Edinburgh Evening News reports:
Ms O'Donnell, 50, saw off competition from Ayesha Hazarika, a stand-up comic and adviser to Harriet Harman, and Kirsty O'Brien, a policy adviser to Gordon Brown, to win the nomination at a meeting of the local party last night.
It appears that the local party have resisted the imposition of candidates favoured by Labour HQ, and you cannot help admiring them for giving Number Ten the finger.
East Lothian is by no means a watertight Labour seat, especially after the Anne Moffat episode, a woman so disliked by her own party that she was deselected, and who milked the public purse during her tenure, claiming nearly £40,000 in travel expenses - the highest of any MP including the Member for Orkney and Shetland. It appears that the only credible opposition to Labour in EL is Stuart Ritchie, the Lib Dem Candidate, with the SNP trailing behind the Tories at the last election.
Tactical voters like me will have to examine our consciences, but it is bleedin obvious that the SNP chap does not stand a chance. For what it is worth, and having lived in East Lothian for seven years, the influx of new residents have definitely been types who look as if they would vote Lib Dem. For those who do not know, East Lothian suffered from a travesty of social engineering in the sixties and seventies, when large numbers of Glasgow and and environs schemies were re-housed from the slums. If those people vote at all, it is for Labour, and has had the effect of keeping the seat safe for Labour for some time. But anybody who looks around the constituency can see now that the thousands of new-build properties that have sprung up since the beginning of the decade are going to be home to Lib Dems or Tories.
It will be close, but I predict a Lib Dem gain for East Lothian, as long as their candidate can walk and talk.
1 comment:
I see Gordon got off to a good start. 'Members of the public' hollered and cheered as he entered the train station on his way to Rochester. Further investigation revealed them to be Labour party activists who had earlier been handing out flyers and wearing party rosettes and t shirts. Same old spin and will set the tone for the election.
I see Tom Harris has reverted to type. Getting a good hammering in the comments though..
http://www.tomharris.org.uk/
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