The rise of Dame Bryony Rudkin goes further and faster. The so-right-wing-its-a-puzzle-why-they’re-still-in-Labour pressure group “Labour First” have put her on their slate for the National Policy Forum, at least according to Luke Akehurst, an arms trade lobbyist (and you can’t be more New Labour than a merchant of death).

Will the Campaign for Social Democracy, SDP, Manifesto Group, Tory Reform Group get the treasure of Bridge ward up to yet another place where she does not need to deal with our mundane worries? And what do the Balls backing Ipswich Labour Party think? Will we ever see those photos of her government sponsored trip around South Africa? And why on earth is Bridge Ward News the best source of gossip about the Ipswich Labour Party?

There will be more thrilling instalments as they happen.

Paul Geater spent his weekend covering David Miliband’s visit. He discusses which candidate is being supported. No real surprises apart from David Ellesmere “leaning” towards David Miliband. I suppose the odd looking kids have to stick together, although he did have some choice. Ellesmere, unlike his rather nice parents, exemplifies the “no one likes us” politics of Ipswich Labour that has lost them control of the council, so if Balls can’t attract him then who can he get? Sadly for the Tories Balls looks like he’s dead in the water (I spent some of the Maidenhall fun day trying to persuade Jim Powell of Ed Ball’s merits).

Otherwise its Sandy Martin supporting Ed Miliband, who’s appealing to the hopeless lefties and somehow attracted Sandy, and Adam Leeder … who cares? Already known people are Mama Rudkin (David M), Chris Mole (Balls) and John Cook (Balls – but not interviewed).

I usually ask questions that I know the answer to, but did Paul Geater cover David Cameron’s visit to the North Ipswich lot when he was the front runner for leadership? I genuinely don’t know, but if he found that uninteresting on a week day but Miliband interesting enough for a weekend, well…

EDIT: I’ve also got to point out that Ben Gummer is also endorsing David Miliband

So John Cook the defeated candidate for Norwich North is back in his old stomping ground of Ipswich, as I predicted he would be before the election. It’s not online but he’s been doing some good old fashioned stirring about the fact that Ben Gummer’s office although functioning (I’ve had some dealings with them) does not yet have a shopfront office, like the Labour MP for Rochdale.

I also understand from a Labour mole (no, not that Mole) that he is now the agent for Ipswich.

Surely his first love was Norwich North? For the life of me I can’t understand why a failed Parliamentary candidate would hang around a constituency without a nominated candidate where the incumbent majority is just over half of his old constituency. That’s a real puzzler. Maybe Chris Mole, David Ellesmere or Bryony Rudkin would be able to answer this? I bet they love a bit of competition.

How would you fancy a Norwich season ticket holder as your next MP?

I predicted that the no-one likes us, we don’t care attitude of Ipswich Labour would mean that some of them would swing behind Ed Balls, and look here both Chris Mole and John Cook (the ex-agent here, and an important player still in the Ipswich Labour Party) are backing the Conservative’s best hope.

While it’s understandable why Chris Mole would back a public school boy who’s keen to hide his privileged background, it’s a bit of a puzzle with John Cook. John Cook attacked his Tory opponent in Norwich North for hesitating if asked whether she would have been tempted by New Labour in 1997. “She talks a good script, but I don’t know where her politics are coming from.” He added: “I couldn’t ever have been anything other than Labour.”

Now that’s not in itself a wrong thing, although it could explain why they seem to be having an uphill struggle in Ipswich at the moment, but Ed Balls was something “other than Labour” and in fact was a member of the Conservatives when at University, in the middle of the 1980s. He may have claimed in that article to have ridden both horses (politically) but that’s hardly tribal Labour.

Was this overlooked because John Cook is a Norwich season ticket holder and so is Ed Balls? And you wonder why those two lost when Labour candidates with lower majorities in 2005 won.

When we were a bit children we all tried to impress our friends by telling them that our dad was more important than he was. Then we tried to tell our friends that our job or achievements were more important than they were. Middle age is the time when we sadly realise that potential is not the same as achievement, and we’ve probably achieved less than we are capable. So with this in mind I felt that I should go a bit easy on this, where she anoints David Miliband as her preferred candidate for the leadership:

Leader of the Council? Really?

Liz Harsant, the real life leader of Ipswich Council, may have something to say on this. The Conservative group may welcome Bryony with open arms (she’s second favourite to defect among Tory activists) but I’m not sure they think she should be leader yet. Perhaps David Ellesmere, the leader on the Labour Group, may also want a word.

Dame Bryony has many, many jobs, but not leader of Ipswich council.

