Month: Jul 2007

The two main local papers took different approaches to the by-election this morning. The free Ealing Times used their whole front page for this piece, click to enlarge cutting from the Ealing Times below:

Although the Ealing & Acton Gazette pointed to their election coverage inside their front page carried a human interest story.

On pages 4 and 5 they covered the defections and the supposed communal nature of some of these. The rest of the spread is given over to lengthy statements from the main six candidates.

Their editorial says:

No election is without its drama, but the Ealing Southall by-election seems to have thrown up another tale of betrayal or defection every day.

One of the most interesting things about the fierce campaigning around the Broadway is the way Labour are having to fight for support – without Gurcharan Singh they can no longer rely on his block vote, although insiders say they wish local Conservatives luck handling him.

David Cameron says his new brand of conservatism is the natural home of British Asian people

The result of next Thursday’s election will also be seen as a measure of the degree to which Labour has lost its traditional connection with ethnic minorities.

The lovely picture, left, of the LibDem by-election candidate and two of their MPs up to their necks in garbage accompanied an equally crap press release yesterday talking about the local council’s re-cycling record. I don’t know why these people think that talking rubbish is good politics.

They say:

Local campaigner Nigel Bakhai has revealed that Conservative-controlled Ealing Council recycled less than 20% of the borough’s household waste in 2006.

The Council’s recycling rate is 10 percentage points below its own target, and significantly below the figure achieved by neighbouring boroughs.

Local campaigner Nigel Bakhai said: “The Conservatives on Ealing Council have a shameful record on recycling – the Council failed to meet its target by a huge margin.

Ealing council’s own figure for 2005/6 was 19%. So, yes, “less than 20%”. But this was the financial year ending 31st March 2006 more than a month before the local election in May 2006 that saw the new Conservative administration elected. Re-cycling went up to 25% in the next year. So with less than a year to work with the new administration increased the re-cycling rate by a third. This was achieved by:

• the completion of the food waste roll out
• the introduction of free pink sacks in October 2006
• the introduction of cardboard collections in November 2006.

The facts were published on the council’s website on 5th June. This information was produced and published by local government officers whose job it is to steer clear of party political pronouncements. Ask yourself – in this case do you trust a LibDem press release or a council one?

The LibDims did not notice that 30% is the target we have set ourselves for next year and we are aiming to increase re-cycling to 38%, or double the rate we inherited, by the end of our first administration.

Clearly in talking down the Tories the LibDems think that the Tory campaign is the one to beat. They are right!

Although the Times today did not catch up with the hokey-cokey Noori story in time they say:

Labour faces further defections from its campaign to hold a stronghold seat in a by-election, amid signs of fracturing of support for the party among ethnic minority voters.

Apparently Ian Dale was a bit previous about Cllr Noori. According to Tom Watson, MP, Labour’s parlimentary lead on this campaign, she has said:

I joined the Labour Party to serve my community. That remains the case….. I have not resigned my membership and will not be joining the Conservatives.

Tomorrow I will be leading campaigning for Labour’s victory on July 19th. I hope to see you on the campaign trail too!

Oh well.

Ian Dale is reporting that Cllr Zahida Noori has joined the rest of her colleagues in Southall Broadway and come over to the Tories.

At yesterday’s group meeting we accepted the original five into the Conservative group, they had already been accepted as members of the party by the national party.

There is some video of all of yesterday’s fun and games on Webcameron below:

http://Switch5.castup.net/Customers/clementina/FLV_white_412x309/

The original story was covered in both the Guardian (yesterday in theory) and Telegraph this morning. The Telegraph had a prominent story on page 2 with a photo. The Guardian story certainly was not prominent on their website – I didn’t bother to buy the actual paper, I haven’t since I was in my twenties. I suspect the Guardian story was written up yesterday but did not make it into the paper.

This story was covered with 8 column inches on page 2 of tonight’s Evening Standard. The online version is longer and includes pictures of this morning’s fun and games on the Town Hall steps.

On page 12 Andrew Gilligan comments on the Ealing Southall campaign and says: “… it’s the Tories who have taken the initiative.”

After a one-liner on the World at One the Radio 4 PM programme covered the story in detail too, even featuring an interview with Manjit Singh. The online version of the BBC story is here. The BBC’s headline downplays the news by failing to identify the parties in its headline: “Five Southall councillors defect”. When a Conservative MP defected to Labour recently the BBC headline was: “Conservative MP defects to Labour “. So much for impartiality then.

Ian Dale is reporting that 5 out of the 15 Labour councillors in Southall have defected to the Conservatives.

They are, in alphabetical order, Cllr Jagdish Gupta, Cllr Jarnail Singh Jandu, Cllr Maninder Kaur Keith, Cllr Gurcharan Singh and Cllr Manjit Singh. It looks as if Gurcharan Singh, who was at one time reckoned to be the leading male contender to be the Labour candidate in the Ealing Southall by-election, has managed to persuade his two colleagues in Lady Margaret ward and two in neighbouring Southall Broadway to go with him as he exited the party in high dudgeon.

This is their statement:

It has become increasingly obvious as this by-election campaign has progressed, that the Conservative candidate Tony Lit is the best person to represent Ealing Southall as our next MP. He’s energetic, dynamic and displays the kind of qualities that would make him ideally suited to represent the people of Ealing Southall. We wanted to provide him with our backing and joining the Conservative Party sends the clearest possible message.

Locally since Conservatives took control of Ealing Council in May 2006 we have noticed that they have been making great strides towards trying to improve the quality of life for all our residents. We’ve finally reached the stage where it has become blatantly obvious that we would be doing own voters a great disservice if we continue to dogmatically stick with a disorganised and divided Labour Party. Our goal is to see genuine improvements for our residents. We believe that the Conservative Party now provides our community with greater opportunities and is genuinely interested in improving services for all.

At a national level we are extremely impressed by David Cameron’s modern Conservatives and, with the changes that he has now made, we feel that the Conservative Party now best represents our views. In a sense we believe the
Conservatives have become our natural home and we are very excited about the opportunity to play a full part in a Party which we believe is destined to form the next government.

We are due to have a Conservative Group meeting tonight so it will no doubt be an interesting evening.

Sam Coates, writing in today’s Times, reckons that Tony Lit is the man to beat in Ealing Southall. Both the LibDems and Labour have selected grey men. The only thing that can get in the way of Lit’s momentum is the short, three week campaign. With week one gone and two weeks to go there is everything to play for.

The Pickled Politics blog covers politics, often with an Asian angle. In a posting today they reckon that Labour will select Cllr Virendra Sharma tonight and that things will not go well for Labour in Southall. They reckon that:

It is now almost a given that Cllr Virendra Sharma will be the Labour party candidate running for the Ealing Southall seat. This is a huge shame because, as one party member told me earlier this morning, they have traded one old and out-of-touch fogey for another.

They also endorsed Tony Lit, saying:

The only one who has brand recognition is Tony Lit.

It appears that yesterday Labour’s NEC chose 2 candidates to go before local members tonight, Sharma plus Jo Sidhu. Other prominent Labout councillors such Sonika Nirwal and Gurcharan Singh did not make the cut. Apparently Sidhu is an Oxford-educated barrister. Great.