….but I’ll be otherwise engaged

The big polling news this evening should be from Populus – the firm’s first public survey for nearly two months. Fieldwork for the last one finished on July 19th and the shares were C38-L26-LD20. The Tories, surely, must be hoping to be in the 40s like they are with all the other pollsters.

I’ll be doing a full thread later but I’m tied up this evening with a big political event in Bedford where I live.

We are having an open primary, chaired by Iain Dale, to select the Tory candidate for a by election on October 15th, for the elected mayor of borough. Sure it’s not a parliamentary by-election but this is being treated seriously by all the main parties and will almost certainly be the biggest electoral test, in terms of the voter numbers involved, before the general election.

Tonight’s gathering follows last week’s visit by David Cameron and I’m really looking forward to observing how this operates.

Following the selection of local GP, Sarah Wollaston, for the Tory Totnes Westminster slot my money for the Bedford choice is on, another GP, Jason Reddy (with his family above), who is the only non-politician on the list of four.

Before becoming a GP Reddy spent large parts of his career working as a cruise ship’s doctor and for BUPA, and is probably good at engaging with people. I’ve never met him but my guess is that the South African born contender will go down better with the public than the councillors that he is up against.

Mike Smithson