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.
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