Epping Forest Tories tonight backed their MP Eleanor Laing after a small group of local Tory members had tried to oust her. She survived a formal deselection vote by what was described to me as an "overwhelming majority" of the two hundred members present.
The deselection move was launched by Di Collins, mother of former MP Tim Collins and a local councillor.
UPDATE 9.59: The vote was 164 to 32.
23 comments:
My spy at meeting tells me it was overwhelmingly in favour on the first ballot.
If she ducked paying capital gains tax then she deserved to be ousted. This stinks
what about the de-selection of Liz Truss?
Crikey I hope it was not to try and get Collins Junior into that Parliamentry Birth.
Unless he has changed he is the Tories Gordon Brown in terms of Voter repelient material!
Former MP Tim Collins = Personification of the 'Nasty Party' Label from my memory of QT contributions and general TV appearences.
Di Collins has previous:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/tories-in-frantic-effort-to-restore-norris-to-shortlist-1132271.html
Well, that's one Tory seat down the pan. Doesn't anyone get it?
Eleanor WHO? I never heard of her.
I don't know who the fCUK she is.
Iain, grow up and write about something worth while.
And another thing I bought an issue of Total Politics and thought:
Total Politics = Total Crap just like this blog
I don't think you understand politics do you. Perhaps you should take lessons in politics because you are having difficulty with understanding basic concepts.
Mrs Collins is well known as an utter nightmare. Those who know Eleanor Laing know she is fundamentally decent, committed to her constituency and a model MP. And I don't vote Tory...
If I remember Mrs. Collins has got form in launching de-seletion bids. Didn't she try to deselet Tim Yeo in Suffolk South in about 1995/1996?
All I can remember is her overcoat which looked like it had been borrowed from a chequered bear. It was like a throwback to the 1950s
So, not a Tory gain then...
Business as usual... A lot of gain, no pain...
'Di Collins' is a poisonous piece of work...if memory serves she tried to deselect the last MP too - Steve Norris. Then, not content with that, she tried to mobilise a campaign to stuff his chances (unsuccesfully) of getting the Con mayoral nomination... she's the bastard cross of Mary Whitehouse and 'Mrs N*gg*rbaiter' from Monty Python... oddball son Tim Collins not much better...
Brown's latest podcast is moaning about credit card fraud. Leaving aside he has had nearly 13 years to do something about this - what happened to his pledge to make announcements to parliament.
Are these podcasts audio only - there certainly seems a reluctance to release any video.
Mrs Collins may well be an utter nightmare, but objet petit a is absolutely right - this stinks like 3-day old fish.
The turnout looks to have been miniscule compared with the electorate and was probably packed with her supporters - although how they can justify supporting such a blatant trougher (and she's a junior shadow justice minister!!) beggars belief.
She really is on a par with the equally repellent Wintertons. Let's hope that she gets opposed - successfully - by an independent standing on a transparency and honesty ticket, because the electors of her constituency deserve better than this.
So much for Call-Me-Dave's committment to root out the expense fiddlers.
Well now, how smug is that decision. Cannot the Epping Tories see the wood from the trees.
I think she protested too loudly.
no transparency or sense of right or wrong in Epping , is there.
Same old grubby Tory games.
When I asked Eleanor Laing about Conservative policy on reducing the number of Westminster constituencies she gave me a direct answer. The only time I have ever had one in reply to any question to any MP on any topic. That is good enough reason to re-select and re-elect her.
Hi guys,
I know you lot are London Centric but just got some stats from Wales.
I know you like to be balanced...
snip>>
EMBARGO: 11.30pm Monday, 26 October 2009
Results of the first YouGov poll in Wales
Tomorrow (Tuesday) morning the results of the first Welsh poll by YouGov - one the UK's leading polling organisations - will be made public in a specially organised breakfast seminar in the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay. The results will be presented and analysed by Wales's leading political analysts, Richard Wyn Jones Director of the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University, and Prof. Roger Scully, Director of Aberystwyth University Institute of Welsh Politics.
Among the results......
Westminster voting intentions in Wales (change since 2005 general
election)
%
Labour 34 (-9)
Conservative 31 (+10)
Lib-Dems 12 (-2)
Plaid Cymru 15 (+2)
Others 7 (+2)
Q. If a general election were held tomorrow how would you vote?
If the swings implied by this poll are applied uniformly across Wales, the parties would win following number of MPs (change since 2005 in brackets)
Labour 20 (-9)
Conservative 12 (+9)
Lib-Dems 2 (-2)
Plaid Cymru 5 (+2)
Others 1
The predicted results:
* Represent the worst Labour vote share in Wales since 1918
(3.5% worse than in 1983)
* Would equal Tory vote share in 1983
* Would be Plaid's best general election vote share and seat result ever
Richard Wyn Jones said:
"This poll serves to underline that the Conservatives are continuing to
make very significant progress in Wales. Having been wiped out
completely in 1997, they appear on course for one of their best ever
results at the next UK general election. For Labour, on the other hand, this is more dismal news from what was formerly its most staunch of heartland areas."
According to Prof. Roger Scully, "Labour is clearly in very deep trouble in Wales as in the rest of Britain, and the party that is benefiting most from that is the Conservatives. And while Plaid Cymru can be moderately pleased by their showing, there are not making the same impact as their sister party, the SNP, is in Scotland."
It's all been checked by YouGov and by the way as a Labour voter in Wales it's going to be WAY worse for Labour than this :-(
During its investigation into MPs’ expenses earlier this year, the Daily Telegraph disclosed that Mrs Laing had claimed more than £80,000 from the public purse towards mortgage interest and service payments on two adjacent flats in Westminster.
She made the claims on the flats, which she designated as her “second home” for expenses purposes, despite the fact that her constituency home was less than an hour's journey away by Tube.
When she sold the flats last year for £1.8 million, she made at least £1 million profit, which would have left her with a £180,000 capital gains tax bill if she had declared the flats as her second home to HM Revenue & Customs.
However, Mrs Laing confirmed that - under advice from her solicitors - she nominated the flats as her "primary residence" for tax purposes, meaning she paid nothing in CGT.
She used her profits from the sale to buy outright another flat in the same block for £900,000.
Daily Telegraph
Did she tell her solicitor that it wasn't her "primary residence" ?
If not, it sounds like tax evasion, and I'm sure her leader would not allow her to continue if that were the case.
"Well, that's one Tory seat down the pan. Doesn't anyone get it?"
Yes, the voters do - far more than you think. They actually don't give the sort of toss that the hysterical media and bloggers belive they should about the expenses row. Its boring - get on with your lives. Personally I couldn't get a monkey's if MPs charged for a lightbulb if they do a good job standing up for their constituents in Parliament.
La Laing will get back in with or without out Harpie Collins' efforts.
Members of the association had been receiving letters for weeks telling us to go along and show our support. To top it off, David Cameron sent a letter to members telling them to support Eleanor.
Nice, fair and balanced.
Epping Forest Conservative Assoc. has around 800 members so fewer than 1/4 voted .
Should be in jail for tax evasion , so much for Cameron's sleaze free party .
Obviously being a trougher is ok, having an affair, well?
Funny how this lady's second home twisting gains carte blanche while Hazel Blears' more modest but almost identically obtained profits were condemned by the billionaire press and their followers.
In both cases, may I advise the lady who persistently harangued me on the topic, the second home for Parliamentary Expenses purposes was NOT the same as the Second Home for Inland Revenue Cap Gains purposes.
Blears paid money to the Revenue, Laing to an undisclosed (to me) charity. Was it Shelter? I hope so . . .
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