Bad night at the office
You'd be forgiven for missing the two by-elections yesterday, but there were, and it will make rather indigestible reading for Mr. Blair. Apparently no one likes him, would you believe:
Blaenau Gwent:
Dai Davies, Ind: 12,543 (- 7,962 from 2005) 46%
Owen Smith, Labour: 10,059 (- 1,325) 37%
Steffan Lewis, Plaid Cymru: 1,755 (+ 912) 6.5%
Amy Kitcher, Liberal Democrat: 1,477 (-34) 5.5%
Margrit Williams, Conservative: 1,013 (+197) 3.5%
Alan Hope, Official Monster Raving Loony Party: 318 1%
Bromley and Chislehurst:
Bob Neill, Conservative: 11,621 (-11.11% from 2005) 42%
Ben Abbotts, Liberal Democrat: 10,988 (+17.52%) 40%
Nigel Farage, UKIP: 2,347 (+4.88%) 8.5%
Rachel Reeves, Labour: 1,925 (-15.57%) 7%
Ann Garrett, Green: 811 (-0.39%) 3%
Even given that the Lib Dems do well in by-elections, that's an astonishing result for them - they seem to have picked up all the ex-Labour votes and more. On the other hand, Labour getting 37% of the vote in a place that's been in party hands since Moses was in nappies is equally poor. That's presumably the *best* they can do, even after allegedly learning from the mistakes made last year in imposing a candidate. Overall (since the two turnouts are nearly identical) that's a magnificent 22% of the vote for Tony's boys. Ringing endorsement then.
Oh, and they lost the Welsh Assembly seat as well.
Come on - you have
Come on - you have specifically chosen figures that look bad for Labour. You have used the percentage change in the share of the vote for Bromley and the change in number of votes for Blaenau Gwent.
Your point - and it wasn't a great result for us by any means - would be much more powerfully made if there wasn't a crass and unsubtle attempt to spin the figures
'Labour limps home fourth
'Labour limps home fourth behind Euro-nutters' - blunt enough, Alex? (Or 'No welcome in the hillside as Labour far to retake Welsh stronghold')
You admit it was a bad
You admit it was a bad night, so my point is right, then. I'm not sure I could *possibly* have chosen figures that would make it look like a good night for Labour, but then when it comes to crass and unsubtle spinning I'm a rank amateur compared to New Labour's PR boys. If anyone chose those figures it was the two electorates, surely?
Actually, the figures (the ones you object to, anyway) are lifted from the BBC, with me merely calculating the % share of the vote for each party (which is pure and unspun, although I'm assuming that any other minor candidates got insignificant shares). I'm not particularly interested in the % change of the vote except for the interesting point in Bromley that the LDs share went up by a bit more than the Labour % went down, from which one can draw an interesting conclusion. In Blaenau Gwent it was very much steady-as-she-goes (incumbent down a bit, but holding on easily) with the interest coming from who the incumbent is, and what he represents.
This latter figure (% share for each party) is what I was actually interested in, given that the two seats are at opposite ends of the political spectrum (5th safest Labour seat v. 7th safest Tory) and it's hard to see where in the country the Blair-voting Labour loyalists are these days - they're not in Middle England and not in red-flag-waving traditional Labour territory either (nor, considering the first by-election of the current Parliament, are they in Scotland). They're as elusive as a not-very-Scarlet Pimpernel, which rather begs the question of who Tony thinks his supporters are, and whether anyone tells him these things any more.
If you want balance, it wasn't exactly a great night for the Tories either (and I'm certainly no Tory), but 37% of a relatively high turnout in what *should* be a safe Labour seat where the only real opposition comes from people who have 'Labour' engraved on their hearts can't be spun (crassly or otherwise) as anything other than pathetic.
Fourth. Behind UKIP. What
Fourth. Behind UKIP. What else needs to be said?
(Psst! I brought my tape measure. Would anyone care to measure this elephant?)
I tell you what I think and
I tell you what I think and that is that NL has probably been busy with sackloads of postal votes in both 2001 and 2005 elections and certainly the 2005 one as people were heartily sick of them by then. It looks to me like they did this in the Welsh election yesterday but somehow didn't bother with the Bromley one. The Bromley one probably reflects the true overall level of support for Blair in the UK, i.e. about 7%!! We know the people of Blaenuau Gwent can't stand NL because of everything Peter Law went through so to get 37% seems very, very unlikely and must have been some kind of fix. We also know from reports in the press that NL was concentrating alot of its efforts on that region.
"Fourth. Behind UKIP. What
"Fourth. Behind UKIP. What else needs to be said?"
Nothing more needs to be said.
"Fourth. Behind UKIP." - describes perfectly the state of Mr Bliar's New Labour Project.
"Fourth. Behind UKIP." - it gives me a warm glow just to keep typing/reading it.
"Fourth. Behind UKIP." - say those words to every Blairite you know - just to be sure they get the message.