Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Cambridge a Three-Way Marginal - it's Official

We are all used to seeing party leaflets that pick out a particular year's results in a particular type of election and declare "This election is a two-horse race - party X cannot win here". This is of course designed to scare supporters of party X into voting for party Y to keep out party Z.

Well the good news for Cambridge voters is that with the Conservatives almost neck-and-neck with Labour in total votes across the city in May and a fast dwindling Liberal Democrat vote, there really is everything to play for in Cambridge and every vote will count.

But there's no need to take our word for it - this job advert for the Labour party in Cambridge states:
Cambridge is a demanding but rewarding challenge. It is now becoming a 3 way marginal!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was very glad to see you elected, and indeed to see a wider 'rainbow' of colours on the city council with the election of an independent and green, thus breaking into the lib dem monoculture.

But the idea that a city which has at last a single conservative councillor (and a good one at that!) out of 42 seats could be somewhere where there a conservative MP is possible did make me laugh!

At least the lib dems and David Howarth are strongly against the ID card scheme, and with the prospect of a Tory government nationally, hopefully that money-wasting scheme might be buried, to the relief of anyone technologically-minded in Cambridge.

Andrew Bower said...

It's certainly good that our current MP is against ID cards and I know that some would-be Conservative voters voted Lib Dem for that reason in 2005 but fortunately we've reverted to the right policy on this. I was quite impressed with the Labour's PPC's bravery for standing up at a NO2ID meeting and trying to defend ID cards once!

However, in wider terms, I really don't think the Lib Dems can be relied upon to oppose Gordon Brown in a hung parliament - we've already seen our MP break his manifesto commitment on a referendum for the repackaged European constitution in the astonishing spectacle of a whipped abstention (the whip was changed to 'against' in the Lords by the way for the same issue).

It's certainly going to be a challenge for Conservatives in Cambridge but with both the other parties' support having plummeted significantly the election should really be a three-way fight and that's clearly how Labour at least are seeing it.