SNTC elections May 2011 - What of Labour?

I know the Labour Party is down in the doldrums. They did badly at the general/local elections in 2010. At the 2007 Town elections Labour didn't stand a single candidate. This helped the Liberal Democrats. So what is the Labour Party going to do for 2011? There are three main choices for St Neots Labour. These are:

1. Field no candidates. This is what happened last time. By doing this will give the tacit support for the Liberal Democrats.

2. Field one candidate in each ward. As 4 out of the 5 wards are multi-member wards this would allow Labour voters to actually vote Labour. The problem is this could let the Conservatives in.

3. Field a full slate of 21 candidates. This would be a statement of intent by St Neots Labour. This could let the Conservatives in.

All this depends on what Labour wants to do. Is Labour going to support the Liberal Democrats? Nominating Town Council candidates is much easier than District with two signatures needed from each ward.

Labour has a difficult decision. By not putting up candidates they are effectively supporting the Liberal Democrats. Put candidates up and they could left the Conservatives in. On the other hand not putting candidates up means Labour becomes an irrelevant political party in St Neots.

If I was Labour I would put as many candidates at the Town Council elections as I could. This would spoil the party for the Liberal Democrats. It would also put a marker down to the other parties that Labour is back in the game.

Local Party websites - update

Another month of nothing happening in St Neots according to zero updates on the local party websites aimed at St Neots. There has been a bit of movement on the www.huntslibdems.org.uk website which has had 5 new articles placed on it from the Liberal Democrat candidate Martin Land.

The 5 posts contain articles on: The selection of Martin Land; Congratulating Julian Huppert; Taking the P out of Djanogly; Campaign to stop charging at Riverside CP and, finally, LD schools policy.
My view is whilst the Liberal Democrats have started to update their site it is still slow and scarce. It is better than all the other sites.

Local Party Political Websites Update!

Well not so much an update. Rather just saying NOTHING has changed since I last reported on these websites. I have found one more website to be added to the list which is the UKIP site.

New Year Messages and Letters in the News & Crier

In this weeks ever excellent News and Crier (pages 6 and 7) there are several New Year messages and some letters that I want to comment on.

Djanogly New Year Message. 
Much more interesting was what he left out rather than what he included. In his New Year message Djanogly left out all references to Parliament and expenses. I feel the problem with his message shows is hasn't come to terms with what many of the public feel about his expenses claims. Far easier to move on from these problems. Unless these are dealt with they will continue to dog Djanogly until after the General Election.

St Neots Town Council New Year Message
Liberal Democrat Council Leader Julia Hayward and not the Town Mayor Gordon Thorpe wrote this message. Ramsey, Huntingdon and Godmanchester messages were from their respective Town Mayors. Is this a snub for Town Mayor Thorpe? Again this was a good news message without mentioning the 2 damning reports into the Town Council by external auditors.

Labour Gets 2 Letters In This Edition.
Bill O'Connor (Branch Secretary - St. Neots Labour) got a letter in about Djanoglys' expenses. I'm fine with that but I feel he should say he is Labour. I suppose if he said he was Labour the public might think Bell Towers and claims for mortgages that had already been paid off. I feel Bill's attacks are dented by this. I remember when Labour they were first elected, in 1997, they were going to be "whiter than white".

The other Labour letter came from Anthea Cox (Labour Parliamentary candidate) who got a letter in about the Copenhagen Climate Conference. Anthea also had a pop about the refusal of the wind farm saying that "local Conservative Councils still reject 60% of wind energy applications." A pretty much useless statistic because most of rural England is under Conservative Councils. This means many rejections will happen under the Conservatives. But there was nothing from Anthea saying she supported the application.
Of course her letter was written before the outcome of the Conference was known. The one good thing that did come out of Copenhagen was the video below:

Anyway, lets have a very Merry Christmas. And a very political New Year.

Rednek

A quick review of local political websites

Having had no political literature through my door since 4th June 2009 Euro elections I thought I would look at how the local parties are doing on the web.

St. Neots Conservatives Website

The incumbent St. Neots Conservatives have moved exactly nowhere. Their site is still calling on visitors to vote Conservative on 4th June 2009.

St. Neots Liberal Democrats Webpage

The Liberal Democrats have updated their website. Well a bit. The old picture of Sam Kemp has been removed and replaced by a picture of the Town Mayor getting in an X5 coach. The content still drones on about 2008.

Huntingdonshire Green Party

Not much has changed here. The last article is dated on 6th June 2009. Green Party website.

Huntingdon Constituency Labour Party

The Huntingdon CLP website hasn't gone anywhere either.

So the activity on the local party websites in very, very minimal. No wonder voters are turned off voting.