Bridge Ward News » General Election

Did the Ipswich Labour Party let Chris Mole sink?

James Spencer — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:09:35 +0000

From Kevan Lim:

Unfortunately your figures are wrong. The tory vote was 17543 as you say, but the labour vote was 16764. Thats significantly more than Chris Mole’s vote. However my main point was the lib vote variation between parlamentary and borough. So I don’t think you can say my point was wrong. Allowing for the switch by some labour and tory voters to fringe like green,bnp and ukip, their were numbers of labour and lib who voted for ben gummer and then went back to their usual political choice for the borough.

Kevan Lim is right and I’ve missed out Labour’s 912 votes in Bixley. This means that Labour actually scored 16,764 votes in the Borough which was 472 votes more than Chris Mole. This was about 3% of their borough vote and between a quarter and a fifth of Ben Gummer’s margin. I still think that this shows that there was not that much split ticket voting, although Kevan disagrees, arguing that the UKIP (and perhaps BNP) votes probably went to the Tories in the borough and so masking the Labour votes that went to Ben and back to Labour in the borough.

The collapse of the Liberal parliamentary vote is very important, and on that I don’t disagree with Kevan Lim. Their disastrous choice of Mark Dyson needs to be quickly acknowledged by the Liberal Democrats in Ipswich. There have been stories that he was getting rather tetchy with volunteers, these and other stories show that he needed to have some grounding in grass roots politics before going for being a Parliamentary candidate. I think a couple of stints of running for (Wandsworth) council should stop him making rookie mistakes. He’s clearly not a stupid man and seems quite well intentioned, but politics does not suit him and parachuting in to another seat won’t suit him either. Also, some electorates take kindly to carpet baggers, but not Ipswich.

I suspect a lot of the Liberal vote split between both Ben and Chris Mole as although Ben Gummer is probably the most Liberal Democrat friendly of the two candidates and there is a history of co-operation on the town, many Liberal Democratic voters are still anti-Tory. This will probably change with the economic climate, but the realisation of how bad things are has not really hit home yet.

However the psychological point that Chris Mole scored less well than his borough colleagues is very important, and could harm him in any reselection battle.

My main point still stands however – The decision makers in Ipswich Labour Party really seem to have seen this election as a fight to win the borough through concentrating effort in the marginal seats. To an outside observer this seems mad when there was a strong expectation that they could lose the Parliamentary seat, reflected in the betting markets. This seems like their fatal mistake (and not just because by losing Alexandra, they still are in a minority). Was it because they just didn’t believe the polls and the betting figures or did they just not think that saving the seat was that important – at least in the short term?

That’s not a question for me, I’ve no interest in Labour’s future electoral success. I suspect that those Labour supporting readers of this blog (I’ll exclude Kevan Lim, who has a clear grasp of what’s happened) either are too loyal, scared or nice to see what their local leadership has done.

Election Maths – The two main parties held firm

James Spencer — Mon, 10 May 2010 06:00:26 +0000

[EDIT: Kevan Lim sets me right on the Labour borough figure, which missed out Bixley and puts Chris Mole a bit behind the Labour borough vote.]

There has been a lot of talk about personal and negative votes and how the party machines got different votes from the borough and national elections, both Kevan Lim and Ipswich Spy have made this point. They are mainly wrong.

Actually I get the following results for adding up the votes in the constituency wards, Conservatives 17,543 and Labour 15,852. This was done by adding the highest vote in Alexandra plus the vote for the party candidate in the other twelve wards. This is not an enormous difference from the Parliamentary vote where Ben Gummer got 18,371 and Chris Mole got 16,292. The difference is probably mostly made up of those Liberal Democrat voters in wards who are more prepared to switch to the least bad party in a close parliamentary election (there’s 3,389 more Lib Dem borough votes than parliamentary votes).

There were crossover votes, but they largely cancelled each other out.

Labour did better than their vote would have suggested in the borough elections not because they were getting a far higher vote but because they were targeting their effort in certain wards. The seem to have fought this as a borough election rather than a parliamentary election, fighting hardest in seats such as Bridge, Rushmere, Alexandra and Sprites and not piling up the votes in Gipping and Gainsborough in the same way that the Tories were doing in Bixley and Holywells. For Heaven’s sake they were fighting in Whitehouse, which makes no sense as Labour knew they were destined to come third in the North Ipswich parliamentary seat.

Did they do this because in their heart they thought the game was up, or that they thought the Tories couldn’t win the seat or that they could fight two elections at once? I doubt we’ll know the answer for sure for a couple of years and a couple of defectors.

With their loss in Alexandra meaning that they’ve been denied control of the council it looks like they’ve miscalculated twice over.

So did the Ipswich Labour Party follow the Spencer Strategy?

James Spencer — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:37:32 +0000

One of the odder points of the campaign was how the Labour Party did not seem to be piling up their vote in their safe seats but doing just enough to win their council seats. Would it have been easier to find voters on the Gainsborough Estate or in Whitehouse? This is particularly pertinent for Whitehouse as it is not even in the Ipswich constituency, but in North Ipswich. Why was Whitehouse a priority?

So was this a failure of the Ipswich Labour Party or a deliberate choice to concentrate on winning control of the council and letting Chris Mole take his own chances? We’ll probably never find out. Some of the activists certainly won’t.

If it did do this were they were following a strategy that I had suggested about six months ago. National opposition is good for rebuilding a party as is control of a council. Chris Mole has enemies in the Ipswich Labour Party.

