Peter- well one of the great things about Rossendale and Darwen is that so many of the wards are tightly fought, especially the Rossendale ones. If you look at the 2013 CC elections, Labour won Whitworth pretty cleanly but had leads in the low hundreds in the rest of its Rossendale divisions and the Tories won Rossendale West by 32. All is still to play for.

I should stress that I think a Labour win is a perfectly plausible scenario- after all, it can be something of a high swing constituency- but I am more inclined than most to give Jake Berry a chance.

Votes cast in the NE Lincolnshire wards (no election in the two N Lincolnshire wards, Barton and Ferry):

UKIP 6,528
Con 5,773
Lab 4,452
Ind 513
LD 349
TUSC 279
Green 198

In the 2011 local elections both Barton and Ferry in North Lincs were easy Tory holds over Labour, so we can probably say Labour wouldn’t have carried the constituency this year, although we can’t say whether the Tories or UKIP would have won it.

2015

Bucket, Hyacinth (UKIP) 13,551
* Vickers (Con) 13,495
McIsaac (Lab) 13,488
Neil (LD) 1,858

Maj 56

UKIP GAIN from Con

Lots of recounts

Yes, that was a witty prediction Joe. Who’s Neil, the Lib Dem candidate, incidentally?

You can imagine Hyacinth correcting the returning officer’s pronunciation of her last name right after her result is called out.

Ha ha indeed. Would Richard stand as the Labour candidate for Rugby?

Richard is definitely a Lib Dem.

The Conservatives have recovered quite well in this seat since 1997, and they are now a full 8.7% ahead of where they were then. Labour are now well behind where they were in 1997, by some 19%, which I think is significant.

This seat like at least 20-30 others – one where the CON/UKIP/right wing split will hand LAB a win.

Is it possible Nigel Farage will try a rapprochement between the Tories?? and UKIP & decide not to put candidates in seats where there’s a eurosceptic Tory??.

He did this of course in Clacton and Rochester for GE2010 and has indicated in the past that he may do this nationally (in selected seats)

Let’s look at 14 ‘eurosceptic’ CON MPs who defied a 3 line whip, in Oct2011, on a motion demanding an EU referendum in 2013 – so they are genuine eurosceptics (at least).

They face losing their seats to LAB by small margins (predicted 4-10% because of a significant UKIP vote in the seat). These 14 MPs are:-

ANDREW (PUDSEY)
DE BOIS (ENFIELD N)
BYLES (WARWICKSHIRE N)
JACKSON (POSH)
MCCARTNEY (COLNE VALLEY)
MCCARTNEY (LINCOLN)
MILLS (AMBER VALLEY)
MOSLEY (CHESTER)
NUTTALL (BURY N)
OFFORD (HENDON)
REES-MOGG (SOMERSET N EAST)
REEVELL (DEWSBURY)
VICKERS (CLEETHORPES)
WALKER (WORCESTER

So do you think Farage not fielding a UKIP candidate in these seats is:-

a) very likely
b) probable
c) not very likely
d) c’est impossible

ty…deepthroat

Main party candidates:

Con: Martin Vickers
Lab: Peter Keith
LD: Roy Horobin
UKIP: Stephen Harness
Greens: Carol Thornton

The LD candidate from 2010 Malcolm Morland is standing again but this time for the TUSC.

Conservative Hold. 1,500 majority.

I think this will be closer than some think but still will be a CON hold in the 300-700 range.

” They face losing their seats to LAB by small margins (predicted 4-10% because of a significant UKIP vote in the seat). These 14 MPs are:-

ANDREW (PUDSEY)
DE BOIS (ENFIELD N)
BYLES (WARWICKSHIRE N)
JACKSON (POSH)
MCCARTNEY (COLNE VALLEY)
MCCARTNEY (LINCOLN)
MILLS (AMBER VALLEY)
MOSLEY (CHESTER)
NUTTALL (BURY N)
OFFORD (HENDON)
REES-MOGG (SOMERSET N EAST)
REEVELL (DEWSBURY)
VICKERS (CLEETHORPES)
WALKER (WORCESTER ”

How many were defeated and in how many of those constituencies did both the Conservative and the UKIP vote increase ?

Only De Bois, Mossley and Reevell lost and think the Conservative vote only fell (by less than 1%) in Peterborough and Enfield N

Upcoming Croft Baker ward by-election here should give a better read on UKIP’s fortunes than anyone else’s

This is a very good Conservative result – not that far off 1992 in percentage terms.

It is not out of line with some others in the region.
I did think Labour could narrow the majority a little.

Was Shona McIsaac a popular MP – could this be double incumbency?

Looks somewhat like a classic case of it I think yes- the Tories did even better in neighbouring Brigg and Goole with double incumbency as well, and I think Andrew Percy has built a strong personal vote there.

I had thought McIsaac seemed quite a good fit for the seat partly because she’s not a Metropolitan type, although eventually the overall swing went Conservative.
Martin Vickers and Andrew Percy (and David Davis) all seem to have built up strong votes in this region.

Both these seats look to be trending Tory in the longterm I think- Labour have equally lost out bigtime in the area as I suspect they’ve lost a lot of support among their old working class voters to UKIP.

l got the impression that McIsaac wasn’t particularly popular, and that Ian Cawsey in Brigg & Goole was supposed to be more so. However, in 2010, while both candidates did quite poorly, the result here for Labour was certainly less bad than in Brigg & Goole.

I wouldn’t be surprised if UKIP did Labour the net harm in this sub region. Although Labour has revived to a more respectable level in Davis’s case as the lib threat has been dealt with.

“l got the impression that McIsaac wasn’t particularly popular, and that Ian Cawsey in Brigg & Goole was supposed to be more so. However, in 2010, while both candidates did quite poorly, the result here for Labour was certainly less bad than in Brigg & Goole.”

That is certainly the case. Labour naturally has more resilience in Cleethorpes because of the coastal grot of the town, plus the suburbs of Grimsby and the port of Immingham.

Brigg & Goole is a more agricultural seat and the Labour strength in Goole is more of the post-industrial type that has faded away in recent elections. Ian Cawsey was very farmer-friendly compared to most Labour MPs and certainly did better than another candidate probably would have done.

The odd thing though is the Brigg and Goole seat still showed Labour quite resilient in 2005.

Sealed with a kiss for Runnymede… know how he loves a good by-election result..

Croft Baker (NE Lincs) result:
LAB 37.0% (-2.9)
CON 24.7% (-1.9)
LDEM 15.6% (+11.3)
UKIP 15.3% (-8.0)
GRN 3.2% (-0.7)
TUSC 4.1% (+2.3)

Local By-election result from NE Lincs Council:

Labour 758
UKIP 462
Con. 312
Green 40
TUSC 26

Interesting these seats nobody posts on now.
This was a key marginal seat not all that long ago, capable of springing an unpleasant surprise on both major parties.