But isn’t 4/5 looking like good value for money? According to Ladbrokes this afternoon there’s been a fair bit of activity on their Bedford mayoral by election market but they have not laid a single bet on the Tories. As a result the Lib Dems have moved in from 2/1 to 5/4 while the Tories have eased from 1/2 to 4/5. Labour is still at 10/1. Clearly the manner of Parvez Akhtar’s selection on Monday has not been welcomed in…
Is he now facing up to to reality of what lies ahead? This evening I attended (that’s me in the blue shirt in the second row) a Cameron Direct town hall meeting in Bedford when the Tory leader fielded questions that hadn’t been submitted in advance from an audience which I guessed was less than 50% Conservative. This is all part of the by-election campaign that’s going on for the town’s elected mayor where his party is holding an open…
Could his intervention thwart the Tories? Probably the biggest election, certainly in terms of the number of voters involved, in the UK before the general election takes place in Bedford in October when there’s a by-election for the post of elected mayor. This follows the death a fortnight ago of the union activist turned multi-millionaire media entrepreneur, Frank Branston, who had held the position since it was created six years ago. What’s interesting is that he was an independent who…
BBC IPlayer Michael Crick’s programme is a must listen I’ve just picked up on BBC IPlayer this great Radio 4 investigation by Michael Crick on the funding of political parties and the rise of what he calls “The Political Club”. The programme blurb goes: “Michael Crick reveals how politicians are increasingly becoming a professionalised and separate class, who use their status to channel taxpayers’ money into the coffers of their parties. The recent scandal over MPs’ expenses has revealed how…
Tory leaflet – Cheadle by-election June 2005 Was this the dirtiest campaign since the general election? There have been two over-whelming themes in the series of Westminster by elections during the 2005 parliament: the intertwined stories of the re-emergence of the Conservatives as a party capable of winning seats and the difficulties that the Liberal Democrats had in maintaining their historically excellent record of doing very well in this form of contest. For the latter Westminster by-elections had over the…
And if he can’t fight on this then what? For the past three elections Labour core message to get its vote out was that a Tory government would make cuts that would eat into the heart of public services. This worked so brilliantly for so long long that until very recently the new Tory team, Cameron-Osborne, refused even to counter discussions about their post general election plans if this involved hacking back on Labour spending commitments on key services. That’s…
Or was today another boost for AJ4PM? So another battering at by the voters and if things run to form then there’ll be more leadership speculation followed by Brown’s September conference speech which all Labour loyalists will acclaim. We’ve been here before – the only difference now is that the election is much closer and Labour is finding it even harder to get people to vote for the party. Fourteen months ago at C&N the Tories achieved a massive swing…
Does this mean that the better organised do better? The first hard news from Norwich is that turnout was at just 45% which compares with 61% at the general election. This is lower than many were predicting and it might be recalled that at Crewe & Nantwich last year the figure was only two points short of the general election level. The general theory of low turnouts is that the campaigns which benefit most are those that are best organised….