Tory tactical voters hold the key

The more we think about this the more we believe that it will be the Tories who’ll decide how this by election will go. The thinking that they will follow their allegiance is based on the July 15 contests when they kept within 2-3% of their General Election peformance.

But two things are different: the Conservatives have put a lot less into the Hartlepool campaign and Labour’s campaign strategy to make the LD candidate the issue has made the party the undisputed challengers.

If you want to give Blair a bloody nose Labour campaign manager, Fraser Kemp, has told you how.

We guess that the 20% who were Tory at the General Election are more likely to turn out today and that they might react to the highly personalised nature of the campaign.

So what result does Michael Howard want? Our guess is that he’ll see that a Labour humiliation even with a terrible Tory vote is best for his party.

The betting exchange Labour price looks ovevalued at 1/4.