Wolf: I think you’re confusing political assistants, with paid party workers. Political assistants are council officers with politically restricted roles. They are employed to provide admin and research support for groups of councillors, not to do party political work and they are not allowed to campaign on behalf of a particular party in elections etc. A party worker or organiser, whose role might be to build up and support a local party, would be paid for and work for the party, which is completely different. Norwich Greens have both - someone the local party pays to help with the day to day running of the local party, and a council officer employed to support them in carrying out their role as the main opposition. This thread has rather gone off at a tangent, sorry!

My prediction - too close to call - with a dogfight next door in Kemptown and the high profile of the Greens it is possible that Labour could hang on to a seat that would be otherwise predicted as a Conservative gain by less than 1000

The latest Bank of England forcast is that the UK will go into recession for at least 2 quarters.

I think the economic outlook will cost Labour in seats like this.

Whoever said Labour would either be in 1st or 2nd place? I think Labour could come third here, in the event of a large defeat.

Agree with Peter on this one, despite earlier predictions of a Labour hold third places looks credible. I would think either the Tories will take it by a small margin or the Greens will persuade the Labour voters that they are the only chance of stopping the Tories and they get the seat with a larger margin.
Kemptown looks on the face of it that the Tories will gain it though they will never be looking at a massive majority, more a case of the left vote being split three ways with the Greens likely to add a good 5-6% to their tally. I would think Lib-Dem collapse here unless they get some miracle polls is inevitable.

I also think the retirement of David Lepper will not help Labour. He may have a large personal vote

Labour can still collapse to a considerable extent here and hold on, thanks to the split opposition (and as JJB points out a large part of their collapse has already occurred - from nearly 55% in 1997). I actually see the order of the parties being the same as last time but with the top three all being much closer together: something like 30/28/27. A victory by either Tory or Green is possible ofcourse, but neither is the likeliest outcome IMO