Brown’s adminstration is starting to have all the hallmarks of John Major’s in 1992 - although poll ratings don’t yet bear that out

The Tories are being relatively quiet at the moment - knowing that the government is quite capable of causing enough problems for itself - as the past month or so has proved

With 2010 the most likely date, I really can’t see Brown’s government recovering in time to actually win an election - not when the Murdoch papers revert to supporting the Tories

His best hope rests on a coalition deal with the Lib Dems (and possibly nationalist parties?) although that assumes the Lib Dems will still have enough MPs to form a coalition government, and this is bounfd to eventually backfire as all cross-party coalitions tend to

My money’s on the Tories

Folloing Simon Locke and Pete Whitehead’s comments, the opinion polls seem to have settled at a point where this seat is very marginal.

There seems to have been little discussion for this seat of issues that might affect the result - to an outsider flooding would appear an obvious one - but this is a seat where effective campaigning and local issues may well affect the result.

The major parties appear to think in terms of the seats that will turn the Westminster majority. Many of these are suburban seats with a lot of newish not very good quality owner-occupied estates. It is beginning to look as though the die has been cast in these seats by an impending mortgage criris and financial recesssion, whatever is done locally. The next layer of seats disproportionately includes medium sized Midlands and Southern English established towns, and Gloucester is a good example. These are the seats that on current opinion polls look up for grabs. Holding or losing them may only affect the size of a Tory majority in 2010, but if Labour loses seats like this English voters may think afresh how to regroup behind a more credible alternative for when the Cameron government in turn gets past its “sell by” date.

The next layer of seats disproportionately includes medium sized Midlands and Southern English established towns, and Gloucester is a good example.

Yes - these are the essential battleground seats IMO; most of the first wave of seats look doomed. Unless Labour can change their overall position in the next few months (very unlikely, IMO), their best bet appears to be to minimise the damage and concentrate, in seats like Gloucester, on getting their vote out and in screwing down the LDs.

Funny you should say that, ASC. Exeter was a great result for us this May.

I think i would agree with ASC’s observation re: Exeter, but not Gloucester and Worcester. I know Anthony King made quite a big deal about the Conservatives not winnning control of Worcester early on the evening of May 1st but one has to look beyond that kind of headline ‘result’ as to what seats were available for them to win in order to deliver control. The fact is there were no real marginal seats up which the Conservati8ves could gain - there was one long shot whichthey almost did win. I havent toalled the figures for these areas but I would expect that the votes cast in both Gloucester and Worcester would have shown a substantial Tory lead over Labour. One often finds in towns of this size that FPTP works against the Conservatives because their vote is heavily concentrated in a minority of safe wards which means that the Tories can win a big lead in the popular vote without winning control of the council. This was always the case in Watford also, before the LDs got in on the act. Therefore the fact that the Conservatives did not win majority control in places like Gloucester and Worcester is no in itself indicative of an inabilty to win the parliamentary seats.