Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Labour: Taking the North for Granted
Ten years on from Tony Blair entering number 10, one of his babes, Yvette Cooper is finding out how out of favour Labour have become. Wakefield council used to have a sea of red in her constituency yet 3 weeks into a local election campaign, Labour are yet to deliver a single leaflet. A sign of Labour taking the north for granted, or that their leaflet-delivering activists are deserting them?
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32 comments:
Wakefield also used to have an MP called David Hinchliffe who was far more use chairing the Select Committee on Health than that idiot Barron.....
Right, and just for good measure, how well are the Tories doing in Wakefield and the North in general?
Seeing as the Tories have hardly been to the North since Maggie kindly bogged off, I'm surprised you have even heard of Wakefield.
When you Tories are finally ready to leave the Home Counties and talk to us, please try and remember not to patronise us, like all the others do.
Asking too much? Thought so.
Perhaps there activists are over in Leeds helping with their activities?
Iain
Well, a partisan reply, if you like, but as I deliver leaflets around north Stockport, where I live and quixotically persist in supporting Labour, I see no Conservative Party posters or window displays. We're told Your lot are on the brink of making a return but so far it's not in the slightest bit apparent up her in my bit of the north...
Labour should take nothing for granted!! Just habe a look at the bbc web site Have your Say!!
I am surprised they have kept it going!
95% of the comments are very much against him.I do hope he reads it sometime!!
Not a single leaflet in the whole of Wakefield? Are you sure Iain? Sounds a bit far-fetched even for a Tory blogger to publish.
Not quite as dangerous as taking your Party membership for granted!
Blair to be gone in the next couple of weeks....
10 years as PM [check]
Blairite groomed as next PM [No]
Legacy Secure [No]
Leaving the crowd wanting more [No]
Having failed to get a duly appointed Blairite successor instead of the totally-mistrusted (by Blair) Brown and to secure the legacy, why hang around....
every day's delay costs money, he could have been in the US a couple of months ago at 100K per speech events....
Have you got the wrong constituency? Or are you generalising from a few wards? Mary Creagh is the Labour MP for Wakefield. Yvette is nearby.
Tories have put out even less gibberish in most of Manchester than usual. With the exception of the city centre which is a law unto itself.
I'm only guessing but I reckon if you didn't deliver to the ten names on the nomination form and the candidate and perhaps as a precaution their immediate neighbours the Tory team on the ground wouldn't have a clue what was going on.
Don't know about the English Council elections,but the only banners for Labour I have seen in my local Welsh Assembly seat are outside the sitting AM's own home.Incidentally,for the first time in years,people do not seem embarassed to have a Tory sticker in the window.
With the rise of postal voting the campaign in many wards was over at least a week ago. In some case half those who will vote have already done so.
It seems to be the same around here. It what was once Sandwell's safest Conservative council seat we haven't seen a single leaflet, no election address, no posters, zilch!
My betting is that the Lib Dems will drive them into 3rd place.... I don't think it's taking the voters for granted though, just a bunch of idle-arsed Tories.
A recent (Newsnight?) prog by US pollster Frank Luntz unwittingly exposed just how widespread disatisfaction with or hatred of Blair and nulab is these days - even in the north.
Luntz set out to measure Blair's popularity and legacy among a sample of Manchester electors - most of whom had voted for Blair.
These Manchester Labour voters ripped Blair to shreds. Key issues were Iraq, spin, corruption, dishonesty and squandered opportunity. Out of a sample of around 20-25 people, only one Labour die hard seemed happy with nulab and Blair.
Given the rejection of Broon by the Scots electorate, it's tempting to wonder if we are beginning to see even the Labour heartland vote disintegrating.
Auntie Flo'
Has ANYONE seen a NewLabour leaflet-delivering-activist in recent years?
I thought they were extinct.
One of the few things voters notice is the absence of leaflets. They don't read the things when they come, but they notice when they don't. "Labour? Oh we haven't had anything from them."
Auntie Flo..
Frank Luntz is a Republican hired goon, he makes the conservatives of the world look popular.
It isn't real - its SPIN. You Tories and your spin, it'll be the end of you, you mark my words...
At least they know where the North is.
Pete. Think you're a bit out of touch. Dave's been to Bradford (plus other Northern cities and towns) three times in the last few months, and in the last two weeks we've had William Hague and David Davis. They HAVE supported the Tory campaign and also the local PPCs. There have been regular visits from Tory front benchers. Can we forget the myths? I don't like everything about Dave, but fair's fair.
Yvette doesn't need to canvass in Pontefract and Castleford. Nobody there is swayed by a leaflet. You either vote Labour because you always vote Labour and your dad or grandad was a miner, you vote Tory if you're an ignorant cretin with a short memory, or vote BNP if you're a racist.
