Will Labour’s lost voters return?
..Or does Norwich suggest that the decline is terminal?
By the standards of C&N the result was a big disappointment to the Tories who failed to get the sort of vote uplift that we saw in the Cheshire by election last year.
But in many ways it did not matter because the election underlined the big trend in British politics at the moment – the terrible collapse of the Labour vote.
For UKIP and other parties can syphon off significant slices of the vote without making much difference to the overall outcome if former Labour voters are reluctant to turn out for their original allegiance.
So all the talk of Cameron needing to “seal the deal” is irrelevant if its main opponent is crumbling.
The big question then is whether in the few months that remain to the general election is whether Brown Central can do anything to get their voters back.
My guess is that we will seeing a stepping up of the cuts rhetoric and even more extreme warnings about what “Tory cuts” will lead to.
Will it work? Probably not but don’t write Brown off just yet. Remember how he turned things round last autumn.