Derby North Pivotal to the Conservatives forming the next Government

Very Interesting Article in the Times.

Confirming that Derby North will be pivotal in the Conservatives forming the next Government at the general Election.



Landslide win for Conservatives may bury Labour’s big names

Some of Labour’s best-known MPs, including Margaret Beckett and Jacqui Smith as well as ten ministers, are predicted to lose their seats in the event of a landslide election defeat.
Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, has suggested that Labour could lose between 100 and 150 seats.

The most recent Populus poll for The Times reinforces this analysis. It gives the Conservatives a 14 point lead over Labour — equivalent to a 7 per cent swing from Labour to the Tories — which would see them take 143 seats from the Government.

The most prominent names to lose their seats in this case would include Ms Smith, a former Home Secretary, who has a 1,948 majority in Redditch, Mrs Beckett, a former Foreign Secretary, which would take a shift of 2,755 votes in Derby South, Barbara Follett, the Stevenage MP, whose lead is 3,451, and Glenda Jackson, the Hampstead MP, whose majority is 1,134.

Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, is the most vulnerable Cabinet minister, sitting on a 6,657 majority in Renfrewshire East.

Other casualties from ministerial ranks would include Bill Rammell in Harlow, Jim Knight in Dorset South, Michael Wills in Swindon North, Ann Keen in Brentford & Isleworth, Vernon Coaker in Gedling, Shahid Malik in Dewsbury, Ian Austin in Dudley North and Mike O’Brien in Warwickshire North.

Tony McNulty, who is under investigation for his housing allowanceclaims, is also vulnerable in Harrow East, and former Cabinet ministers Ruth Kelly and John Hutton could have lost their seats if they were not already standing down.

John Curtice, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, said the swing to the Tories was fairly consistent across England and Wales.

“If you look at local election results there aren’t signs of the Tories advancing less in the north than in the south — the change in Tory vote share has been fairly consistent.

“Eric Pickles [Conservative Party chairman] will tell you that he is concentrating on marginal seats in London, the West Midlands and Yorkshire. A decapitation strategy is a waste of time — in the Labour Party, all the Cabinet ministers are now in safe seats.”

A modest increase in the Tory vote over its current polling position would be even worse for Labour.

Those Cabinet ministers and party heavyweights who would be at risk if the Tories gain an eight or nine point swing from Labour include Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, whose Edinburgh South West seat has a 7,242 majority and Jon Cruddas, torchbearer for the Left, who holds on to Dagenham & Rainham. Ben Bradshaw in Exeter and John Denham in Southampton Itchen could be vulnerable in the event of a Tory landslide.

However, Professor Curtice cautioned against expectations that Mr Murphy and Mr Darling could lose their seats.

“The biggest factor is that the Tories aren’t making advances in Scotland. The big, indeed only, regional variation is Scotland versus England and Wales. In Scotland the Tory party has made very little advance. It’s the SNP that are up. The consequence is that Darling and Murphy are safer than they appear.”

The most extensive analysis of the hurdles the Conservative Party need to overcome in order to form the next government has been carried out by Anthony Wells on the political website UK Polling Report.

He says that the Tories need to win Stourbridge, 25 on its target list of Labour seats, to cost Labour its overall majority. They need Dudley South, number 73, to become the largest party and Derby North, number 130, to win an overall majority.

Boundary changes mean that 12 seats already held by Labour have already, notionally, been lost, with 11 going Tory and one going to the Lib Dems. These include the Wirral West seat of Stephen Hesford, the ministerial aide to the Attorney-General who resigned last week during the row over Baroness Scotland of Asthal’s cleaner. Under boundary changes in place at the next election, the Tories already nominally hold his seat with a majority of 283.

The Article is available at:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6851739.ece

Thousands of Lib Dems are choosing the Conservative Party

We have a very simple message for Liberal Democrat voters this week: the Conservative Party is the only party that can bring the change we need.

Of course, we are not expecting them to become card carrying members of the Conservative Party overnight.

Instead, we are asking them to help form a progressive alliance to get rid of this failed Labour Government.

An alliance built on our shared aims of personal freedom, a commitment to the environment, and a desire to protect the most vulnerable at home and in the rest of our world.

Eric Pickles gave a speech on Friday setting out why he believes Lib Dem voters should lend us their vote - you can read the full speech here.

