ABBOTT, Diane 3.86%  (National 7.34%)

BALLS, Ed 14.29%  (National 10.11%)

BURNHAM, Andy 3.86% (National 8.55%)

MILIBAND, David 51.74%  (National 44.06%)

MILIBAND, Ed 26.25%  (National 24.93%)

In Ipswich David Miliband ran home  on the first round, considerably better than the national showing.  Ouch.  That must hurt.  Is this the time for a new SDP? Dame Bryony would then have some chance to represent where she lives.

It is interesting to see how Ed Balls, who like David Miliband paid some attention to the Labour Party in Ipswich came off quite badly.  This is especially so when the whole Chris Mole gang threw their weight behind Ed Balls.  Chris Mole, John Cook and Adam Leeder (candidate for the wholly owned Suffolk Coastal subsidiary).  After all that he only did marginally better than he did among the nationwide membership of the party.

It looks like a lot of people who were around Chris Mole are going to be thinking carefully about what this shows about Chris Mole’s influence in the party.  Although you can never really get an accurate measure of an hysterical crowd, this seems to sink him.  Looks like John Cook will be even more explicit in his bid for the Ipswich nomination.

Mama Bryony Rudkin must be feeling pleased, David Miliband’s most prominent Ipswich supporter from the start, and shows she has a constituency within the party.  The Chris Mole / John Cook “no compromise with the voters” stance has been widely rejected.  However her result for the National Policy Forum (a reasonably narrow miss) was not so good.   A shame really, as although I can’t pretend to rate her as a councillor, she’s a reasonably sensible – for Labour – voice in a party that needs a lot of sense at the moment.

David Ellesmere’s dithering was no credit to him.  I’ve not heard much good said about his stance on this election and there does seem to be a sneaking realisation that he had some responsibility for the loss of the seat.  Looks like wielding the knife won’t win the crown for the group leader.  And even that’s in Martin Cook’s gift, so they say.

Ed Miliband scored a broadly in line with his showing among the nationwide membership, which probably makes no difference to the Tory dream of Labour running a suicide mission by putting up Sandy Martin.

By the way is the person who came last in the poll for the Eastern area in the National Policy Form vote,  ”MACDONALD, Neil”, related to the Ipswich councillor?