Leicester South By-election Result

Jon Ashworth's red letter day

The result of the Leicester South By-election is in. Probably the longest wait for a result ever. However, they did have all the other ballots to count in the other elections and no council wants to employ unnecessary counters, do they?

Labour won, which isn't surprising. Perhaps Mr.Ashworth can now tell the voters where Labour would cut things in order to balance the books? Or is that wishful thinking.

Here's the result -

Jon Ashworth, Labour Party 19771 57.84%
Zuffar Haq, Liberal Democrats 7693 22.51%
Jane Marion Hunt, Conservative Party 5169 15.12%
Abhijit Pradip Pandya, UKIP 994 2.91%
Howling Laud Hope, Monster Raving Loony William Hill Party 553 1.62%

Labour Majority 12,078


A decisive win for Labour no doubt, but they need to propose as well as oppose.

By the way, Leicester City Council have the best interactive results page of all the councils I've seen. Brilliant!

SNP cock-a-hoop - now for the cock-ups!

A winker wins!

Alex Salmond and his nationalist band of merry men and women are celebrating winning the Scottish Parliamentary Elections. Smiles all round, excited talk and chatter, interviews about independence. But winning an election and pushing away from England are not necessarily the same thing.

People seem to have voted for the SNP as they see Alex Salmond as a surefire bet for taking potshots at the Cameron/Clegg Coalition in London (as he would say). They could not see the Labour Party led by doing anything good for them. As I write this Iain Gray, Scottish Labour leader, is waffling on about how nice the people of East Lothian are. Soft-soaping charlatan. You just scraped home by 151 votes!

So Salmond & Co will wait a while and then try a referendum on separation or independence as it is called. It won't happen. The economics don't stack up and the Irish Republic will be a constant reminder that tiger economies can get their hides tanned, teeth capped and their hands tied behind their backs by the European Union.

Better to have a ferret in the UK sack that a sick wandering tiger on the loose causing the vets a headache.

Alan Johnson not protected by a fair cop!

Alan Johnson's resignation was described as a personal affair. When I told my wife I thought he should have just said he wanted a change of job she said that it wouldn't be left there. "You know the press," she said, "they'll keep digging". They didn't need long to find out that his quitting the front bench was after his wife was alleged to have had an affair with his police bodyguard. That's a bit rich. The constable is now being quizzed.

I think it is now up to the police to envigorate their staff and remind them that undercover work or protection work is no excuse for philandering. I well remember watching a play by Jack Rosenthal about The Knowledge, when would-be taxi drivers had to ride around London memorising street names. One of the cabbies had a mistress. He told one young lad that, in his opinion, the knowledge was the "best thing in the whole history of how's your father!".

It seems such attitudes have pernmeated the police. Apart from the dwindling band of milkmen, policemen are the last lot likely to be tempted in such a way. We have only recently heard of such straying, but are there more?

Alan Johnson is liked by all sides of the House. He apparently is a great one to have at dinner parties. Baroness Warsi take note! He does not deserve to be cuckolded in such a way. I hope it all works out for him whilst he takes a step back from front line politics.

Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/2011/01/21/alan-johnson-quits-as-shadow-chancellor-amid-claims-wife-had-affair-with-his-bodyguard-115875-22864296/#ixzz1BfHyxpAU
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Alan Johnson 'to quit frontline politics'

So he's going and not staying. He says he had "found it difficult" to cope with issues in his private life while shadow chancellor. Very strange? He didn't have such issues when in government. Why just as shadow chancellor? He leaves it all with an "I will make no further comment about this matter" approach.

Now he's just going to get more questions than answers. He'd have been far better off just saying that the brief was not really for him. Aren't we all looking for transparent answers? He wasn't a bad minister, he's a pretty good MP, articulate, etc. This just seems like a smokescreen. Even if it isn't, I don't think this "private life" line is what we need to hear about.

New Shadow Cabinet - more like a walk-in closet!

Here's the line-up for the new shadow cabinet. I thought Shaun Woodward failed to make the grade, yet he's back on the front bench. He can't be that good, surely?

