Entries Tagged 'General Election' ↓

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?

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.

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.

Chris Mole showed how little influence he has in government by the fact that he couldn’t stop Gordon Brown coming round to lose him a couple of hundred votes.

We got a couple of temporary correspondents to crash into the Gordon Brown visit to Ipswich. They had to pretend to be Labour activists from Islington to get in, so much for Gordon Brown meeting ordinary people.

There were about one hundred Labour activists from all around Suffolk and Essex. After all they didn’t bat an eyelid when you had people claiming to be from North London.

They overheard one councillor with a pony tail quietly telling one of his friends that he’d never seen such a hostile reaction on the doorstep “but I thought we’d won in 1992 so what do I know?” What indeed, Sandy, what indeed.

The questions were the intelligent and tough questions that you would have expected from Labour activists. “What are your favourite achievements” and “Why do we not hear about our achievements on the doorstep”. Michael Crick was laughing and passing sarcastic comments on the inanity of the questions.

Gordon cracked a joke. Referring to the presence of Duncan Banatyne, the dragon, he said “if you have any questions on business or the economy, just ask Duncan”. None of the Labour activists laughed. It’s the way you tell ‘em Gordon.

Any way they’ve got a good picture of Gordon, Chris Mole and Chris Mole’s tie (oh dear) that when I get hold of it I may push it a few more times before election day.

What does Sandy Martin know, Chris? Not a lot, Gordon.

UPDATE: Ipswich Spy have a report of the event.

Andrew Cann has another reminiscence of the Labour mask slipping:

One comment I would have made, if technically able, on the post you make about Mrs Duffy and the local labour candidates not condemning Brown is that I recall in 2004 when the Labour Party got stuffed in the local elections they blamed the electorate for not voting for them. For being ‘ungrateful’. Always stuck in my mind. It betrays that statist do ‘do as we say’ attitude of them.

Thank God we didn’t have Mark Battersea Dyson rather than Andrew Cann as the Ipswich candidate. The Lib Dem surge would have been very threatening with a candidate. There’s a film on the Guardian website which really shows the difference between the two.

By the way the comment on Comrade Ross and the other Labour twitterers (twits?) still stands. Every day you refuse to condemn that Scottish pension snatcher for his imperious attitude is another day you betray the voters that you presumably came into politics to advance and defend.

As well as being a Labour councillor in both Manchester and Ipswich, Kevan Lim has been a Labour member since he was eighteen and has voted Labour in every election since 1970. With that sort of pedigree it’s shocking, to say the least, that he’s considering who to vote for now, and it won’t be Labour.

He makes an interesting post in his blog where he lays down the frustration of the financially literate. Gordon Brown is saying that he will protect government spending, having full knowledge that he can do nothing of the sort. To me – although Kevan’s too much of a gentleman to say this – that is the textbook definition of a lie, and to make it the main plank of your election campaign is to be a liar and to make thousands of well-intentioned and honourable activists into liars. Most of them know that they are lying on every doorstep and with every leaflet, but they will keep on with this appalling leader and his appalling behaviour until times get better.

Kevan Lim seems to have had enough and to say to the world what the other Labour activists do not even want to themselves, the Labour campaign is based on a central lie.

All three main parties (and almost all the minor ones) are soft peddling the horror that’s to come, whoever gets in. Sure, the Tories tried to lay it out starkly for a while, but although they are still far more honest than the other parties they have rowed back.

Anyway, back to Kevan Lim, and here is his main point:

So blindly protecting public services as the government is stating during this election is both impossible due to the budget deficit crisis and also because it will be the ordinary working people of this country who will have to pay for the cost of inaction either through higher taxes and/or the ending of key public services.

Spot on. And this is more eloquent than George Osborne and Vince Cable have been throughout this campaign.

I reproduce a report from about a week ago of Chris Mole’s reaction to Ben Gummer’s twenty or thirty activists at Ipswich Station:

Spotted this morning at 7.35am at Ipswich Railway Station: Chris Mole with just 2 men.They were stood where the buses wait near the signals.

They were not handing out leaflets or any such thing. One of the men with Chris Mole looked like this–My friend described him thus–’ Quote” He looks a gangster–black suit, black goggles, bald, ponytailed, grey haired. Someone who is 50 but likes to think he is still 25′. Unquote. They sort of looked embarassed!

Who could this bald, pony-tailed man who dresses half his age? I’ll give him credit for the hard work, I know it’s not easy leaflet the station in the morning – I only go to the station because the office is in London and I know that there will be a seat on the train.

Pity the other activists couldn’t be roused.

Do I look 25 in this tie?

A high School in Suffolk decided to run a school election. So they wanted to get all the parties represented. The Tories, UKIP and the Raving Loonies all got candidates. Even the Liberal Democrats.

But among all the almost 1,000 pupils not one would stand for Labour.

Even in 1997 kids would stand as Tories in their school elections.

And when you see Labour canvassing (if you ever do) the average age seems to have gone up exactly five years since the last election.

No wonder I'm glum, have you seen my activists?

This particular new cycle has gone, and there’s no subtelty to this, but I thought I’d use it any way as I’m easy to please.

Perhaps we had all misjudged our Gordon, and bigot means something different. We’ll let Gordon Brown’s candidate in Ipswich explain:

Brown Is Gone On Thursday