At last the Tories respond on the potential sale of the stake in Ipswich Buses to the Go-Ahead group. Obviously it’s partisan, mercilessly mocking Labour on their three positions on bus privatisation (nationally for, locally both adamantly against and saying maybe but not yet). That’s to be expected, after all with Chris Mole as the transport minister Labour can’t make much of the running on this unless Chris Mole were to veto or delay this measure. And if he were to do that in his backyard then there would be wild fires in all these areas such as Plymouth where he’s helped to push through bus sell offs. Expect a lot of Conservative canvassers to point out the role of the undersecretary of transport and MP for Ipswich in the bus sell off.
Labour’s best local issue has for some time been the buses, but their MP has been instrumental in the municipal sell offs. If I were a local councillor I would be furious to see my best gun spiked. And after the hospital.
A left of Labour candidate could clean up, although in Ipswich there’s no real action on the ground apart from a couple of blogs (Andrew Coates has written nothing since his “utter numpty” post, instead talking about the attitude of the Irish Greens on blasphemy laws, the socialist leanings of David Tenant. No really, I didn’t make either of these two up.
Will the Greens move in with a full throated cry for municipal ownership of the buses, with public transport, anti-commercialism and local ownership it should be made for them. If they do would they be able to get their message through to the large Estates on the outskirts where the issue could catch fire? Even if they weren’t pushing all their troops into Norwich South at the General Election, this is probably not something they could do even if they wanted to.
I still think this is going to get the Labour vote out and could lose the Tories a knife edge seat (like Bridge) but it could have been so, so much bigger. Oh Mr Mole, what have you done?
No related posts.