Leader of the Opposition: Ed Miliband
Deputy Leader and Shadow Secretary of State for International Development: Harriet Harman
Shadow Chancellor: Alan Johnson
Shadow Foreign Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities: Yvette Cooper
Shadow Home Secretary: Ed Balls
Chief Whip: Rosie Winterton
Shadow Education Secretary: Andy Burnham
Shadow Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary (with responsibility for political and constitutional reform): Sadiq Khan
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary: Douglas Alexander
Shadow Business Secretary: John Denham
Shadow Health Secretary: John Healey
Shadow Secretary Communities and Local Government Secretary: Caroline Flint
Shadow Defence Secretary: Jim Murphy
Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary: Meg Hillier
Shadow Commons Leader: Hilary Benn
Shadow Transport Secretary: Maria Eagle
Shadow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary: Mary Creagh
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Angela Eagle
Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary: Shaun Woodward
Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland: Ann McKechin
Shadow Welsh Secretary: Peter Hain
Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary: Ivan Lewis
Shadow Lords Leader: Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
Shadow Olympics Minister: Tessa Jowell
Shadow Cabinet Office Minister: Liam Byrne
Lords Chief Whip: Lord Bassam of Brighton
Shadow Attorney-General: Baroness Scotland

And Jim Murphy's at defence. Ideal for spotting drones.

Labour is "fortified" says Harriet Harman

The Labour Party has been invigorated by the election of its new leader, according to Harriet Harman. Fortified is the word she used. It will also be united. Sounds very cosy. But what will the policies be. Que sera, sera? If Dianne Abbott's view, as expressed on Question Time last night, is anything to go by, it will be all guided by some new blame game and its set of rules. Deny the past, see no problems, just talk about cuts as if there is a big set of scissors snapping at the clouds above.

If Labour has been fortified its been on weak beer supplied by those union bosses eager to be a part of the anti-coalition action. High dosage Phyllosan would be hard going on them. The Labour Party needs some kind of shock therapy to be really fortified. A woman's work is never done, eh, Harriet!

Ed Miliband and his new broom (minus a few bristles)

Ed Miliband is now Labour leader and looking every inch the junior executive with a day in charge whilst the boss is away. I suppose the Labour Party is now going to reinvent itself again. Branding for Britain's socialists, or whatever they are today, is rather like supermarket branding. Keep changing the label and the punters might think they're getting something different. I've been thinking about this Miliband brother contest. I think it will be probably best all round if Dave does disappear. Otherwise the press will continue, ad nauseam, about the brothers. Ed and David are both ambitious men. Both wanted the top job. This is not about responsibility as Ed waffled on about this morning. He has no "responsibility" to be leader. It's just his ambition. He thinks he's better than anyone else. Fair do's. But don't get all pious about it.

As for his Iraq stuff, well it's OK as it goes but he's been around for some time and his voice of disapproval was a whisper if it was anything. He implies New Labour is dead, but looking at the present shadow cabinet, as Ed gave his leader's speech, it looked like they were suffering from nothing worse than having eaten sour grapes.

Miliband junior gets to have an elected team to select from. None of his choosing. Could be anyone. Dromey's in there apparently. He's Harperson's husband and looking quite good for a suited and booted former trade union rabble rouser. I fear a slick presentation of anti-cuts opposition. The trouble is it was New Labour that baked the cake and stuck frightful frosting on the top. Now that they lost the knife to cut it with, they are berating the coalition over its choice of knife and slices. The cake should never have been baked in the first place. It's full of quantative easing and the cherries have all sunk to the bottom.

Miliband may suit some but I don't think he will be much more than he is already. Just leader of the Labour Party.

Labour not total losers!

I spotted this on the BBC ticker. Somebody called Mitin says, "Has everybody missed the council election results? Labour has 420 extra councillors and 15 extra councils. Both the Tories and Lib Dems have lost councillors and seats. This puts a different complexion on the general election results doesn't it?". Have to say I missed it. And yes, it is some comfort to the prime minister, I suppose.

Pity for Gordon Brown he can't just swap the results around and claim the ballot papers were all in the wrong boxes!

Gordon Brown's Last Stand

Gordon Brown is beginning to resemble all those characters from history that made a last valiant stand but it all came to nought. Tonight he has been in Manchester sounding forth on Labour's achievements. One side of A4 would do it. I'm not convinced by his rhetoric. But his self-deluding economic giant status that he ascribes to himself is one thing that we can either take or dismiss. It's when he becomes some kind of maverick preacher that I rush for the smelling salts.

Charles II once said that Presbyterianism was not a suitable religion for a gentleman. Listening to Gordon Brown just now I tend to sympathise with the late king's comment. Well, Gordon's version of it. His moral compass seems to be in its very own electrical field currently. He judges the Conservatives in a very nasty way. He says, with extra shoulder heaving, that they "pass by on the other side". The suggestion that the Labour Party under Gordon Brown is some kind of jamboree for good samaritans is laughable. What he said tonight kind of drives a coach and horses through the New Testament. For one thing, he is leaving political debate behind and getting dangerously close to judging souls. "Thou shalt not bear false witness"? Was this ever raised in the manse? Maybe its OK these days in the Labour Party.