David Miliband got an unimaginable boost to his campaign when our very own Dame Bryony Rudkin announced that she would anoint him as her candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party. Former councillor John Cook, who seems to find any excuse to come down to Ipswich, is spreading the gospel for wounded candidate Ed Balls (as is Tory Councillor Paul West).

So who are Ipswich Labour party supporting? Ipswich Labour Party’s strength and abiding weakness is that they have stayed tribal when the rest of the country is far less tribal than it was a generation ago. This is why they didn’t see Ben Gummer’s challenge until it was too late. However it also means that they should be able to keep the whole show on the road and not implode after government as other Constituency Labour Parties seem to be doing.

Ed Balls image as a “no compromise with the voters” candidate should appeal to the Ipswich Labour Party. That is, however, the Ipswich Labour Party’s problem.

I received this today from Councillor Alasdair Ross, the Games Master at Ipswich School:

James
This local candidate issue does not stand up to scrutiny- I live in Rushmere and I am the Cllr for the ward- unlike Mrs Terry or Smith who both live outside the ward, but Mrs Smith is a great local Cllr, so are people that bothered? And before you keep going on about Cllr Smart – sort out your own party- Cllr Pope lives in East Ipswich but represents Stoke Park, I think you will find that is further way than Cllr’s Smart and Rudkin. even in Bixley the safest Tory seat, only one of the Cllr’s lives in the ward.

Well let’s ignore the fact that it was apparently Soo Smart, Mrs Philip Smart, who brought up the question.

The fight for Bridge will be within the ward, not in Bixley. Yes I do believe that local councillors are better. And that does put me at odds with many in my own party (not for the first time),

All politics is local. It is not about party. Party is important but one of Alasdair Ross’s (and Philip Smart’s) abiding failures is their inability to see that the party should come behind their duty to their constituents. A long way behind.

The party is simply a label. I believe in low council tax, economic growth, efficient services and strong families. The Conservative Party by and large believe in these things too, and so it is a good label for me. If I stand under the Conservative banner then people know where I’m coming from.

However, it is merely a label. What is most important is representing your patch. Although I don’t doubt that Philip Smart cares about Bridge, I don’t believe that he originally chose Bridge because of the links he had with the place. I’d love to be proven wrong. And as for Dame Bryony…

I simply think that a person is not as good a representative if they don’t live in the ward, shop in the ward and socialise in the ward. This is not some silly point of contrariness this is why I’ve refused to stand outside Bridge. I don’t mind another (local) candidate taking over – well I mind quite a lot, but I’ll accept it – but I will not stand where I don’t live. And yes, writing things like this paragraph does drive other Tories in the Association to the point of distraction.

I want to represent my patch and do what’s best for my neighbours. To me that is a far higher honour than being the youngest recorded mayor of the borough or the chairman of Ipswich Buses. I know that this does not “stand up to scrutiny” if your party is more important than your constituents. If your constituents are more important than your party, then what I said makes perfect sense.

Some miscellaneous notes before politics stops being as interesting. I’m going to squeeze in as much as possible, as I don’t think I’ll get away with it otherwise.

When Chris Mole saw the figures, instead of calling for a recount (as we all feared) he reached over to Ben Gummer, extended his hand and said “well done, Ben”. He then read a pre-prepared speech which was peculiarly graceless – not even mentioning Ben’s campaign in the same way that Bill Rammell had. Then on TV the next day he is gracious again.

Why this split behaviour, this departure from the norm? Well it was the Labour Party activists, who seemed to have stitched him up by concentrating on winning the borough, who had stayed to listen. It was very clear that Chris Mole was talking about an imminent election, and he dearly wanted to be the candidate. And Ipswich Labour Party was in no mood to let a conciliatory speaker be there candidate.

I think we won’t see Chris Mole stand again, and instead see a senior figure from the current Labour group emerge as the candidate. Just coincidentally they will probably be one of the same people who decided to cut Chris Mole off.

In other news Alasdair Ross is going as Labour’s candidate as mayor. Yes a real uniter, not a divider. If the Liberals do give it to him then it should keep him busy and away from internal Labour matters. Funny that he’s the candidate as he would be almost as troublesome as John Cook if he rumbled what the Labour group had done. But some people find it hard to think about more than one thing at a time.

Finally my builder called up today to talk about the coalition, he’s barely talked more than two words about politics – and that was just to say that my wife was in a leaflet. It was the main topic in the office, although the known Labour supporters were not chatting so much. At least I know where all the Tories are now should this get to be like the 1990s again.

That’s a lot done.

I will start going back to normal and courting the smaller Bridge specific readership now that the excitement of coalition building and elections seems to have worn down.

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.

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.