Southall is probably comparable demographically to Brent East or Leicester South.

The Hindu and Sikh vote is a stronger prop for the Labour vote in Southall than in the other two - they were, naturally, much less inclined to rebel over Iraq.

Ealing C&A is winnable for Jon Ball especially with the benefit of having had a significant part of the new constituency heavily worked for him - lots of voter ID and the spectacle of “David Cameron’s Conservative” coming in 3rd.

I’m not convinced. There are no good recent examples I can think of where a Liberal/Alliance/LD second place provided enough momentum to actually win the seat. The nearest example would be the LD gain of Chesterfield in 2001, after gradual advances stemming from the Liberal second place in the 1984 bye which put Tony Benn in; but that took seventeen years to achieve. Secondly, LD success is usually based on a situation where one or other of the main parties is naturally weak in an area. This certainly isn’t the case in Ealing, where both Labour and the Tories are highly competitive. The Conservatives, in addition to their strength on the ground, had already been working the area covered by the new seat for Angie Bray before the bye. Voters are quite capable of distinguishing between Southall, which has never elected a Conservative as an independent constituency, and Ealing Central and Acton.

Ealing has not been profitable country for the third party whatever it was called(Liberal,Alliance,Lib Dem) certainly in the time I have lived in the area which goes back to 1980.They’ve never held more than a handful of seats on the council for instance.Nigel Bakhai’s performance in last year’s by-election was surprisingly good for them and they certainly thought they could have reduced the majority further had the campaign been longer.They don’t stand much chance of winning the seat under the new boundaries.It is however a mistake to think of Southall as the Sikh/Hindu stronghold it was years ago.Many Punjabis have now moved away and Southall consists increasingly of newer immigrants from Somalia and Sri Lanka.The Lib Dems have held one ward in Acton for several years and have had a couple of seats in Central Ealing but I can’t seeing them winning the Parliamentary election.

London 2008 results - Ealing Central & Acton (new boundaries):
{Excluding postal votes}

Mayor:
C - 13,568 (43.91%), Lab - 11,252 (36.41%), LD - 3,489 (11.29%), Green - 1,267 (4.10%)

Constituency Vote, (Ealing&Hillingdon):
C - 12,787 (41.78%), Lab - 7,440 (24.31%), LD - 4,541 (14.84%), Green - 3,419 (11.17%)

List:
C - 11,420 (37.15%), Lab - 7,813 (25.42%), LD - 3,989 (12.98%), Green - 3,444 (11.20%)

POSTAL VOTES for whole of Ealing:

Mayor: C - 4,155 (41.79%), Lab - 3,777 (37.99%), LD - 1,034 (10.40%), Green - 352 (3.54%)

Constituency: C - 4,129 (41.44%), Lab - 2,878 (28.88%), LD - 1,241 (12.45%), Green - 828 (8.31%)

List: C - 3,752 (37.66%), Lab - 2,923 (29.34%), LD - 1,023 (10.27%), Green - 736 (7.39%)

Ealing Central & Acton represented 37.01% / 36.82% / 36.84% of non-postal Ealing votes for the 3 sections respectively.

Or Con “win” - but I’m broadly in agreement.

Thats rubish. The Lib dems will win this by an 8000 majority.

What ever happened to Gloy Plopwell

This is going to be fascinating and for us it depends how much we can squeeze Labour. Slaughter is toast. This is a Lib-Dem Tory battle that could go either way.

Slaughter may or may not be toast, but it’s of limited relevance, as he’s gone with the rest of the constituency into the re-created Hammersmith. Labour may be in poor health here, but they still managed to get double the LD strength here in the GLA elections, and - unlike other areas of London - there’s no real evidence of LD strength in much of this constituency apart from a couple of wards.

Richard Barnes carried every ward in this constituency on the constituency vote. The LIberal Democrats will not be a contender in this constituency at all - they will do well to get 20% here and I think a comfortable Tory lead over Labour of around 10%