No surprise that Labour walked it in Denton NE. It was obvious from the outset they were the only ones really up for this election. Commiserations to the losing candidates, between you, you gave the electorate a choice to make their voices heard. Shame on the 69% of the eligible voters of Denton NE who could not be bothered to vote!
Labour 1258
Tories 660
BNP 358
UKIP 193
Greens 164
Turnout 31%
48 comments:
Well done Ros! Near 14% in a first time effort for the BNP is very good.
John Bell has to look at himself and his leadership. I am clear we need a new leader.
Nationally Tories are getting swings to us of 16.5% - in Norwich North - enough for a landslide and a government with a massive Tory majority.
Yet here tonight in Tameside we see a swing TO LABOUR of 6.4%.
If that was repeated nationally Gordon Brown would be returned as Prime Minister with a Labour majority of 80. Enough said.
John Bell has to be the most despicable representative of any political party in Tameside. His behaviour was making me cringe. He was openly sucking up to Labour, especially Andrew Gwynne and Roy Oldham. He was incredibly rude to a lady candidate of an opposing party and he was talking about young Liam in such a disrespectful way it was beyond belief, and when I say he was talking about Liam, I mean not to fellow * Conservatives but to Roy bloody Oldham of all people. I managed to record most of it on my K850i. I will convert it to an MP3 file and send it to TC in the hope he will host it on this blog for all to listen to.
*John Bell was explaining to one of his Labour buddies that he was once a Liberal when the Liberal’s were a ‘real’ liberal party. He then went on to describe himself now as a ‘Liberal Conservative’. He also made disparaging comments about Colin Grantham. Wait until you hear the MP3.
Well done Ros! - Another seat specially picked out for you by your mates.
You predicted you would win Denton NE which makes this another spectacular defeat for the Tameside BNP.
Keep up the good work. With you as the candidate UAF only need to deliver a handful of leaflets.
Can you ask your BNP mates in Tameside for permission to stand in every ward in Tameside next May that way we can guarantee many more Labour victories?
How did they predict to win a seat they've never even contested before, you moron?
“another spectacular defeat for the Tameside BNP”. They do make me laugh. The BNP beat the UKIP and Green vote combined – but it was not a ‘spectacular’ defeat for either of them just the BNP lol . It is a pity the church did not intervene as that would have given us a boost; The Advertiser was unusually silent as well which is a pity, and as for the UAF/Searchlight coalition of hate – they had very little if any impact on the overall result. This was just a probing expedition for the BNP and from our point of view we have gained a raft of new members and supporters in a previously untouched part of Tameside. Our inexorable rise across the borough continues and we are rapidly gaining organisational momentum a day will come, not long from now, when we will pull something real spectacular out of the hat.
^
Good luck Tameside BNP! I hope that Ros becomes a BNP councillor someday.
The truth is Ros keeps losing badly what is it now seven times shes been hammered.
Take a look at Nigel's record in Newton look at the results in Audenshaw and Droylsden last year, you will see much better results.
Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and deal with these very poor candidates for the good of the party.
The Tories will have to deal with its rebel element now the ones who caused all the chaos in Denton will have to be cleared out.
Stacey and Liam have brought shame on the party can you image Roy Oldham and co at the next council meeting they will ram Denton down the Tories throats.
Labour did very well Tameside once agian bucked the National trend, but you have to look at the work they put in, on bad day they would have over twenty party workers out on the streets, others did not have this many for the whole election period.
My advice to the losing partys especially the Tories and the BNP is spend less time on here and more time on the streets with a united team out work the Labour team then see your efforts rewarded.
Well done to all who took part and well done to those who voted in this election, you have spoken good luck to Denise Ward Mr Wareing will be a hard act to follow.
UKIP CANDIDATE NEVER TURNED UP LAST NIGHT
"Labour cruise to victory..."
CRUISE??
I have seen less effort put into a General Election than Labour put into this by-election! Will they be able to put the same effort into each ward when it is next year's council election?
Since we are all giving advice i'll give some to Ashton Tories...replace your leader. If you think he was spending too much time with Labour last night in Denton you should have seen him at the Euro count in June!
Finally, look forward to the MP3 file.
Just checked the figures
LABOUR 1258
NON-LABOUR 1375
More don't want Labour than do
From an outsiders point of view it seems John Bell is causing the split. He's a terrible leader and bullies the Tories to take sides. For a man of his age and a leader of the opposition he's behaved very childishly publically and behind closed doors. I would advise the Tories to deselect him next time you vote for your leader. It seems to me and eveyone I talk to that because of a feud he has with Mr Billington, he's isolating everyone who refuse to get involved and chose a side. The Tories could have taken this seat. I'm not sure who was making campaigning decisions but they were the wrong for the job. The young party members were seen out with Floyd most days and I can't say I saw the Councillors out much. If we want to send out 4000 leaflets we can do it overnight - not the Tories, their Councillors are too busy squabbling with the few members they have. If any of the younger hard working members, Gaz, Miss Knighton or others want to work with a proactive TEAM that wins then join us at the Labour team.
