The Sept/Oct 2014 Sutton Coldfield by-election: Where Diane James becomes Ukip’s first elected MP?

The Sept/Oct 2014 Sutton Coldfield by-election: Where Diane James becomes Ukip’s first elected MP?

What we need is a contest in a CON stronghold

Of all the by-eletions in this parliament what we haven’t seen is one in a rock solid CON stronghold where LAB and the LDs are nowhere.

How would Ukip perform in that environment and how would the blue team respond?

Well we could well see such an encounter towards the back-end of next year after, of course, June 2014’s EU elections when the purples are expected to perform well.

Also happening at about the same time is the appointment of a new UK EU commissioner to succeed Cathy Ashton who was selected by Gordon Brown.

There’s been a bit of a buzz in recent weeks for Andrew Mitchell – the chief whip who was forced to resign in October although the events that led to “plebgate” have become very fuzzy indeed. It’s being suggested that Mitchell is being considered for the EU role.

If that happened then there’d need to be a by-election in Sutton Coldfield – one of the safest blue seats in the country which has been held by the Tories since its creation in 1945.

    Could this be where Ukip makes its break-through with, I’d suggest, Diane James as candidate.

    She did a brilliant job for her party on Thursday and would be ideal for Sutton Coldfield.

All this, of course, is me specualating – but Mitchell does seem to be in the running for EU commisioner.

Remember you heard this first on PB.

Mike Smithson

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