Gordon Brown sneers at the concerns of committed Christians who hold to a traditional understanding of the Faith. He may have jettisoned doctrine he finds incompatible with melding a secular society into shape, but others haven't. Democracy is all about hearing the opposing view with respect and dignity. I get the distinct impression that many in the Labour Party are just political bullies. Pity!

Oh, and speaking of respect, I hear George Galloway is taking Labour to the cleaners for alleged postal ballot frauds. It would be far better if Gordon took time to dig out the motes in Labour's eyes before trying to suggest others had beams in theirs.

Heckler thrown out of Brown meeting

The Labour Party said Gordon Brown was going to meet ordinary folk. It's been a total disaster. No ordinary voters have come near the man. When he gets a heckler, Labour goons chuck the concerned citizen out.

Let's hope by this time next week we've all had the good sense to chuck Brown out.

Kinnock windbags Labour's hopes

Lord Kinnock, stoker first class on the EU Gravy Train, has come out to say that it "doesn't look like" his party can win the general election, but insists it remains "within reach". I hope the Labour Party's reach has been severely forshortened.

Kinnock waffles on to say that the prime minister has been "poisonously misrepresented by the press". If he's talking about the encounter with Gillian Duffy I think there's been zilch misrepresentation. Not a word out of place. Brown said it all himself. If it's over the past 13 years, there might have been the odd phrase or two, but that's it.

No, Labour has itself to blame for the muddle and mess. Mrs.Duffy asked him a straight question on the economy. Gordon Brown just raised his caninus muscle and gave a few platitudes and spotted that her use of red in her clothing was a good sign. Then he got into the car and revealed himself as he really is.

I think it was summed up quite nicely by Brown's biographer, Tom Bower, when he said yesterday on BBC News that "Gordon Brown has never understood the working class of England". So face to face with a representative of the species and he's spun off his axis bigtime.

Who knows what will happen tonight. My hunch is that Cameron and Clegg will be relaxed, Brown will be like a cork in a champagne bottle. His body language will show him up if he lets it loose. He'd be better off grabbing the podium for dear life and keeping deadly still.

This election is now like a steeplechase with unknown nags in the race. I can see all three parties winning seats and losing them. There will be some very startled new MPs by the end of next week. And a great many startled voters.

It's hard being Gordon Brown in Rochdale

Gordon Brown won't be heading back to Rochdale in hurry, I'll wager. It's hard being a cowboy in Rochdale, but it's a hell of a lot harder being Gordon Brown in Rochdale!

Bigoted Gordon Brown rounds on Rochdale granny!

Well, well, the truth is coming out. Gordon Brown is getting grumpier, he can't stand being questioning by "ordinary folk" and he blames others (Sue Nye his loyal aide) for it all. Fancy calling someone a "bigoted woman" just because she asked a couple of civilised questions.

Who exactly is the bigot here? I'd say it was Brown. He's bigoted against the electorate. So why on earth are there any people out there still wanting to vote for him. According to Amanda Platell, he looks washed out. Blimey, I get grumpy when tired. He must be like a volcano right now. One week its an Icelandic eruption, the next its a Scottish one. Well, limited to one Scottish person, that is.

The woman in question, Gillian Duffy, simply asked him about the deficit, pensions and Eastern European immigration. So is everyone who talks about immigration a bigot? That makes Brown a very big bigot. He's talked quite a bit about it recently.

His body language on the Jeremy Vine show (Radio 2) said it all. Heaving and shifting like a dozy seal that's just been given a kick to get back in the water. And he told Vine "If I said it". IF?

IF I SAID IT?

What a creep! How can he possibly say that? He knows damn well he said it. It just shows him up for what he truly believes and thinks. That the great British public in their voting habits are some kind of unwashed, thoughtless morons.

We all say things in unguarded moments. But, hey, this was no unguarded moment. He was miked up, ready to go. Has he learnt nothing about broadcasting techniques?

I suggest every potential Labour voter does as Mrs Duffy is going to do. Not vote Labour!

Free speech banned by Labour!

The Labour Party is becoming a party of pharisees and philistines in equal measure. It is an unholy alliance. I hope the shower come fourth or fifth in this election. A good humiliating result is needed.

Labour apparatchiks have rounded on their candidate, John Cowan, in South East Cambridgeshire because he has said "he would not want any children of his to marry a Muslim". Now I may not agree with him totally, Gordon Brown might get sniffy, but I think it is a legitimate sentiment. Mixed marriages on religious grounds can be quite hard going. A lot work out. A lot don't.

