Voters, know your place
New Labour Information Minister, Hazel Blears, on Radio 4′ The Westminster Hour, last night:
The next election will be won and lost in those super-marginals like Crawley, Hove, Harlow, Dartford, Swindon. These are the places where we’ve got to go out and fight for what we believe in. And, actually, if we in the Labour Party really are talking about the things that people are interested in about the state of their streets, the police, vandalism, the NHS, getting a decent education for their children, that’s how we’ll win the election, that will motivate Labour member’s and supporters.
So, sorry those of you not living in Crawley, Hove, Harlow, Dartford or Swindon (or the other 43 ’super marginals’) – Hazel either doesn’t need your vote or has taken it for granted.
Fortunately, I live in Hove where Labour incumbent Celia Barlow hangs by a slender majority of 420. So I can look forward to much wooing for my vote, with much attention lavished on my needs. I think I’ll have a gold cadillac and an ankle length fur coat. And a flunky that scoops up the myriad dog turds that I find strewn in my path whenever I pop out for budget lager.
Not that we’ve had much attention in this postcode since the last election. Three of the four letters I’ve sent to my MP this parliament have gone unacknowledged. Celia signed up for the ‘Hear From Your MP‘ initiative but her second and seemingly final message was posted nearly a year ago. Still, plenty of time to start blowing up my skirt…
Update: Listen to the Blears interview here for the next week.
Posted on January 22nd, 2007 at 2:22pm under UK politics
| Related posts... • Are you local? • Taking Hazel Blears seriously • Celia Barlow’s expenses puts Hove and Portslade on the map |
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• 6 Comments |
This is the same strategy Rammell and Byrne were banging on about here, which not only ignores voters in ’safe’ seats, but all the seats Labour lost by an equally narrow margin. It also ignores the actual demographic/electoral composition of those seats: they’re not ‘marginal’ because of voting intentions, they’re marginal because of the damage done to Labour’s vote by Blair and Iraq. Still, if they’re going to persist with the strategy, they’ve no-one to blame but themselves when it comes unstuck.
Pitty how they can’t motivate the general public.
I had a taste of this just prior to the last GE. My MP, whom I’d never heard from before sent out a letter asking for support in making my village an Anti Social Behaviour Action Area. He had a smallish majority which as it turned out was cut to about 1000 at that election. Anyway I wrote back to him informing him about collective punishment, and that he was obviously just trying to curry favour because his leader was a liar and he was scared of losing his seat. When he wrote back he didn’t seem too happy with me, lol. of course the election came and went, he just kept his seat and we never heard any more of his tough on crime policies. If that’s how they are going to try and win the vote of the marginals, they can forget it.
Great to see hilarious Hazel as Yoghurt topic.She absolutely cracks me up.This ginger dalek is a Blairite clone desperate to save her seat.You must have seen her on the picket line outside her local hospital protesting her own government’s health cuts.Her seat is one of the most marginal in the North West…coincidentally.
There’s an equally laughable clip of her doing,or in her case trying to do,a Michael Howard duck the question over and over again trick with Paxman on Newsnight.It’s side-splitting!
Watching the likes of Blears and co. grovelling to keep their seats at the next election will definitely be worth waiting for!
I second your support for Respect the only vaguely socialist alternative now available.I only wish they’d put a candidate in Northampton North where I’m based.I’d dearly love to see Sally Keeble(lobby fodder for Blair’s Iraq war vote four years ago get her marching orders.Door-stepped by Stop the War demonstrators outside Northampton Labour Club on the night war began,Keeble told an Iraqi worried about his family back home,that she had no difficulty sleeping while Baghdad
burned.
Incidently how the hell did Blears get the Orwellian title Minister of(Dis)Information?Don’t ask unless there’s a New Labour casting couch for daleks!
More on Northampton.In Northampton South at the last election anti-war Labour MP,Tony Clarke lost his seat while aforementioned Lobby-fodder Northampton North MP Sally Keeble managed to keep her seat albeit with a reduced majority.Funny town:Northampton.Could’ve been something to do with the fact that Clarke was reported in the local press to have an Inter City firm West Ham tattoo from his London past.Given he was chair of the Northampton Town Supporters Club,and sat on the board at the time this was a regarded a an horrendous breach of loyalty.
Clarke was duly dumped and the seat returned to Tory hands.
So should anyone be aware of any tattoos on the Blears dalek we don’t know about now is the time to declare them!
Further to previous coverage of Northampton’s MPs-Tony Clarke lost the Northampton South seat to local millionaire businessman:Brian Binley.
This guy’s business deals especially since becoming MP in 2005 worry me.He is very much the local man but once elected developed a strange interest in supporting opposition parties in ….
Iran!What’s that all about?
When on Tuesday I saw a picture of Binley with none other than former Israeli President(now opposition Likud leader)Benjamin Netanyahu in the local paper the smell of singed sewer rat became yet more noxious!
Why….well among any number of groups who work with the Iranian opposition are Mossad,the CIA who use bases in Azarbaijan and the mojaheddin-e Khalk fighters to carry out surveillance on Iran.All are engaged in propagandizing and inflating the Iranian threat to the US.The Likud right wing with Bibi Netanyahu at the helm,along with their neo-con allies in the US are promoting the danger of crescent nations ( Iranian-sponsored Lebanese Hezbollah,Syria and Palestine ) as a shared security threat for US and Israel.
Like Iraq,Iran poses no threat to the US only Israel when nuclearization is finally achieved by Teheran.
Worryingly the local paper reported the claim that Iran was the major threat to security in the Middle East.I have written to the editor advising that Binley would do well to choose his friends more carefully in future.To compound the monstrous folly of the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by starting a third one in Iran would have global consequences Binley could not even begin to understand.
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