Last night Irfan Mustafa came from fourth place to win a safe Labour seat in Clementswood ward (London Borough of Redbridge).
The result was: Lib Dem 904, Labour 715, Tory 377, Independent 65, Green 49, British Public Party 48.
In May (only five months ago!) the result was (taking top vote for each party): Labour 1,424, Tory 477, British Public Party 315, Lib Dem 307, Green 129.
As with the recent good by-election result against Labour in Manchester, this result suggests that the hugely increased levels of support amongst ethnic minority communities which the Iraq war brought the party show no signs of fading.
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A Week in Politics #8
Matt (Bristol)
David Raw
Jana
expats
8 Comments
Fantatic work by Irfan, Farrukh, Richard and all the team.
Just shows how, with Labour taking it for granted, and with a bit of hard work, there are no limits to where we can win.
“As with the recent good by-election result against Labour in Manchester, ”
uhm, there was no swing (in either LD or Labour direction) in Manchester byelection. The LD majority remained almost the same (on the back of a swing to Labour last may).
(Not the overall result wasn’t good for the Libdems, but it wasn’t bad for Labour either)
Labour threw huge resources at it and many of their members were very confident of winning the seat. They didn’t – and didn’t even make progress in the seat – so I’d fairly count that as a bad result from them and a good Lib Dem result.
liberal democrats celebrate defeat of candidate M. Santos – now there’s a sentence to cause confusion… 😉
Andrea – you clearly didnt see how much Labour put into their campaign in Manchester.
so you didn’t put any resources in it (or at least much less than what Labour put in it)?
Anyway, leaving aside if it’s a good or bad result for Labour….can be Gorton South used to support the point that ethnic minority communities are still supporting the Libdems?
Looking at 2001 Census, Gorton South population was 84% white (above the Manchester average)
Gorton South wasn’t a bad result – Labour really go for the American style, negative campaigning in places like Manchester. I would agree that you cannot use GS as a barometer for the Ethnic Vote. This party needs to work much harder at not taking this for granted. The result is London is obviously better. One thing I think this party lacks is any sort of direction on how to play the Asian Vote. I mentioned it at an English Council Meeting in Birmingham not long after the locals but it was just ignored.
It took Iraq, Palestine etc. to show the Asian Community that Labour took them for granted for too long – We need to keep them with us and MC is doing an excellent job as Leader to help. Campaign’s Department need to look at this issue seriously though and have a reasoned debate within the Party on how we can do this. Maybe a step forward would be to select a “Campaigning Asian Lady or Lord” similar to what Labour have done.
Any Thoughts?
Dave Hennigan
Rochdale
“Gorton South wasn’t a bad result”
yes, yes, I agree that it wasn’t bad for the Libdems…it was good (it was an hold afterall!) for them. Just that it wasn’t bad for Labour.