I was at the South West Area forum yesterday. It was quite far away, in the Triangle Church in Dickens Road, but there were issues that affected Bridge being discussed there.

Sadly there were no councillors from Bridge there. No newly re-elected Jim Powell, no soon to stand for re-election Philip Smart and no double County and Borough councillor Bryony Rudkin. For shame.

The other two county councillors from the area were present and there were councillors from the other three wards in the area. There was a debate in which the policing priorities were set for the South West area of Ipswich. Not surprisingly Bridge did very poorly in this. Last year it was generally remarked upon by other councillors of both parties that Bridge was being better represented as the councillors were scared that they could lose to the Tories. It’s now been commented that as Labour thinks Bridge will be in the bag next year that the Bridge councillors are returning to their bad, self indulgent habits of quango hunting and wittering on about pet subjects. I didn’t want to believe it, but when the bread and butter of local representation is neglected like this, then what can you believe?

This is why Bridge must never revert to being a safe Labour seat.

Bridge Ward is one of those wards in Ipswich that Labour rather contemptuously treats as a “vote bank” which is there to parachute in high flying councillors who do not have the ability to connect with their constituents and so need a safe seat. Not surprisingly they don’t tend to live in their ward.

Jim Powell did not have that handicap and lives in Maidenhall Aprroach. Quite rightly he has a high personal vote. Together with the higher turnout and the more partisan atmosphere of the election he did well and got a majority over me of around 170.

However looking at the County results in 2005 and allowing for Jim Powell’s personal vote, the predictions were that the majority would be more than double that, around 400, even in a bad year for Labour.

This showed Labour that they cannot take Bridge for granted. It’s time to spend a little less time on public transport policy and a bit more on the Hayes and the Maidenhall Estate.

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.)

Yesterday I was canvassing on Cardiff Avenue, Montgomery Avenue, Tenby Road and Swansea Avenue. One of the shocks was the attitude of Labour councillors before 2004.

I heard two separate stories about councillors being asked to help tenants who wanted to buy their own home and both being refused help, once by Jim Powell and once by Harold Mangar. When it was pointed out to Harold Mangar that he owned his own home he simply retorted “I’ve worked hard for what I’ve got”. The implication being that Maidenhall residents didn’t. The typical Labour response of “it’s good enough for me, but not for thee” is exactly why the ward I live in should never be a one party state again.

I don’t think that currently people would be met with the same patronising attitude now, but I have no illusions that this is due to fear rather than middle class absentee councillors suddenly putting their socialist principles behind their constituents wishes.

Steve Flood would never win a councillor of the year prize for his work in Bridge, but his election was like an electric shock here. Councillors realised that they had to work to keep the ward and issues that affected Bridge could no longer be ignored by the council as they were by the Labour group in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Lib Dems are a strang bunch, but this is probably odder than normal.  A Lib Dem councillor in Hampshire has seen aliens, in the local shopping centre (thanks to Paul Staines for that little gem.  Believing in aliens in your back garden is fairly odd, you’d think.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall you’d also think that it was odd to believe that the Soviet Union was better run than Britain, but as recently released Soviet archives now show a whole swathe of senior Labour Party officials did, despite what they said at the time.  To get on in the Labour Party in the late 1970s and especially after the SDP left in the early 1980s it helped to be either pro-Soviet or ambivalent about the crushing weight on the human spirit that was expansionist communism.

So which political figures in Bridge Ward did well in the loony left early 1980s.  Why step forward Councillors Jim Powell and Phil Smart who first became councillors in 1982 and 1983 respectively, the time when the Labour Party was clinically insane (and it turns out a large chunk of its leadership, including the genial liar Michael Foot, were treating with the enemy). 

It would be interesting to know who they thought was worse, Thatcher or Brezhnev.