It’s rather appropriate that a by-election in Ealing, home of Ealing comedies, has been the site of a by-election that has frequently seemed on the edge of farce.
For the wider world, of course, perhaps the height of farce was the sight of the Tory candidate Tony Lit beaming with Tony Blair at a Labour event where a cheque for £4,800 was handed over (and a further auction bid of £4,000 was made) just before he became the Tory candidate (Mr Lit that is, not Mr Blair!). This story does at least mean that – thankfully, at last – we have a story to top the Liberal Democrat embarrassment from the 1990s of having a Parliamentary by-election candidate join Labour on polling day itself.
For political insiders, the arguments over Iain Dale’s blog and whether he is letting himself be used as a largely uncritical mouthpiece by the Conservative Party have eaten up much blogging time.
An example of this was the attempt by the Conservatives to use Iain’s blog to criticise the use of photographs by the Liberal Democrats. The attacks were rather blunted by the fact that on the very same day that Iain hit “publish” on the story on his blog, the Conservatives in Ealing were delivering a leaflet that did the very same thing that his story fulminated against.
As did – amongst others – previous Conservative Parliamentary by-election leaflets in Cheadle and Leicester South and … wait for it … a story Iain had penned on his very own blog a few days previously.
But what will it all mean when the voters are counted and tempers have settled? The downside of making predictions just ahead of polling day is that if you’re wrong you look a fool, and if you’re right – well, who really cares anyway given they’ve now got the actually results to pore over?
But as I volunteered for the task … the projection from our weekend work made by Chris Rennard is that the state of parties was around Labour 37%, Lib Dem 31% and Conservative 22%. As he said, “From this position Lib Dems can win but it should be close. I believe that we could be into re-count territory on Thursday night.”
Interestingly, he chose to make public these views in a comment on a blog, rather than to a journalists, which reflects the way the internet has been changing how politics works.
Given the eagerness of some politicians to write-up a “return to two party politics” story, for Nigel Bakhai and the Liberal Democrats to come even close to winning a seat off Labour, in the teeth of a determined Cameron New Conservative onslaught to boot, will be some achievement. An achievement all the greater of course if Nigel Bakhai wins.
As the first major electoral test for Gordon Brown, Ealing (and Sedgefield) are likely to be useful indicators as to how firmly rooted the “Brown bounce” in the opinion polls really is. Can intensive local campaigning by the Liberal Democrats still eat heavily into Labour’s vote as happened in many places in 2005? And how well with the Conservative campaign message of “David Cameron wants this man to be your MP” go down?
All will be revealed shortly. As to my own personal prediction in the meantime? Well, working for a political party I find it generally safest to stick to keeping it a secret between me and my bookmaker.
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