Attending the speech were a number of senior Liberal Democrats who have decided to join us in our movement for change. And in the exclusive video above, you can see David Cameron talking to them about why they did so.

Reality has caught up with Gordon Brown

On Tuesday, after months of denying it, Gordon Brown finally admitted that spending had to be cut. So at last he is catching up with reality.

The public spending debate can often get bogged down in the language of deficits, forecasts and balance sheets but it really is this simple: Britain's in a debt crisis. We're borrowing far, far too much money. And unless we cut public spending, we're all going to pay the price - with higher taxes, higher interest rates and lower confidence in our economy for the long-term.

So why on earth has it taken the Government so long to realise this? For months, we've been telling them that they need to get a grip on our national finances. And all across the country, families and businesses have been working out how to trim their own costs and live within their means. But the Government seems to have been entirely asleep on the job.

It didn't have to be like this. On Wednesday, the Conservatives were handed leaked documents from the Treasury. These showed that as far back as April, Gordon Brown's officials were drawing up plans to cut public spending by nearly ten per cent. So all the time that Gordon Brown was adamant in public that spending could continue to rise, in private his figures showed otherwise. He was, not for the first but hopefully for the very last time, taking people for fools.

Add that to the election that never was, the bungling over the abolition of the ten pence tax rate, the evasiveness about the release of al-Megrahi, and we have a Prime Minister who can't be straight with people about what he really thinks.

Cutting the cost of politics

The seasons might be changing but this Groundhog Day Government certainly isn't. Labour came back from their summer holidays promising a fresh approach - more honesty and more realism about the state of the public finances. But after all the spin the most striking thing about Alistair Darling's speech was what he didn't say. He still couldn't bring himself to utter the word 'cuts' and there were no new commitments to reduce spending.

What's more he didn't address the fundamental inconsistency in Labour's argument. He says he'll reduce the deficit once the recession is over, yet his own forecasts expect growth to resume at the end of this year. So why on earth are they still planning to increase spending next year by £30 billion? Simple - there's a general election around the corner and for Labour, doing the right thing lost out long ago to political calculation.

On the same day David Cameron gave a speech that showed our approach is the exact opposite. David was honest about the scale of the challenge, and that cuts have to be made. He said we had to start dealing with the debt as soon as possible, and that the extra £30 billion is simply too much. David also set out new commitments to reduce spending by cutting the cost of politics. The whole pampered, profligate apparatus of modern politics has got to be trimmed back. The chauffeur-driven cars, the subsidised food, the public affairs consultants, Ministers' pay, even the number of MPs - all have to be cut.

People say this is a stunt. When the deficit is £175 billion, saving £120 million isn't going to make a massive difference. We know that. But this isn't just about the money - it's the message it sends out. This country is in a debt crisis. We must all now come together, play our part, carry our burden and pay our fair share. And that starts at the very top - with politicians cutting the cost of politics.

Lessons from the past

This week was the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War. It's a time to remember all those who fought, died and sacrificed for Britain. But it's a time, too, to remember the lessons.


Some of those lessons apply in Afghanistan today. We're fighting a ferocious war and after eight years there still seems to be no end in sight. Our troops lack vital equipment, especially helicopters. Many people want Ministers to explain more clearly what our troops are fighting for. And that anxiety is now really affecting the Government, with the resignation of an aide to the Defence Secretary. It's clear we cannot go on as we are.


We need to make it clear to the British people why we're in Afghanistan. It's simple - to stop terrorism here in Britain. We must help the Afghans to stop their country from once again hosting the world's most dangerous terrorists. So we need to train and equip the Afghan army to root out terrorists, and to support them until they can do this for themselves.


We must make sure our soldiers have the tools they need - more counter-IED capability, more helicopters, more surveillance drones, more heavily armoured vehicles, and more transport aircraft. We must support their families here in Britain, and give every assistance to the injured.


And to do all these things we need one thing more than anything else - leadership. That's something that's been desperately lacking. We've had four defence secretaries in as many years; the last one was part-time and the current one ranks 21st out of 23 in the Cabinet. That's not a great starting point when we're fighting a conflict thousands of miles away. This is a new kind of war, it's a necessary war, and we need strong leadership and relentless focus to explain that to people in Britain.


The lessons of 1939 show that Britain can turn things around in war. Six years of effort later, we won the war. I'm confident we can see success in Afghanistan. I like many know what a tremendous job our servicemen and women do. It's time they got the right kind of support from the Government at home.