Caroline Flint got rid of her first Muslim husband by declaring him an illegal alien. What does Gordon Brown think of her behaviour and attitudes? Self-righteousness knows no boundaries in the modern Labour Party. They have infected political life by being anti-democratic and anti-free speech. Not only that, loads of them are anti-Catholic, anti-countryside, anti-nobility (inverted snobs, that is!) and anti-anything that they don't fancy on Mondays.

Come on, you hypocrites! How many Labour candidates other than John Cowan relish their sons and daughters marrying Muslims? I bet they won't be poking their heads over their parapets!

It isn't a case of saying such marriages are wrong. I know several successful ones. However, many are not. That is just a fact of life. Labour can be such a nauseating party. It was far better when it was real Labour. Now it's just a bad version of load of dodgy door-to-door salesmen.

If Labour lived in the real world they'd know that adherents of Islam have a very different approach to marriage. Someone I once knew, a good friend at the time, was very typical of a Muslim man married to an English woman. His family urged him to get her to change her name and to renounce most of her cultural past. In the end the strain broke up the marriage.

Mr. Cowan hasn't said anything that outrageous. He just expressed an opinion. But he has been made out to be the week's worst racist by a self-serving bunch of humbugs. What he's doing in such a party Heaven only knows. I think he should leave well alone and leave their prissy precocious politics behind.

Lord Mandelson - Cheeky Git!

Lord Mandelson says that a hung parliament might give "disproportionate power" to the Lib Dems. Does he know what disproportionate power is exactly? If he doesn't, then I'll tell him.

Firstly, it's throwing your weight around in cabinet or the corridors of power, spinning against your colleagues and generally acting as a prince of darkness.

Secondly, it's deluding yourself that you can govern a country when only 20% of the total electorate have actually decided to affirm your party as the right one to govern.

Peter Mandelson does actually know about disproportionate power. He has lived with the knowledge that all his dealings and dodges have been about making sure the scales are weighted in his favour. So he's the last person in the country to be talking about disproportionate power!

Stoking it up in Stoke Central

All around the country there are constituencies where various ding-dongs are going on. Some odd, some peculiar, most just the usual political sniping and squabbling. In Stoke Central it appears to be a mixture of everything. First, the remnants of New Labour got a guy called Tristram to be the candidate in place of posh Mark Fisher. The phrase "pot calling the kettle" comes to mind and New Labour is deftly trying to be both pot and kettle at the same time. Because the Labour candidate is a friend of Peter Mandelson's this has upset the Stoke Old Labour stalwarts, so the factions are getting fractious. This has led to Gary Elsby, a former secretary or whatever of the local party, to stand as an Independent Labour candidate. He's puffing hard on his bravado pipe and causing a skirmish in town. His use of the word Labour has upset the London lot. Hard to say whether he will succeed in knocking much off the Labour vote or not. If he does, anything could happen. It's a volatile electorate at the moment. More Grand National than a two-horse race.

The BNP is also in a spot of bother, with their former stalwart Alby Walker calling his former comrades a bunch of Nazi revisionists. So he too is talking of standing as an independent. Somehow I don't think he will do as well as Elsby.

All these individual constituency scraps must play havoc with the pollsters and their expensive number crunchers. Where on earth would you put Gary Elsby in the scheme of things? More and more it's becoming 650 mini general elections and not one big one.

In Solihull we've got no worries about Gordon Brown and his ideas. Labour are down in the low tens. This is a contest between two opposition parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. So even if Labour won the whole thing we'd still have an opposition MP whichever one won. If the Conservatives win nationally we have the joy of knowing Brown's out, but we could still have a LibDem MP. As I say, each constituency does its own thing.

When all the votes are counted I'm sure it will be the strangest result ever recorded. The electorate appears more in a "plumping for" mood than a "standing up for" mood. It's wide open basically and the pollsters are not really sure about what's happening. That's why I think constituencies like Stoke Central excite the media. They can in turn excite the candidates to engage in a real knockabout election.

Twitter abuse? Yes, says Labour!

A young and inexperienced Labour candidate has been sacked for posting such remarks as "coffin dodgers" and "being sober for the first time in 4 days" on his Twitter account. Not only has he been sacked but his opponents are coming out with pompously self-righteous comments and Jim Murphy describes the episode as if the candidate were a wife-beating monster. Maybe Frankie Howerd was right. "Twitter ye not!" - or at least very carefully during general elections.

