South West Results and reflections

Conservative 468,742
UKIP 341,845
Liberal Democrat 255,253
GREEN 144,179
Labour 118,716
BNP 60,889
Pensioners 37,785
English Democrat 25,313
Christians 21,329
Mebyon Kernow 14,922
Socialist Labour 10,033
Misc 39,702 (6 other groups mostly around 7,000)

1st seat Conservative with 468,742
2nd seat UKIP with 341,845
3rd seat LD with 255,253
4th seat Conservative with 234,371
5th seat UKIP with 170,923
6th seat Conservative with 156,248

Greens 12,070 votes short of a seat

Spread across 49 parliamentary constituencies that is 247 votes short per constituency. Each constituency is about 60,000 electors, typically divided into 20 wards of about 3,000 for local elections. So in your ward we needed an extra 12 votes and probably 1,800 people in your ward didn't bother to vote.

Small consolation that we beat the current party of government into 5th place. We also increased our vote by more than enough to have won a seat last time when there were 7 seats in the SW. That's the price of EU enlargement.

Yesterday's Stall + New Poll

We held a stall in Swindon town centre yesterday. It went very well
from 9am to 3:15pm, then the table broke and we had to call it a day. We
were almost out ofleaflets anyway so it made sense to stop then. I will chase up more leaflets from GPSWHQ so that we can continue our campaigns. We got a very. very positive response. It's looking good but we still need to win over the undecided
and make sure our supporters do actually go out and vote.

A Sunday Telegraph/ICm poll to be published tomorrow, when asking voting intentions for the EUROPEAN ELECTION next Thursday, (apparently even without prompting of
non-main party names) gives the following headline figures:

Con 29 (-1)
Lib Dem 20 (+2)
Lab 17 (-7)
Green 11 (+1)
UKIP 10 (nc)
BNP 5 (+4)

Have been up to my eye-balls...

in election stuff. There is still so much to do and less than 3 weeks to do it in. I've been off doorknocking (is that even a verb? I've not have enough sleep to know!) almost every night and have lots of Governors' stuff coming up too. I'm going over the plans for the eastern development. My eyes are going crossed. I wish Fabian (my 8 month old) would sleep at night, it would really help me get this all done.

Ricky Knight will be in Swindon tomorrow so more campaigning then. At least dave has taken the day off so I will not have to be doing it with the kids.

Letter from me to the Adver:

It shouldn't be a surprise that sea-levels are rising faster than expected. The observable pattern with scientific reports is that they continually reveal that climate change is more serious than we thought previously.

What is astonishing, on the other hand, is that all three big political parties in the UK fail to adopt the right targets, fail to pursue the full package of policies necessary to meet even their inadequate targets, and continue to pursue some policies that go in exactly the wrong direction. This is another observable pattern.

There is still only one political party that has always had the right targets and the full range of policies needed to meet those targets in an economically viable and socially just manner. It’s a simple fact: if you want the right action taken on the climate crisis, you're going to have to elect more Greens.

And the next opportunity is of course the European election on 4 June. The EU has a huge role to play on the world stage, and the need for more Green MEPs has never been greater.