Campbell Docherty saw the UK Independence Party launch its South Staffordshire by-election campaign at Wolverhampton Airport...

Rule number one of political PR stunt management: don't hold your election campaign launch at a site of much local controversy.

For example, an airport that wants to expand, angering many of the residents who live nearby (you know, the ones who you want to vote for you?).

To be fair to UKIP, they only wanted to take advantage of their South Staffordshire candidate's rare skill: Malcolm Hurst, who does not believe in expansion of Wolverhampton Airport, is a pilot.

Here comes the second broken rule: don't entice the media with a press release claiming "the candidate, Malcolm Hurst, will arrive for the launch by landing in his Messerschmitt 109 Second World War fighter plane which he has helped to restore".

But thanks to last weekend's French referendum result on the European constitution, Mr Hurst would have flown into the Halfpenny Green airfield with a favourable wind whatever aircraft controls he was behind.

Unlike the General Election, where the narrow battle ground was the health service and tax, Europe and British sovereignty is a high priority.

As UKIP leader Roger Knapman said at the campaign launch: "The French have done more in the last few days for the 'entente cordiale' than they have in the last century."

Mr Hurst reserved the majority of his speech to attack longtime incumbent Conservative MP for South Staffordshire, Sir Patrick Cormack.

He accused Sir Patrick of a "breathtaking display of arrogance" for asking to be made Father of the House when he has still to fight the by-election.

"Perhaps he has lost touch with reality. For the reality is, Sir Patrick, it is time to go.

"You were a Tory MP when Ted Heath signed us into Europe more than 30 years ago.

"You were also a Tory MP supporting the Government who signed the Single European Act giving away more of our independence to Europe.

"You were a Tory MP when John Major signed the infamous Maastricht Treaty, which dragged us even deeper into the European mire."

The French and Dutch referendums may, ironically, prove a double-edged sword for UKIP.

If the current Euro framework crumbles, they may well be denied a UK referendum of their own - something UKIP would be confident of winning.

Mr Knapman said: "We must not allow Labour and the Tories to cheat us out of a vote. The British people must be given a chance to express their views on the whole issue of Europe." Outside the main gates to the airport, there were a number of anti-airport expansion protesters, joined by Labour candidate for the constituency Paul Kalinauckas.

Stopping expansion at Wolverhampton Airport - or "Halfpenny Green Airport" as he rather reductively calls it - is one of his "key pledges".

"There isn't the local infrastructure to cope with it and, frankly, we just don't need it any bigger than it is, considering the airports we already have in the region. If Malcolm Hurst is against expansion, why have your campaign launch here? It is a bit of an own goal," he said.

He studiously avoided answering the rather fundamental point that his own party's Government could have killed off the expansion plans in 2003's Aviation White Paper - but didn't, instead using the phrase "local determination" to plunge both Wolverhampton and Coventry airports into vexed planning disputes.

Labour are also painting the Lib Dem candidate Jo Crotty - the replacement for Jo Harrison, whose death caused the by-election - as a parachuted candidate claiming to be " local" when she was actually fighting the Eddisbury seat in Cheshire on May 5.

PR gaffes, confusion and some good, old-fashioned inter-party sniping - the General Election may have failed to deliver but, fear not, South Staffordshire looks like being a laugh a minute.