In case anyone has been wondering, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth, I merely stopped blogging because I was immersed in the County Council Elections in Rayleigh North.
To cut a long story short, I finished a cheerful second out of six candidates, closing the gap on the Conservative incumbent to about 6 percent:
Stephen Charles Castle The Conservative Party Candidate 2095
Chris Black Liberal Democrats 1739
John Hayter English Democrats 718
Tony Smith Say No To European Union 416
Lisa Byrne British National Party 278
David Dennis Bodimeade The Labour Party Candidate 226
I represent one-quarter of Rayleigh North on the District Council, and was ahead by a landslide there. So if I want to win in four year time, I know what I need to do.
The Conservatives didn't have any fun in the campaign, and were too frit to even put their candidate's home address on any of his campaign material (he lives more than 20 minutes away, on Canvey Island. And they had to, ahem, twist the truth quite a bit in their last leaflet.
Meanwhile the Lib Dems advance across Essex, making 4 gains and becoming the second party in the County with 12 seats.
4 comments:
Well done on the progress you made Chris. As you say you know what has to be done next time. Good performance too from the English Democrat candidate, any story behind that?
Congrats, Chris. sometime when you're REALLY bored, you can do a primer on just how those UK elections actually work.
WV: comin - Chris Black in 4 years.
Trevor - With the collapse of Labour - someone else has to come third. It's the English Democrats who've stepped up to the plate in Rayleigh, on a kind of anti political correctness theme. Their candidate also lived in Rayleigh.
I had a interesting conversation when I was telling with Brian Lee, who is their political stragegist, an urbane fellow who started off his political career with the Alliance Party in Northern Ireland
One of the underlying questions in this years elections was whether they take more votes from us or from the Conservatives - the answer seemed to be a mixture of both.
Roger - I'd be glad to write a two-part guest post on your blog on politics and elections in the UK - we are going to have a general election in the next year and it might clearify things for some of your readers.
Glad you're back in the blogosphere Chris!
Post a Comment