My view is that the candidate Stuart MacLennan has been foolish and naive but no more than that. He's probably expressed opinions that most men of his age have done regardless of party allegiance. I think this says more about those commenting about him. Mr. MacLennan didn't curse or blaspheme as far as I know. Plenty of current MPs do both!

It would have been far better to leave Mr. MacLennan where he was as candidate for Moray. I'm sure the voters of this constituency are better placed to judge who they want as their representative than the paragons of virtue who are now "infecting" our political process. I do hope his replacement is not the school swat who has become leader's pet. We want fearless representatives not apparatchiks that act as if they are in toothpaste commercials.

What is the point of New Labour now?

Gordon Brown has given a conference speech that went down well with the apparatchiks, not so well with the old school rank-and-file and it gave The Sun its final nail in the coffin. They just need to find a good hammer to drive them home!

Last night Newsnight showed Jeremy Paxman wandering around the conference enquiring about the purpose of New Labour. He found a votes office with nothing much to do, a number of expensive show stands conveniently paid for by willing councils and compliant unions and he sensed a rally format without much verve or nerve to rouse the crowds. Tony Blair was a man who could fill a hall on platitudes and revised beatitudes. No need for a moral compass, he had God on his side (or possibly at his side!). He had New Labour certainty which basically translated as Tony Blair certainty. Blair could easily have been the leader of the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats. If it had served his purpose for power, he might easily have fitted into UKIP, the SNP, or the Green Party. Blair could mould a message to suit the circumstances. But he's gone. We've got Gordon Brown now, floundering around like a beached whale. What is his purpose?

New Labour was a fiction. It still is. It doesn't stand for anything. It doesn't create policy. It hates votes, hence the sheer boredom of being in the votes office! However, it loves control, it loves manipulation, it loves messing about with things. New Labour strikes me like its a child that cannot stop fidgeting. The old adage was "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!". New Labour turns this around. They fix things or people in such a way that they end up bust, broken or bewildered.

If I were a socialist I'd be wondering what on earth the Labour Party had to offer me. As a democrat, I find their aversion to free votes baffling. If I were a trade unionist I'd be thinking about how far I could stretch loyalty and credulity. As a voter I was never conned. I knew what they were about in 1997, but have no idea now.

It seems to me that the country, as The Sun thinks, has just lost favour with the New Labour magic. The Blair pixie lost his sparkle and the Brown straw man couldn't find it. However, the Tories and Liberal Democrats are not seen as easy replacements. They will have earn their votes.

It's just that, as we approach the general election, the question as to what the point of New Labour is still remains unanswered. My guess is that many will drift away. Radicals will see the Liberal Democrats or Greens as an alternative. Those who only had cupboard love for the Blair experiment will bounce back to the Tories and other minor parties will get the intellectual socialist support.

So I've probably answered my own question. There is no point to New Labour!

Caroline Flint's foul mouth

Gordon Brown was right to sack Caroline Flint. The woman has done this country no favours in her ministerial "career". Her absurd attack on the Prime Minister just proves the point. And, yes, he may be grumpy and bit gauche around women, but he is certainly no misogynist. She branded Gordon Brown a 'f****** b******' as she stormed out of Government in anger at his 'sexism', it has been claimed. That sexism she calls "window dressing". She says the PM used women as 'a smokescreen, a way of making it look like you've got a lot of women around the table' while giving them little influence. How she thinks the country can fall for that rubbish beggars belief.

Caroline Flint is a woman who thinks highly of her own abilities. She appears to be (I take from the Farage comment) a curious hybrid, part temptress, part machievellian schemer. Basically, a woman to be given a wide berth, which is precisely what Gordon Brown has done.

Every time she comes on Question Time, her lips curl in snide ripostes to the audience. She definitely has a massive chip on her shoulder. Ex-MP Oona King, Gordon Brown's former aide, said it was 'absolute nonsense' to suggest he had a problem with women. She also accused Ms Flint of exploiting her sexuality. She said, "She shocked a lot of women in the party by often posing in a fashion that implies she's more interested in the way she looks than the policies she presents." Touché

Parliamentary expense scandal hits new low!

Frank Cook is a Labour MP. He tried to claim on expenses for a £5 church donation he made at a Battle of Britain memorial service. Now if that isn't the lowest of the low, I do not know. Forget the moat cleaning and the duck houses, this is morally reprehensible. To think he handed over a measly fiver in the House of God thinking all the while he could get it back from the Fees Office. Is that all the memorial service meant to him?

Little faith, some hope, no charity!