Author: Phil

The Ealing Today forum is a lively and often thoughtful local discussion forum that is often contributed to by local councillors in Ealing.

Leon Markham kicked off a thread yesterday morning entitled “Who to vote for in this by-election”. I tend to stick to local issues on this blog and a few detailed issues that interest me. Here is my answer to a big question for a change:

By-elections do bring out the worst in political parties and I think that all three main parties have made mistakes over the last few weeks. The Labour party had the right to call the by-elections as it was their MPs who were incumbents so they have chosen the shortest possible timetable and thus helped to ensure a frenetic campaign. I suspect that we will all be glad when the avalanche of paper stops coming through the door on Thursday. I have had roughly 50 leaflets.

You have got three capable councillors in Northfield but being an MP is quite a different game and you have to hand it to Tony Lit that he has had the chutzpah to put himself forward for such a high profile campaign. If I had any ambitions to be an MP, I would not want to go through what he has gone through over the last three weeks. I don’t think that Tony Lit will bring great intellectual rigour to the Conservative party or strong policy ideas but he is someone with a good business brain who will ask awkward questions. The team needs a range of skills. Tony’s will be a useful addition to the mix.

For me the voting decision is simple. You have to go with the three main parties in spite of their failings. I am happy that the Greens are influential in our politics but they do not have a programme for government and are not a serious party in my view.

As an ex-(very)Young Liberal I have always had some sympathy with the SDP and the Liberal Democrats. Unfortunately, they often take positions that are unrealistic. Too often they think the state can fix things if only it is given enough cash. Wrong. We will never have a LibDem government. So for me it comes down to the choice we have had in British politics for the last 100 years. Labour or Conservative.

The modern Labour party is unrecognisable from that pre-1992 when John Major got the largest popular vote of any Prime Minister in history. A tribute to the Blair-Brown duopoly that has dominated British politics for 10 years. That project has had its day and the alternative is being created by David Cameron and a Tory party that is intent on change and intent on re-gaining power. Iain Duncan Smith’s Commission on Social Justice has shown that the new Conservative party will be as different from its predecessor as the new Labour party.

At some point in the next few years most British people will agree with this analysis and we will have a Conservative government. Ealing Southall is just a side show. A very entertaining one all the same. All we can do is send a signal. Do we believe in the Blair-Brown project or is it time for change?

Not only is it a duty to vote. It is a duty to choose too. Life is full of hard choices. Voting is one of them.

I spent the weekend in sunny Worthing visiting my parents so haven’t had the chance to comment on the toast dropping revelation that Tony Lit is a Labour donor. I read about it in my Dad’s Sunday Telegraph . Further examination though reveals that his company paid for a table at a Labour event that was aimed at Asian business people. He had been to a similar Conservative event a week before that. We knew Lit was a businessman – that is what we liked about him. Often business people think it is in the interests of their company to keep in with politicians and political parties. Fact of life.

The scanned image of the cheque made out to the Labour party gives us a clue as to what is behind this non-story. The Labour party are clearly windy about the Ealing Southall by-election so have leapt on this story. Whilst it might make a few Telegraph readers huff and puff over their cornflakes it is unlikely to ruffle many feathers in the constituency.

I suspect that this will backfire on Labour’s drive to restore its shaky finances. Whilst political donations should be public who would be a Labour donor? Whilst someone has obscured the sorting numbers on the bottom of the cheque most donors would be horrified to see an organisation they had supported revealing their banker and account name to the public along with the signature of one of their authorised signatories.

Much was made in the press of Brown’s cowardice whenever things got difficult for Blair. Some took to calling him Macavity Brown after TS Eliot’s Macavity, the cat who wasn’t there. During the Ealing Southall by-election Ming Campbell has visited the constituency four times. He has no choice. Without a good result here he is finished. David Cameron visited for the third time yesterday. He is able to relax and enjoy sticking it to both Labour and the LibDems. Coming from third place in a seat which was hitherto not a natural Tory area means that the only way is up. Like Campbell Brown has much to lose too. A bad result in Ealing Southall will mark an early end to his honeymoon if his gaffe prone foreign policy team haven’t already achieved that. Is he in Ealing Southall flying the flag? No. Too busy. Too scared.

Great coverage today for the Tories in the Telegraph, Independent and Guardian (who managed to get the result in the Hounslow by-election on Thursday wrong – it was in fact a Tory hold).

David Cameron visited Ealing Southall for the third time today in support of Tony Lit’s by-election campaign, click to enlarge cutting from the Evening Standard below:

From the red and brown sauce bottles in the background Cameron had clearly just popped in for a bacon sarnie.

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.