John Bell isn't at all happy about it Stacey fraternising with Liam. She's digging her own grave.
As far as the Tory leadership is concerned, John's just making things easier for Labour.
Labour will return the Councillor's who have worked hard and listened to people over the last few years.
And don't be surprised to see a few new kids on the block.
It's a dissapointing result from a Tory perspective. But, by-elections produce abnormal results because of the abnormal levels of activity that can be concentrated in one area at any one time.
The real test for the major parties will be next May's elections when all of the wards will be up for election.
By the way, people are making some very naive comparisons; Norwich North is NOT Denton North East.
By the way, is this blog usually full of BNP pond life?
John Bell is a yes man, a Labour clone. He will destroy our party in Tameside.
Well done to Floyd for running an honest and strong campaign. You have won the respect of eveyone in the Tameside Conservatives and your supporters in denton. This is all great experience for the May election. Keep up the hard work and you will be a Councillor in the near future.
You should be very proud.
x
Fact: Labour have killed themselves to get 47.7% of the vote. In 2006 and 2007 they got an easy 55% and 57.5% of the turnout, a massive percentage drop in a couple of years. If they hadn't worked this hard and the leaderless (they might as well be) Tories hadn't put in such a dreadful campaign things could have been very different. Next May, with Labour conducting a broad based campaign and with the economy and unemployment significantly worse than they are now I believe the result will be very different.
'Pond life', that's a new one. it's usually, 'Nazi', 'fascist', 'racist' etc etc etc. Very mature. Is that you in the picture or are you his younger brother?
ABC - is that as far as you have got with learning the alphabet? Nevermind - you'll learn eventually.
Splendid comment Stacey and I second it.
When discussing the 2010 locals I think people should also remember that the Conservative's have considerably fewer activists in Tameside than Labour. People should also remember the popularity of Andrew Gwynne and David Heyes. The General Election factor combined with the hard work that is happening in these constituencies will result in Labour successes.
How on earth are the Conservative's going to muster the manpower to compete?
Labour Councillors and candidates work all year round. This is how they win elections.
Ps Floyd, only follow Stacey's advice if you wish to be ostracised to Ashton with no chance of winning in the foreseeable future.
There's a long queue for Werneth and Stalybridge South so take a number!
Master Hatton, never mind is two separate words. Is that as far as you've got learning grammar? Never mind you'll learn eventually.
Didn't I say there is a Labour vote and an anti Labour vote and that the more candidates there were, the anti Labour vote would splinter, thus making the Labour majority bigger. Oh to be proved right!
Peter Snow's swingometer - what do you propose instead? Just one 'Oppose Labour' candidate? Who would then represent the envoronmentalists, conservatives, and fascists?
...otherwise known as the Conservatives. The Tories have all of these!
What with their Vote Blue Go Green agenda and the ultra-right Monday Club (or more locally, Sheila Bell)and of course the traditional establishmentarians.
What a broad church. Now if only more people would vote for them in Tameside!
Mr Snow, every Party's got a core vote. Labour got their usual quota of deadheads, OAP's and members of the 'community' out by busting a gut and using every available method including the utterly corrupt postal voting system. The Tories notably failed to get their vote out. The result of Labour's massive campaign expending all their resources? 7 out of 10 didn't vote and Labour's winning 1258 was about 14.8% of Denton North East's electoral role. A shocking indictment of the apathy, animosity and lack of trust which reigns amongst voters, particularly at council elections. This apathy does not extend to general elections where the turnout will probably be two and a half times greater than Denton and the nation's electorate will be strongly motivated to get rid of an utterly incompetent, disastrous and corrupt regime. Mr Purnell in particular, will I believe be one of many Labour MP's to feel the public's wrath.
Regime change you are missing the point... The turnout in this by-election was UP on the normal local election turnouts. Yes it is a scandal that near 70% of people don't think local elections are important, but if they did vote in larger numbers, the breakdowns for the parties would be pretty similar anyway.
The Tories didn't fail to get their core vote out, their core vote came out and a sizable chunk voted for other right-wing parties like the BNP and UKIP.
And if we are calculating the total Labour vote per the number of electors possible to vote, how about even handedness - how pathetic then was the miniscule Tory, BNP, UKIP and Green share of the electorate?
It's a good Labour win in the present political climate with a credible swing TO the Labour party in Denton, just like in Reddish North the week before.
