116 Responses to “Salisbury”

1. Joseph Brayson

   He was the Senator from Ohio from 1974 to 1999.

   June 20th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
2. Harry Porter

   Yes indeed he was – I’d forgotten that! Of course, every US state has two senators, so he was one of them.

   June 20th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
3. Barnaby JL Marder

   and he ran for President too, but failed to gain the Democrat nomination. He was generally regarded as on the conservative wing of the party.

   June 20th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
4. John D

   A disappointingly small Tory majority, although it’s interesting to note that it wasn’t actually especially large in the ’80 / early ’90s either.

   In fact, the majority in 2001 was larger than in ’83 and ’92, and the 2005 majority was slightly larger than the ’87 one.

   Of course the reason for this was the split in the opposition vote from ’97-’05, but now it’s once again moved primarily behind the Libs.

   John Glen can comfort himself with the thought that there isn’t much more of a Labour vote left for the Lib Dems to squeeze, and that the Conservative vote share did at least increase (although it’s disappointing that it didn’t quite reach 50%).

   Anyway, for the next general election I’m more concerned about Tewkesbury than this seat.

   January 31st, 2011 at 3:36 pm
5. Shaun Bennett

   “Of course the reason for this was the split in the opposition vote from ’97-’05, but now it’s once again moved primarily behind the Libs.”

   Which is surely why this seat is safer than it looks on paper. At the next election, the support will be moving away from the Libs and behind Labour.

   So long as Labour remain strong in seats like this, the Tories can continue to hold them.

   January 31st, 2011 at 3:44 pm
6. Tim Jones

   ‘Which is surely why this seat is safer than it looks on paper.’

   This seat is pretty safe for the Tories anyway

   In 92 the Tories had a majority over the Lib Dems almost identicle to that in Winchester and yet whilst they took Winchester, they didn’t even come close here

   Maybe they had a weak candidate as right-winger Robert Key never struck me as a particularly formiddable opponent – although he was obviously popular or rather, more popular than John Glen whose majority has been halved

   but I agree that this is a lot safer for the Tories than it currently looks

   Would not the swing make it one of the worst resukts for the Tories in 2010

   January 31st, 2011 at 3:53 pm
7. John D

   “He even oposed the Good Friday Agreement when he was a shadow Northern Ireland spokesman.”

   To be fair there were some hard things to swallow as part of that agreement – such as setting murderers free.

   January 31st, 2011 at 5:05 pm
8. Tim Jones

   ‘To be fair there were some hard things to swallow as part of that agreement – such as setting murderers free.’

   That’s true John – and assuming your a Unionist I very much hope you are referring to the murderers on the loyalist side as well as the IRA

   I’m all for reconcilliation and with hindsight I don’t think anyone could argue that the Good Friday Agreement hasn’t been worth it – but I do wonder how necessary freeing people who had willfully murdered others was

   January 31st, 2011 at 5:10 pm
9. John D

   Yes indeed. A murderer is a murderer.

   January 31st, 2011 at 6:32 pm
10. Anthony Wells

    Tim – I used to have you on pre-moderation because I couldn’t trust you not to tour around seats putting up comments about how personally dispicable you found the Conservative MP. You seemed to have got it out of your system so I took you off of moderation.

    Please don’t start doing it again or I’ll have to go back to hand moderating all your posts.

    February 1st, 2011 at 2:55 pm
11. H.Hemmelig

    It wouldn’t be so bad if Tim’s criticisms were accurate and if he treated all parties equally. The fact that he doesn’t just makes his criticisms look like Lib Dem partisan froth.

    Robert Key certainly wasn’t particularly right-wing on most issues. For example, he was one of the few Tories to vote for an equal age of consent in 1994, and he was chair of the all-party group on preventing AIDS.

    He was completely loyal to John Major on Europe.

    February 1st, 2011 at 5:36 pm
12. Joe James B

    I’m not going to keep replying to them if they’re about that sort of thing
    because I’m just encouraging more (as he pretty much admitted on the Witham thread).

    (Tim does make good and informative posts aswell when he wants to,
    which I do want to reply to).

    I haven’t got out at Salisbury for many years, but used to stop off there on family holidays,
    and go through more recently on the way to Lyme Regis for sea rowing.

    This seat certainly seemed to suffer a swing to the Lib Dems perhaps as a result of the upsurge in the campaign or Labour tactical voting,
    but now the Tories are closer to 50% than 40%, they should be ok.

    February 1st, 2011 at 6:10 pm
13. Cogload

    This seat will be radically different at the next election….

    February 24th, 2011 at 12:34 am
14. Barnaby JL Marder

    Looking at the result here I’m a bit surprised that the LDs have managed to stay in contention, after their failure in 1997.

    February 24th, 2011 at 8:31 am
15. Cogload

    They managed to stay in contention because of a decent candidate and the rural vote switching during council elections. This gave them the activists on the ground.

    However in the current reviews this seat is undersized so I expect more of the hinterland to come through in the next 10-15 years before the mooted development to the north of the City at Old Sarum may even things out.

    Nick Radford has written to the executive stating that he has no intention of standing again so a new LD candidate will have to be found.

    March 25th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
16. Harry Porter

    What have been the boundary changes to this constituency since 1918?

    January 19th, 2013 at 10:24 pm