As much as I would never wish to stoke up suspicions and infighting within the Ipswich Labour Party (who were totally behind Chris Mole as the 30% of activists who stayed to listen to his concession speech at the count showed), it’s obviously not the sort of thing that David Ellesmere or any other senior councillor would do. After all what would they have to gain apart from a nomination for a normally Labour seat?

Leader of a local Labour council has always been a good way to get the Labour nomination in Ipswich.

And I've still got my job, Chris.

36 Hours to Save Ipswich Hospital

James Spencer — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:00:14 +0000

One of the things that should not be forgotten as we go into the polling booth is that Chris Mole has supported plans to cut the specialist units out of Ipswich Hospital and Ben Gummer has campaigned to attract them here. That’s what Ipswich gets when Labour (or any party) takes it for granted.

Save Ipsiwch Hospital Services

(If you look at the photo closely you’ll see Ben Gummer had a beard at the time. Oh dear.)

Yesterday Andrew Lansley came up to Ipswich Hospital in his battle bus (more like a skirmish van, but anyway) and was met by more than sixty supporters. In this he promised that a Conservative government would give Ipswich Hospital trust status. This will be a real advance.

He’s the only shadow cabinet minister to be guaranteed to get his portfolio should the Conservatives get a majority Let’s get him in and let’s hold him to it.

The NHYes battle bus

Let’s stop Labour taking Bridge for granted

James Spencer — Wed, 05 May 2010 05:42:58 +0000

Last night I was out with a team of canvassers canvassing Bridge. We bumped into Jim Powell who was typically charming and leafleting on his own.

However we also bumped into Richard Kirby, Labour councillor for Sprites and opponent of doing anything about the Southern Cement ship noise. He had no red rosette and was coming back from Starfish on Wherstead Road (he has better taste in fish and chips than in politics).

“What are you doing here?”

“Canvassing Bridge”

“Why?”

“We only lost it by 13 votes last time.”

“Ha ha ha. You’ll never win Bridge, it’s ours.”

If Labour go back to thinking like that then Bridge will be ignored as much as it was before 2004.

That, and not my charm or Ben Gummer’s good looks, is why you should vote Conservative tomorrow.

(Actually don’t count my charm or Ben’s looks in the equation.)

Kevan Lim votes for Ben Gummer

James Spencer — Tue, 04 May 2010 22:11:12 +0000

Kevan Lim the former deputy leader of Labour in Suffolk County Council, after a lifetime of voting Labour has decided to vote for Ben Gummer.

Despite the fact that he comes from a totally different political tradition from me (although I used to be a Labour activist, but years ago) he comes up with a couple of points that I wholeheartedly agree with:

1) Like it or not we are in a big hole with this deficit, and some painful things need to be done now
2) Ben Gummer’s strongest point is not that he’s a Tory but that he’s independent minded and, let’s be honest, more than a bit mouthy
3) Mark Dyson doesn’t understand Ipswich and it’s a mystery as to why the Liberals didn’t choose a local candidate

Kevan Lim firmly remains a man of the left, but he has switched because Ben Gummer will be a stronger voice for Ipswich – not because he’s suddenly fallen in love with the Conservative Party.

Gordon Brown’s visit, can’t they get anything right?

James Spencer — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:41:57 +0000

Two poor students were going into the UCS building to get hold of a book. Little did they know that the hapless Eastern Region Labour machine were lurking for them. Worried about the average age of the audience they grabbed these two hapless students who were most definitely not Labour supporters, pinned rosettes to them and told them to stand where the TV cameras would pick them out.

All rather stupid. Even more stupid when one of them is going to put in an official complaint.

The fraud that was Gordon Brown’s visit

James Spencer — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:30:43 +0000

It seems that Nick Robinson has also rumbled the fraud that was Gordon Brown’s visit to Ipswich, show casing the sort of tough questions that our Prime Minister is trusted with:

Q1: Can you tell us what you would most like to celebrate?
Q2: Why has Labour not said more about its achievements?
Q3: What can be done to build community relations?
Q4: What would you do to help people with disabilities?

My favourite of all, though, was: “Will you come back to Ipswich when you win the general election?”

Michael Crick also did not think much of the questions openly laughing at them and at one point coming out with the sarcastic comment “Oh yes, that was a tough one.”

In Ipswich members of the public (OK, Tory activists) had to lie about being Labour activists to get in to Gordon’s meet the people farce.

I thought Ipswich was one of the wealthier Labour parties, couldn’t they have given a generous donation to the national party so that the mad Scotsman wouldn’t come by?

Gordon Brown is the worst Prime Minister ever

James Spencer — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:05:02 +0000

Not my view but that of the Labour candidate for Kings Lynn. He actually sounds like a member of the Monday Club rather than a dissident Labour Party member or some sort of Thatcherite.

I somehow suspect we’ll see more of Manish Sood after the election and his expulsion from the Labour Party.

The pressure starts to show on Mark Dyson

James Spencer — Tue, 04 May 2010 09:29:15 +0000

Not a single person who I’ve talked to about the Liberal Democrats in this election (and there aren’t many, to be honest) has failed to comment on Andrew Cann, or to say how Cann would have run his campaign better.

Well there’s one exception, Mark Dyson, who makes no logical connection about going into the kitchen and standing the heat. He comments five times on one Ipswich Spy item criticising his leafleting operation.

To be fair it’s easier to comment on these blogs from Battersea.