The Tories are down to geriatrics, troublemakers from minority pressure groups, the overwheeningly ambitious and children. What a bloody shower. Good job they've got such an inspirational and unifying leader.
Regime Change,
You have a knack of hitting the nail square on the head. You are both a pleasure and informative to read.
To watch the Labour Party in action in Tameside is to watch seasoned professionals at work. The fact that they are now pulling out the stops in fighting these by-elections shows how much the BNP worries them and how little the Tories do.
Accordingly we will analyse what we are doing right and what the Tories are doing wrong in order to improve our performance
The BNP are no where near getting a seat in Tameside. We are in the worst recession for decades and we have massively high levels of immigration. Yet, still, the BNP can't get a single seat. I think the BNP have hit their peak in Tameside - there are only so many protest votes.
Ok, so if only 14.8% of the electorate voted Labour (and by implication around 85% did not - a line both the Conservatives and BNP have used in this election before) then let's look at the facts:
Of the total electorate in Denton North East, ONLY:
7% voted Conservative
4% voted BNP
2% voted UKIP
1.5% voted Green
Yes, that means:
93% DID NOT VOTE FOR A TORY
96% DID NOT SUPPORT THE BNP
98% AREN'T MITHERED ABOUT UKIP
98.5% COULDN'T CARE LESS ABOUT GREEN POLITICS
Mr Snow, the turnout was below average. Historically Labour do better at all levels when this is the case. A higher turnout such as the 1992 general election virtually always benefits the Tories.
The Greens, the BNP and UKIP are minor Parties with nowhere near the level of manpower, contacts or back-up of the three main Parties. Also NONE of these Parties have stood in this ward previously.
In Reddish, a similar Labour effort and poor Conservative campaign combined with a chronically low turnout of 23.5% returned a similar result. The only notable difference was a significantly better BNP campaign and result in Denton.
If the Tories had worked as hard as Labour their vote would have been substantially higher, perhaps in excess of a thousand. Their campaign however was a shambles.
The minor Parties now appear to have built up individual support bases. UKIP's will almost certainly fade as the European Elections become a memory and UKIP members and activists are virtually non-existent. The Greens will probably remain the semi-fringe Party they are now. The BNP have some potential to expand especially given Labour's disastrous handling of, immigration, crime & social disorder and the economy. Exponential unemployment growth in particular will I believe destroy the New Labour experiment at the next general election. 'New' Conservative and the Lib Dems are now extremely similar to Labour in their core policies and beliefs and a Party that offers a GENUINE alternative may benefit.
Turnout was not below average, it was higher than 06, 07 and 08 in Denton North East. Yes the Tories won in 1992 (across the UK) but there were massive differential turnouts with some constituencies racking up big Tory majorities, some constituencies being a close fight and some constituencies - like Denton and Reddish - securing big Labour majorities. In 1992, the year you keep harking back to, the Labour majority here was more than 12,000 over the Tories. The higher the turnout, the higher the votes for all parties, but the proportionate shares of the vote stay broadly the same. So it would appear that Labour can expect about 50% share of the vote in a General Election in this seat. Just the way the cookie crumbles. The Tories don't need Denton to win nationally, they DO need Cheadle.
If the BNP is just a 'protest vote' why has their support and membership/activist base been growing apace nationwide over the last few years? They polled more than the other two 'protest votes' combined and were the only Party to worry Labour enough to get their agitator mates in to put out ten thousand smear leaflets. Neither UKIP or the Greens had to contend with that as the BNP are the only Party to threaten Labour's core working class vote.
General Election 1992: Denton and Reddish
Party Votes %
Labour 29,021 55.2
Conservative 16,937 32.2
LibDem 4,953 9.4
Liberal 1,296 2.5
Natural Law 354 0.7
Labour Majority 12,084
Turnout 76.8%
Get your facts straight... except on the face of it they appear to have taken a sizable number of votes off the Tories working class core, which is why the Tory share of the vote has crashed to just a quarter of those voting. Labour's share increased slightly.
If the BNP were no threat Labour would not expend so much, time, effort and money getting their hard left associates in to smear them. It wasn't the Tories who did that.
I think you'll find it probably WAS the fact the Tories were only 200 votes behind which ensured a good campaign was fought and nothing else.
Labour must be delighted that the right-wing vote was split.
Remember, in 2006 the Tories polled over 1,000 here and a smidgen under 1,000 votes in 2008 too. 660 is pathetic for them and it looks like the BNP took a good chunk of what should have been natural Tory support off them, and to some extent UKIP did too.
Mr Snow, you stated, 'The turnout in this by-election was up on the normal local election turnouts'. I responded that the turnout was below average, which it was.
