Phil Taylor

The last 3 days has seen big efforts from the Northfield Conservative candidates to persuade the people of Northfield to vote for them. On Saturday and Sunday morning we delivered another leaflet to every home. This time we gave people a taste of what the local papers have been saying about Ealing council for the last couple of years. Not much of it good! On Sunday we got back to canvassing again, finishing off the last areas we have not got to so far. On Monday we started revisiting the people who were out last time we called.

I met our current Labour councillors on Carlyle Road on Saturday morning. They were talking to their own voters but were not knocking on all doors. We have been approaching all voters. Very few people are turning us away. Most Labour voters are miserable and happy to unload. A few are coming over to us but most seem to be intent on staying at home on Thursday. By Sunday the councillors were spotted in South Ealing Road about ready to give up because the response they were getting was so bad. No sign of the LibDems except for 3 or 4 of their bright orange signs saying that they are: “winning here”. Not likely.

On Tuesday night we were leafleting the tube stations at South Ealing and Northfield. This is experience slightly took the wind out of our sails. People in a hurry to get home don’t want to see yet another obstacle standing between them and their hearth. Maybe one in five took the leaflets with many muttering as they went past that we had their votes. I was impressed how polite and interested many people who you might think were not natural Tory voters were. Many new immigrants seem to be much less cynical about politics and happy to see local activists in their faces. Too many white, professional looking types were avoiding eye contact, tut-tutting and looking too important by far to engage with a mere candidate for the council.

Ealing Councillor David Scott was helping us canvas on Monday morning and Stewart Jackson, MP for Peterborough, was out canvassing on Tuesday evening. Thanks for your help.

According to the Ealing Times yesterday, Labour council leader, Leonora Thomson, is under threat from one of her fellow Labour councillors, Lady Margaret ward councillor and ex-mayor Gurcharan Singh.

The Times points out that with two suspended councillors the woes of the ruling Labour group are multiplying. Councillor Joginder Saroe has been suspended in the expectation of a damning report from the Standards Board. Councillor Richard Porter resigned following an unpleasant re-selection battle.

I googled Singh just now and found that apart from being deputy mayor he has his own website. He has obviously gone to the trouble of registering a domain name to support his bid for power but otherwise “This site is currently under construction”. There is though a Labour logo and a photo of himself. If I were him I might make the photo a little smaller.

Labour are rolling out the Chameleon Party Political Broadcast again today. Follow link for a preview. It does seem a bit rubbish that Labour are wasting their national TV airtime on a cartoon. Even when they raise issues they are raising the 14 year old ERM exit after they have been in power for 9 years. Maybe they think that by reminding local election voters about supposed past Tory economic incompetence they will forget Labour’s incompetence in every area from prisons and unfettered immigration to the NHS.

Even the Tory incompetence slur is unsustainable if you review the facts:

• in 1992 John Smith and Gordon Brown were in favour of the ERM as were most of the chattering class economics commentators at the time
• interest rates hit 15% for less than a day, they were 10% the day before, 10.5% the day after, 9% a week later and 8% a month later
• the regime of monetary policy that Norman Lamont put in place after the ERM debacle was taken over by New Labour and given to the Bank of England and is the basis for Britain’s relative out performance ever since
• Gordon Brown, being the worst kind of partisan politician, will not acknowledge his predecessors and their permitting Brown and Ed Balls to meet with the Bank of England before they came to power to ensure economic continuity
• the ERM thing cost a lot less than is popularly imagined (ie £3.3 billion estimated by the Treasury see article)
• this figure is only slightly more than the £2 billion plus (see Scotsman or Times) that Brown allowed the Treasury to waste by selling our gold reserves early.

Maybe Labour should tell us how it is going to sort out the Home Office and make our young women safe from being murdered by foreign criminals with long records who seem to be to enter the country easily (and just disappear again after their prison sentences in the unlikely event that they are caught).

chiswickw4.com published some analysis of the Ealing local elections last week. See article.

It seems like there is all to play for. Off out canvassing now. The LibDems seem to have abandoned Northfield and the Labour activity seems pretty desultory. Either they are complacent and don’t think that they need to do much to win or they have given up already.

You might be interested in attending KRA’s public election meeting on Thursday at 8am at St John’s Church Hall. Most of the Walpole candidates should be there. Follow link for poster.