Archive for August 8th, 2008

Arrogance Unbounded

Published by Iain on August 8, 2008 in National Comment and Salford. 1 Comment

Tim Roll-Pickering has a very interesting post about the Labour reaction to a shock local by-election loss in London. Rather than reflecting on how they might do better, senior London Labour figures instead talked of returning the Church Street seat to the “rightful owners”. Charming – so much for democracy!

It’s an attitude I recognise well from the Labour Party in Salford. Every time they lose a Council seat, they act as if the electorate have had a collective “voter moment” – of course they meant to vote Labour, it was just an accident that they put the cross in the other box, it won’t happen again, honest guv! This arrogance – taking local residents completely for granted – is one of the (many) reasons why the Labour Party in Salford keeps on losing seats and why their vote share is heading through the floor.

I won my seat from Labour in 2004. At my first Council Meeting, a senior Labour Councillor talked about Walkden South “temporarily” voting Conservative – the implication being at the next election local residents would see sense and vote Labour again. In 2006 I stumbled across the then Labour candidate canvassing and we overheard a colleague of his say “it’s in the bag”. He lost by nearly 500.

Conservative Councillors in Salford will never take the local community for granted like that.

How Not To Run Housing Policy

Published by Iain on August 8, 2008 in National Comment. 0 Comments

I’m a bit baffled by the Government’s dithering over a potential stamp duty holiday. By allowing the speculation to run to such an extent, they’ve exacerbated the very problem they were trying to alleviate. One can only imagine how many potential deals will now fall through as buyers wait for the mooted stamp duty relief to arrive. Daft.