Living in the constituency I’ve only come across the Tory, who has been sending out letters and bothering people in the town centre.
I didn’t particularly like the last MP, Patrick Mercer, as he was a Tory, but he did once help a friend of mine with her benefit claim, so he earned my lack of murderous hatred. Then he got driven out just because he was caught being hideously corrupt, which is hardly something unique among Tory MPs. The one who wants to replace him looks like a twelve year old in his dad’s suit on his way to his first interview and is as vapid and bothersome as the other candidates are anonymous. There seems to be a consensus on not voting amongst those I’ve heard talking about it.
Yesterday we had a scrum of UKIP adherents with placards on the steps of the town hall, and today we had a man in a red rosette wondering forlornly through the rain in the market. UKIP even got a camera crew out. Although not long ago we had GMTV come around.
They won the constituency as recently as 1997, but lost it in 2001 after an expenses scandal with the MP, who had defrauded the state of a few thousand pounds.
Since 2001 Labour have had a decreasing share of the vote, getting less than half as many votes as the Tories last time and barely more than the liberals. Partly this is because Mercer, before his lobbying scandal and resignation, was quite popular.
This time Labour have got a chance. The Tory doesn’t have Mercer’s personal popularity but does have the lingering stench of his corruption to deal with, and the burden of the Tories being in power and somewhat unpopular. Then there’s UKIP, the only party with the common sense to canvas in the town centre on market day and with the camera crews and placards, they’ll probably split the Tory vote, especially in a by-election where protest votes do well. That, combined with the likely collapse in the Liberal vote due to their shameful whoring of themselves since the last election might give Labour a chance.
I just happened to see the man in the red rosette on his own traipsing through the rain in the deserted market place. I’m not even sure that he was the Labour candidate, I wouldn’t know him from Adam. UKIP’s flying media circus has been through and the Tories have sent out several barrages of leaflets, newsletters and surveys and their candidate has inflicted his presence upon us. Labour, on the other hand, I’ve heard nothing of at all and as far as I know the Liberals and the rest aren’t even standing.
The UKIP offensive continues. They had a market stall on Saturday, now they’ve hired a shop in the town cnetre and plastered it with their posters. They’ve also had people roaming around with placards, UKIP umbrellas and that sort of thing. In fact they’ve convinced one girl I know, who was planning to vote UKIP because she’s never voted for them before, that she shouldn’t. I think it’s the mark of a successful campaign when it can change peoples minds like that.
The Tories, on the other hand, have put one of their rosettes on a man with clearly evident learning difficulties. I’ve heard them called “repulsive” and “the worst people on earth” for this apparent attempt to manipulate and exploit the mentally challenged, but then how else are the Tories ever meant to win anything? Truthfully, he could just be a Tory or like blue rosettes or something like that, but that doesn’t seem to be how anyone is interpreting it.
Another market day another sinister development, as the Tories have been handing out balloons to children with their logo on. More exploitation of the mentally challenged.
Labour have finally made a definite appearance, with a leaflet arriving in the post. Certainly still heavily outgunned by UKIP and the Tories in publicity, though.
Today we also got our first loony, a man in the market wearing a sandwich board and handing out leaflets. He was from a party calling itself “the Common Good”, and the sandwich board seems to indicate that he wants to stop the banks from creating money. I consider the democratic control of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee to be quite an important issue, but I think he’s more likely to have been think along the lines of the gold standard.
Well, it’s all over, at last, after several visits by the Prime Minister, none of which I knew about until after the election, after a stack of election literature about three feet tall came through the door, including a leaflet that came through the door after I voted, it’s over.
As a Labour voter, it went badly. Rather than taking advantage of UKIP splitting the Tory vote, Labour actually received a lower share of the vote by 4% and were pushed into third by the rise of UKIP. The party has claimed this was due to their voters voting strategically for the Tories to keep UKIP out, but most Labour voters seem to find UKIP less offensive than the Tories, and the Labour areas of town are the ones with the UKIP signs in the windows.
The Tories kept the seat, albeit with a 7% swing against them. There were lots of Tory signs up in the richer parts of town.
UKIP have missed their chance, and their predictions and targets. A by-election in a Tory seat just after European elections was a dream scenario for them, and they still failed.
The Liberals, pleasingly, are effectively a thing of the past. The came sixth, they lost 90% of their voters, they lost their deposit.
For the rest, the independent standing on a platform of liking the local hospital very nearly retained his deposit, he came fourth with nearly the needed five percent, almost exactly the same share as the swing against Labour. The Greens came fifth. Everyone below the liberals got less than a thousand votes, and less than one percent of the vote. The patriotic socialists got only 18 votes.
Communist?