’s tactics as “despicable”.

He said: “Ukip are clearly more interested in trying to use victims’ suffering to win votes than in coming up with solutions. They have never contributed to discussions in terms of child sex abuse.”

A spokesman for Nick Clegg said he regretted that “victims of sexual abuse are being turned into a political football”.

But Ukip’s candidate, Jack Clarkson, rejects the accusations, saying: “It’s Ukip that has opened the debate up to what is happening in this country.”

Clarkson also defends making immigration an issue – even if it is not, as The Times puts it, “within the remit of the PCC”. Says Clarkson: “It’s an avenue that people are using to express their displeasure.”

So, what are Clarkson’s chances tomorrow?

There’s no doubt Ukip are making waves in the region. As well as forcing the close call in Heywood and Middleton, they came second in the 2012 Rotherham by-election caused by the departure of Labour’s Denis MacShane (and have made it their number one target seat for the May 2015 general election).

In May’s European elections, Ukip came top in Yorkshire and Humber in May with 31 per cent of the vote.

Another reason for Ukip optimism is that a low turnout tends to favour them – and the turnout tomorrow is expected to be very low.

It will be a surprise if more than 15 per cent of the one million eligible voters visit the polling stations – that was the turnout when Shaun Wright was elected in 2013. A crime commissioner election in the West Midlands this summer saw just over ten per cent of voters take part.

But the size of the region prompts doubts about Ukip’s prospects. Its one million electors are spread across 14 Westminster constituencies in Sheffield, Doncaster and Barnsley as well as Rotherham. All but Nick Clegg’s Sheffield South seat has a Labour MP.

Jack Clarkson, who retired in 2006 after 30 years in the South Yorkshire police force, is leader of the Ukip group on Sheffield City Council. That sounds impressive until you look at the make-up of the council: 59 Labour, 18 Liberal Democrats, four Greens … and only three Ukip.

Labour’s Alan Billings, however, is the product of many years of service as a Labour councillor. A former parish priest, he is currently director of the Centre for Ethics and Religion at Lancaster University.

Whatever he may think personally about Ukip’s child abuse posters, he accepts that the issue is at the centre of the campaign. If elected, he promises that every instance of abuse will be investigated “with perpetrators brought to justice, officials held to account and victims fully supported".

For Billings, it’s now a question of getting the Labour vote out.

The irony is that Labour plans to scrap PCCs if it wins next year’s general election, a policy confirmed by shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper when she visited South Yorkshire this week.

Billings himself says he supports the move to abolish the controversial posts, but that while the roles remain in existence, it is important a suitable person performs the task.

“It would be quite negligent for the Labour party to walk away even if it doesn’t support the idea,” he told the Doncaster Free Press. “I see it as a two-year term. My view is we are going to get a Labour government and they will abolish it and then I go.”