Ealing Southall and Sedgefield by-elections thread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Now that the writs have been moved, this thread be created.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There has been a lot of buzz about Reg Keys running for the Lib Dems in Sedgefield, but nothing is confirmed.

He has no ties to the area and didn't exactly do that well in 2005. The most likely LibDem candidate is Greg Stone (a Newcastle counciller, and not exactly a very strong candidate himself).
I've heard some interesting names mentioned for Labour candidate though.

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Um... why would they want to do that?

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The LibDems don't stand much of a chance either. The thing about Sedgefield is that in a majority of the constituency, only one party ever polls above single digits. There are plenty of non-Labour voters in the Darlington commuter villages and in Sedgefield itself, but not in Newton Aycliffe (the biggest town in the constituency). And there are even less of them in the string of old pit villages between Spennymoor and Peterlee (where during General Elections, little red signs sprout up like weeds just about everywhere).
In all honesty, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the BNP finished second in Sedgefield.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The guy they ran last time IIRC. An interesting choice given his less-than-stellar record in local elections.

Despite the surname he's based out in the west of the seat, btw. Going to be a "fun" race; hopefully the very short campaign period means that the nastiness that has defaced recent by-elections will have less time to build up.

Hah. Maybe in Sedgefield, but West London politics is nasty, full stop.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh, and the three candidates most likely to get the Labour nod in Sedgefield (barring the national party parachuting someone in) are Phil Wilson, Dr Simon Henig and Pat McCourt. McCourt is the furthest Left of the three (and is the son of a well known local politician), Wilson is the favourite (and is apparently quite close to John Burton; Blair's former agent and a quintessential Durham machine politician), while Henig is the Deputy Leader of Chester-le-Street District Council, a political academic and the son of Stan Henig (M.P for Lancaster in the '60's) and Ruth Henig (now a Life Peer).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Keyes has no links to the area (he lives near Bala IIRC).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Labour have selected Wilson in Sedgefield; he looks like a strong candidate (mind you, so did some of the other names) and shouldn't have any trouble becoming an M.P.

And the Labour shortlist in Southall reads as follows:

1. Jo Sidhu
2. Virendra Sharma

Sonika Nirwal didn't make the shortlist; to the surprise of many. Sidhu is a lawyer (I think) while Sharma is a longtime local counciller and is now the favourite for the Labour nod.

Another candidate that failed to make the shortlist (Gurcharan Singh) is rumoured to be thinking about standing as an Independent; no idea whether that's just idle speculation or not though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Naturally, I'm very relieved that the Lib Dems have parachuted Greg Stone into Sedgefield

Ditto. A pity that he took down that nasty little website that he runs down a few days ago though.

Btw, who's running the Labour campaign in Sedgefield?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ditto. A pity that he took down that nasty little website that he runs down a few days ago though.

Not this one I take it http://gregstone.org.uk/

Dave

No, not that one. He used to run a site called "Labour Watch" which was... erm... "special"... even by the standards of politics on teh interwebs.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Virendra Sharma - a Hindu, not a Sikh - will be Labour's candidate in Ealing Southall. RESPECT's candidate is Salvinder Dhillon.

My prediction is wrong already. Damn. Mind you, I said that before I knew that it wouldn't be AWS.

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Also known as Croydon Loony.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ditto. A pity that he took down that nasty little website that he runs down a few days ago though.

Not this one I take it http://gregstone.org.uk/

Dave

No, not that one. He used to run a site called "Labour Watch" which was... erm... "special"... even by the standards of politics on teh interwebs.

"Special" in so far that it distorts, lies and character assassinates

Dave

Yep. I look forward to seeing him lose. Again.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(but at the same time their by-election form and the potential for a influx of LibDem activist from across the south east will make up for this to a certain extent).

Not just from the South East. From everywhere (even their Sedgfield site had, when a checked it a few days ago, had things on it encouraging people to campaign in Ealing...), which is why, despite ghastly local results, they can't be written off.

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Trouble with by-elections is that everyone thinks they're doing well (until late in the campaign o/c). I've heard all sorts of contradictory rumours out of Ealing...

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In Southall?!!?! Minimise is possible, overcoming isn't. Though the candidate picked is less likely to cause more internal problems than most (which is why he was picked, basically. Interesting to note that the two most divisive candidates were kept off the shortlist...), even if he's a bit of a town hall hack.

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In one word; yes. Actually I'm not sure that Stone is Geordie (IIRC he moved to Newcastle as a student or something), not that that'll be of much help either.
I gather that Labour hecklers have had much fun calling on him to, erm, "go back" (yes... that's it... "go back"...) to Tyneside.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Five Labour councillers in Southall have defected to the Tories. Here be their names...

Manjit Singh, Gurcharan Singh, Maninder Kaur Keith, Jarnail Singh Jandu, Jagdish Gupta.

About as ugly as it looks o/c, and I can't quite work out which party this is good news for... (the bolded name be the reason for this).

I gather that some senior Tories are/have tried to make a big deal out of this? Frankly I'm sadder about that than about the loss of Gurcharan Singh and his cronies...

In other Southall news, one Indie candidate (Golbash Singh) has endorsed the Tory candidate (he was a Tory candidate in the 2006 elections, so that's nay a big surprise), while another (Kuldeep Singh Grewal) has endorsed the Labour candidate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Surly good news for Lit and the Tories (in terms of momentum if nothing else)...

