Carlisle Labour party lose Botcherby council seat to an Independent

Commiserations to the excellent Conservative candidate Rob Currie who won 115 votes in the Botcherby by-election for Carlisle City Council yesterday. In the circumstances that was a good performance but not enough to win.

The by-election was caused by the sad death of a sitting Labour councillor.

Labour lost the seat to Independent candidate Jack Paton who won with over 50% of the vote in what has normally been a Labour ward. Congratulations to him.

The News and Star reports that the new Independent councillor recently led the transformation of a dilapidated building into a new base for Army cadets, with the conversion of a former hairdressers on Victoria Road and land behind it.

He has also previously campaigned on issues including buses in the area and on kerbs and pavements that he perceived as dangerous for wheelchair users.

A number of people on social media have blamed the result on Jeremy Corbyn who visited the area a few weeks ago.

I don't imagine that the pantomime put on by the national Labour leadership was any great help to the Labour candidate in the by-election, but I suspect that Carlisle Labour party might be wiser to examine their own management of Carlisle City Council over the past few years if they want to understand the reasons they lost the seat.

Comments

Jim said…
One of the problems of a London centric governement bubble, is that sadly people often do vote for someone on a local council seat, based on the performance of their party leaders in Westminster.

Personally I dont think this way, I an just commenting that a lot of people do. Others tend to feel some sort of misguided loyalty to a party they may not believe in themselves - you know the "my mother would turn in her grave" line.

Its sad and unfortunate the cause of this By-election, and I would like to pass my condolences to the family of Terry Scarborough.
4:40 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Good point.

I doubt if this was primarily a national vote. You had good Conservative and Independent candidates in the election, and I think labour voters wanted to reward a hard-working member of the local community and send a message mainly to LOCAL Labour.
12:51 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more