In your later comment you changed this to, 'It was higher than '06, '07 and '08 in DENTON NORTH EAST'. I was responding to your comment with regard to Tameside's overall average turnout, please don't misrepresent me or change things around. Denton's turnout is lower than the Tameside average but in this election it did go up marginally, as it did in Hyde Newton, due to the abnormally high amount of campaign activity.
I don't keep harking back to the 1992 general election, I have mentioned it once as an example of high turnouts virtually always benefitting the Tories. This also applied to the Conservative's three previous victories.
There are vast amounts of statistical information but the overall fact of high turnouts benefitting the Tories has never been in dispute.
Given the current appalling state of the economy, out of control unemployment, a mountainous national debt that will take decades to repay and the fact that all of these will be significantly worse come the general election a suggested 50% vote share in ANY constituency is phenomenally optimistic. In Denton this would represent only a 7% drop on their 2005 performance. Mr Purnell has most to fear locally, his fate may mirror New Labour's; political annihilation.
Mr Snow, Labour pursued the same lies and smear tactics against the BNP in Hyde Newton and there was no Tory threat there. In the last few years a significantly increased BNP vote at a series of council elections nationwide has altered the result, very often tipping the balance against an increasingly unpopular Labour. 5% was usually no threat to the status quo but 15 to 30odd per cent is.
Look, you are ties in knots now. Turnout up, Labour vote up. In a national vote, the higher turnout = higher Labour vote in Tameside. FACT.
That is why way back in 1979, while Mrs Thatcher cruised into number 10 the Tories lost control of Tameside Council. More people voted in the local elections because they were held on the same day as the General Election so the turnout was massively up.
That is also why the County Council results were so poor for Labour this time around because the last time they were fought was on the same day as the 2005 General Election when turnout was much higher.
Anyway it's all academic. We'll see what happens in Denton and Reddish, Stalybridge and Hyde and Ashton-under-Lyne sometime soon.
We do have three indicators from 2009: Hyde Newton, Reddish North and Denton North East by-elections. All point to a good Labour win in Tameside. We shall see soon enough...
Mr Snow, I never disputed or even mentioned what happens specific to Tameside when a general and council election is held on the same day. I stated that a high turnout, particularly in a general election is historically proven to favour the Conservatives. John Major got 82 LESS seats in his 1992victory than Tony Blair in 1997 despite 500,000 MORE people voting for him, Blair benefitted massively from the huge drop in voter numbers. This is just one example of a high turnout favouring the Conservatives. Mr Blair's three consecutive wins were marked by the lowest turnouts since before the war, due to Tories failing to turnout, alienated by their own Party's sleaze and stagnation.
I'm not tied up in knots and my argument has been clear, consistent and responded directly to your comments from the start.
Mr Snow, I take it you accept my argument about Labour's use of outside agitators and smear leaflets in Hyde Newton and Denton North East having the same cause, i.e. Labour's fear of losing their core working class vote to the BNP as the other circumstances of the two wards were quite different.
does anyone else think it's a sad state of affairs that despite everything the Tories only managed just under half the number of votes Labour got in this by-election?
if the tories cannot manipulate this now in Tameside with Labour's national popularity at an all time low they never will. Controlling the Council ever again is nigh impossible. May will be a walk in the park.
Work hard, work smart.
It wan't a walk in the park in Denton North East or Hyde Newton. Labour had to work their guts out in Denton for a 10% reduction in the vote share. Their result was good superficially but there are many cracks and weaknesses underneath. Any success next May will have to be earned and the BNP at least will be there to make Labour work as hard as possible for every single vote. The electorates reaction to the appalling and rapidly worsening state of the economy and burgeoning unemployment could destroy the Labour Party.
Anonymous, Labour's share of the vote rose, it didn't fall, compared with the last local elections (incidentally the election Martin Wareing last stood in) in 2008. Quite a remarkable result considering the national opinion polls don't you think?
Tameside MBC, Denton North East - date: 30/07/2009
Lab 1,258 (47.8; +2.3)
Con 660 (25.1; -11.3)
BNP 358 (13.6; +13.6)
UKIP 193 (7.3; +7.3)
Green 164 (6.2; +6.2)
[LD (0.0; -18.2)]
Majority 598
Turnout 31.5%
Labour hold
(Percentage change is since May 2008)
Apologies, I Should have made clear I was referring to recent results and not specifically 2008.
2007:Labour 55.1%,
2006:Labour 57.4%,
2004:Labour 58.6%.
All these results were achieved with a massive amount less work than was expended in 2009. In a full council or general election no-one has the manpower or
resources to mount such a campaign.
Dealing with the anger, frustration and hostility of tens of millions of people who have had to cope with huge drops in their
living standards and/or unemployment may well mean catastrophe for the Labour Party.
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