However.......she was out canvassing at the weekend with Denise Jeffries and Mark Burns-Williams (cllrs), and I know that cos my old mum got 'stickered'. Interestingly, the Conservatives have been doorstepping in Castleford for the first time in many years - bit of a pointless exercise if you ask me....
Both.
There are two council estates in this otherwise rather leafy ward, but Labour only leafletted them after, and because, I had done so as an Independent. Before that, they weren't going to bother.
But then, no one (including the Tories) except me ever leaflets the farms, either.
Skipper
I live in a true-blue area. Yet there are few if any blue posters or signs. All the signs are yellow.
The thing is that posters and signs are not what Iain was talking about; they are not useful or informative, they are a desperate plea. I do get leaflets through the door from both parties.
I have seen neither from Labour. Nothing. Nada.
Perhaps your header should say the truth for a change Iain.
Tories, "grant the north for the Labour taking"
In reply to the force at 3.23PM -
'You either vote Labour because you always vote Labour and your dad or grandad was a miner'
I've heard the same line from Scottish voters living on run down council estates - seemingly oblivious to the fact that the reason things are so bad is because they keeping voting in the same idiots, generation after generation.
What a waste - why always vote for the same party regardless of how little they have actually done for YOU and the country? It makes no sense.
We have seen plenty of leaflets in West Leeds.
It's surprising they find the time in between fiddling the votes.
Why they bother so hard to do either actvity is a mystery because, as the force said, the kind of people who bother to vote will vote Labour because their parents and grandparents did.
I wish Labour were as indolent in Southampton. They might be useless at running the Council but in my ward (of over 5500 households), they have delivered 5 pieces of (mostly) fairly poor quality literature.
Local council elections here in a former Conservative stronghold.
According to the lack of election leaflets, NO Consevative candidates are standing. (We are a consituency Labeour must lose for the Cons to form a Gov't).
Absolutely useless...
Anyone seen any leaflets explaining, for the benefit of the hoi polloi, the Byzantine ins and outs of Yvette Cooper's absurd new Home Information Packs, soon to hit a bemused public and cause chaos in the housing market? A massive political fiasco for Labour in the making, and yet she's ploughing ahead blindly. People take their bricks and mortar seriously in this country and won't take kindly to Government meddling with their right to buy and sell freely. Labour are about to become much further out of favour, if that's possible.
Iain, totally untrue about the any lack of leafetting in Yvette's constituency. The truth is labour has leafletted well; the Tories are the one who have not. As a Labour candidate in one of the wards I and my colleagues have distributed 7,000 leaflets in the ward, while the Tories have not distributed one. We also distributed 5,000 leaflets a couple of months before the election and I have helped to distribute leaflets in other wards of Yvette's constituency.
By the way, even those (and there are not many here) who are dissatisfied with Labour still hate the Tories for what they did when they were in power.
I hope you allow this response, more like correction, to be published. I notice you have to approve responses before you decide whether to publish or not.
Iain, totally wrong about the lack of leafetting in Yvette's constituency. The truth is labour has leafletted well; the Tories are the one who have not. As a Labour candidate in one of the wards I and my colleagues have distributed 7,000 leaflets in the ward, while the Tories have not distributed one. We also distributed 5,000 leaflets a couple of months before the election and I have helped to distribute leaflets in other wards of Yvette's constituency.
By the way, even those (and there are not many here) who are dissatisfied with Labour still hate the Tories for what they did when they were in power.
I hope you allow this response, more like correction, to be published. I notice you have to approve responses before you decide whether to publish or not.
Iain, totally wrong about the lack of leafetting in Yvette's constituency. The truth is labour has leafletted well; the Tories are the one who have not. As a Labour candidate in one of the wards I and my colleagues have distributed 7,000 leaflets in the ward, while the Tories have not distributed one. We also distributed 5,000 leaflets a couple of months before the election and I have helped to distribute leaflets in other wards of Yvette's constituency.
By the way, even those (and there are not many here) who are dissatisfied with Labour still hate the Tories for what they did when they were in power.
I hope you allow this response, more like correction, to be published. I notice you have to approve responses before you decide whether to publish or not.
By the look of anthony's posts 8:19 8:20 8:23 they are indeed leafleting but all the leaflets are going through the same letterbox.
Nevertheless the Labour punters of Wakefield have my sympathy. Must feel just like Being a Tory in Hornsey & Wood Green come General Election time.
Conservative candidate, what Conservative candidate?
Bit late this response, and no-one is going to read it, but what the hell...
Of course it is rubbish that no leaflets have been put out in Wakefield. As my sore feet attest.
In fact today I spoke to a voter who said he would be reading the leaflets he's received from all the parties before deciding how to vote. He then added 'but as I've only got a leaflet from Labour, I think it's fair to say you've got my vote'
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