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
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At the moment that looks like the ballot of party members will be May versus Leadsom unless - as they probably have the votes to do - Theresa May's supporters decide they would rather face Gove than Leadsom in the ballot of party members and "lend" Gove enough votes to overhaul her.
That sort of thing has been known to happen in Conservative leadership elections. It has also been known to go horribly wrong for the people doing the tactical voting, or nearly so.
In 2001, IDS supporters are believed to have lent some votes to Ken Clarke to try to knock Michael Portillo out of the final two. If this is true, Ken had more support than they realised and they nearly overdid it trying to produce a result that might have happened anyway. Ken topped the poll among MPs and Portillo did get knocked out - but he was only one vote behind IDS. If they had moved two more people over to Ken, or one person wavering between IDS and Portillo had gone the other way, they would have knocked their own man out!