Tag Archives: rochester and strood by election

Stephen Tall

Rochester & Strood by-election: Ukip win, Lib Dems lose 11th deposit

By Stephen Tall | Fri 21st November 2014 - 9:10 am

Mark Reckless won his bid to be re-elected an MP under the UKIP banner last night, following his eve-of-conference defection from the Conservatives. That this wasn’t at all a surprise — the swing from the Tories to UKIP was 28% — says something about the febrile dynamics of politics at the moment. Support for Labour in a seat they held until 2010 also slumped. Geoff Juby for the Lib Dems trailed in fifth place behind the Greens, having shed some nine-tenths of the party’s May 2010 vote. This was Lib Dems’ 11th lost deposit of the parliament.

Here are the votes:

Continue reading »
Posted in News and Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 144 Comments
Olly Grender

Baroness Olly Grender writes…Tales from the Rochester campaign trail

By Olly Grender | Thu 20th November 2014 - 8:02 am

image004Sometimes being a Liberal Democrat is like walking into a bitterly cold prevailing wind with soggy leaflets in one hand and a disappearing map in the other. By-elections can be the epitome of that experience. Especially by-elections where our vote is being squeezed ‘til our eyes water. Which makes every person who turns out in those battles a hero in my eyes. Yes yes we can all cheerily dry out our wet socks on the piping hot radiator of victory at an Eastleigh experience, but it is Rochester that’s character forming!

The team in Rochester are out every day building up a campaign for the future. They are in a part of Kent where UKIP are on the rise but every day on the doorstep they are hearing the message “anything but UKIP”; we almost need a new column on the connect data. And let’s face it, our party is the opposite of UKIP in almost everything we stand for. Last weekend YouGov published a poll which showed that people understand with absolute clarity that the Liberal Democrats are a party that is vastly different from UKIP (see chart below).

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 46 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Sandy Walkington
    Man is born free and everywhere s/he is in chains… Michal you are an outstanding mayor, proud to have you as my first citizen....
  • Jana
    “ There is no offence of using the wrong lavatory and there never has been” This is correct - an offence would only be committed if there were some malicio...
  • cim
    Agreed with a lot of the above, "compulsory voting" is just a way to mask the symptom that there's not much in our current democracy that gets people excited to...
  • Stephen Gosling
    I was against compulsory voting until a few decades back when I saw in my then ward the age & assumed income cohorts of those currently voting. If we want t...
  • SteveTrevethan
    Thanks to all for a most interesting and relevant article and set of comments! From the information and possibilities therein contained, is it the case that ...