You'd think so but... Gurcharan Singh? Depending on some things that I don't know, this could help any of the three parties...

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He says that he has a huge, huge personal vote. But communialist machine politicians (of all parties) say a lot of things, and councillers in Southall aren't generally that well regarded.

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There isn't a single Sikh community in Southall; there's a marked division between what you could think as more orthodox Sikh's (like Gurcharan Singh) and more secular Sikhs (like the late Piara Khabra).

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From what I can tell, that's exactly what it is. The N.E.C seems to have been well aware that Gurcharan Singh (and cronies) might do something like this if denied the nomination that he'd assumed was his by right (he was a vocal opponent of an AWS for this reason; not only that but, unlike Peter Law, he didn't even bother to hide it...) but kept him off it anyway. I gather that the general assumption was that he would probably run as an Independent, rather than cross the floor (there are all sorts of rumours, which I'm not repeating here as they may technically be libel, as to why he reached the decision that he did).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This thought can't lead to anything beyond mere speculation, but I'd imagine this constituency has a fairly large Polish community, given Ealing was well-known for having a large Polish community even before recent Polish immigration..

Ealing as a borough yes, but not really this part of it. Acton proper has a large Polish community (as does Hammersmith over the borough boundary) and Northolt's had one since the War.

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None; most are not British citizens, yet (as E.U. citizens they can vote in Euro/Local elections, and some did).
A lot will be soon though as they seem to be following the same sort of pattern as previous groups of immigrants (the overwhelming majority of West Indian immigrants, for example, intended to return home after a few years) as regards settling here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Councillor Zahida Abbas Noori (Broadway ward).

Judging by the name not a Sikh Cllr either(?),

Looks like a Muslim name. And thus still reeks of Communalism and/or Factionalism. I suspect that all of Gurcharan Singh's cronies on the council will cross the floor as well (if they haven't all already done so already).

I'm beginning to get quite angry at what seems to be going on and the extremely ugly reasons for it, though not quite as angry as I am about the fact that Gurcharan Singh (who turns out to be an extremist with links to some charming organisations...) wasn't thrown out of the Labour Party years ago...
All the three major parties have been far too accomodating to people like him for decades.

All in all (and considering some of the other sh*t that's been going on) this looks set to be the nastiest by-election since Bermondsey.

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In other news, I've just noticed that one of the candidates in Sedgefield (Paul Gittins) is a counciller in Newton Aycliffe.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Full list of candidates for both elections:

Ealing Southall
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6283832.stm

What's this David Cameron's Conservatives lark ? He's not Indira Gandhi

Dave

If Cameron was Indira Gandhi, Gurcharan Singh certainly wouldn't have endorsed Lit!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In relation to my previous point, didn't the Greens once do surprisingly well in a Bradford ward because theirs was the only candidate who was white?

Not a ward but a constituency; Bradford West in 2001. Most of the Green vote in that seat from 2001 voted BNP in 2005. The Greens did actually have a counciller in the constituency until this year (when he lost his seat to Labour) but the sort of people who vote Green in local elections in Heaton ward aren't exactly the sort of people that voted Green in 2001...

There are actually other (and also rather ugly) similarities between the current situation in Ealing Southall and past (hopefully...) situations in Bradford West... but at least the Tories aren't running Gurcharan Singh as their candidate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Odd; apparently Cllr. Noori hasn't defected to the Tories after all.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Getting stranger

Fixed your post.

Hopefully things won't get even worse next week, but I'm now quite sure that that's a rather foolish hope... I mean, I'm almost expecting to hear news of a campaign office going up in flames...

You know, I've been slowly coming around to the idea that by-elections manage to represent just about everything that's wrong with British Politics for some time, but I'd not quite believed it until the past few days.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Put bluntly, whether more defections happen or not depends on what possible defectors are being offered by various people.

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This is, if you pardon my Francais, bollocks. It's well known that Khabra and Gurcharan Singh hated each other (hell I knew that before I knew anything else, beyond very basic details, about a certain former Mayor of Ealing...) and even better known that Khabra actually supported an AWS for Ealing Southall.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

BTW, any one know whether the swing to the Conservatives in the 2006 borough elections was more against the government or, the then Labour controlled, Ealing Borough Council ?. Because if it was the latter, the by-election might not as bad for Labour

Mainly against Ealing BC; some tram scheme was extremely unpopular there for whatever reason. IIRC some of the Southall results were quite odd when compared with the GLA figures, though I canst remember quite how...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just when you thought the Ealing Southall by-election couldn't get any wierder...

It's just emerged that Lit donated Labour £4,800 last month.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What about the following? Lab hold Ealing Southall but challenged by the Lib Dems by less than 2%, with the Conservatives beaten into fourth by Respect?

Would be very funny, but won't happen.

One prediction that I will make, is that the LibDems will probably throw everything they have (and from just about everywhere) at Ealing Southall over the next few days.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Some early predictions (these will change as the week goes on, obviously)...

Labour to hold Sedgefield easily with the LibDems second. Not sure how well the other parties will do. Turnout will be low. Basically it would take freak turnout patterns for Labour to lose and, from what I've heard, that's not very likely (turnout will probably be down everywhere).

I think that Labour will also hold Ealing Southall, by about 2,000 votes or so (last week I'd have said a thousand). But I'm much less sure of that than my Sedgefield prediction... and I've no idea which party will come second. Most things about this by-election seem to be uncertain.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The following post appeared on Tom Watson's blog earlier today:

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