Blue Thursday

I find it incredible that an electoral ward such as Cadishead in the top 20% of poorest places within England and Wales, has managed to return a Tory Councillor. Does this present a sign that the Conservatives are making inroads into northern cities?

There were 10 spoilt ballot papers, which actually could have made all the difference, given that the Tory got in by just 7 votes ahead of Labour. This guy, however, becames an elected council official with a mandate of just 12.2% of the total local electorate. That's democracy for you!

Labour's cause couldn't have been helped either by the Community Action Party, which deposited a cantankerous newsletter in everyone's letter boxes in the run up to the elections, which simply aimed to discredit anything Labour had done ever within the locality. As a consequence their candidate managed to bag a fifth of the votes cast. I wonder if people would have voted for them given that their leader was alledged to have given the Nazi salute at a council meeting in Wigan, a fact not included on their factsheet. He also seems to get beaten up a lot. I can't work out the purpose of this party. Their slogan seems to "Say no to ..." (insert an opportunistic word as appropriate) and have it in for any sort of bureaucracy.

Less than 34% of the local electorate bothered to turn out, which meant out of a possible 7300 over 4900 votes remained uncast. Given the choice of Labour (Neo-right), Conservate (Neo-right) and Community Action (???) and Liberal (???), this figure is perhaps not too surprising. I wonder what these people would have voted for though?


Source: Tory gains in Salford - News - Manchester Evening News; http://blogs.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/politics/2007/05/conservatives_in_bloom_1.html