It’s now over a week since the dust settled and two new Labour MPs took their seats in the House of Commons. As many had initially predicted, Labour won both Ealing Southall and Sedgefield by a comfortable margin.

In Ealing Southall, Labour were a full five thousand votes ahead of the Liberal Democrats and seven thousand ahead of Tony Lit, with ‘David Cameron’s Conservative’ gaining about half the votes Labour polled. There has been an enormous amount of spinning on these two elections from all sides, however, make no mistake, the result in Ealing and Sedgefield were not good for the Conservatives – though it has to be said they were hardly good for Lib Dems or Labour either.

Like many others, I was extremely disappointed that the Conservatives didn’t do much better in either Ealing or Sedgefield than at the 2005 General Election. Tony Lit, who had only weeks before donated around £5,000 to the Labour party while head of Sunrise radio was not the type of candidate we should have been selecting to fight the seat in Ealing, and far too much hype was added to the campaign.

I do not believe in faceless opportunism and winning at any cost, though of course, in the end Tony Lit only exhibited faceless opportunism because he didn’t win. Also I can’t say I was happy that Mr Lit was installed by Cameron against the wishes of the local association and without any real consultation, even though Tony Lit had only been a party member for a few days. I suspect this is in part because the Conservative upper-echelons and general hierarchy care little for the grassroots and supporters, and in fact at times treat them with complete contempt (the new MEP Selection process comes to mind.) What’s more, what exactly is ‘David Cameron’s Conservatives’? I thought I belonged to a political party not a strange suedo-personality cult like ‘Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party’. Thankfully, though I never involved myself in any active campaigning during the Ealing Comedy, so I have a clear conscious on that part.

In fact, I think I can say that I am actually rather glad Tony Lit did not win in Ealing Southall. Of course, the downside to this was that Labour did win and have installed yet another socialist posing as a ‘moderate’ in the Commons, similar to the ex-Communist Piara Khabra, who preceded him. However, many of the voters of Ealing Southall, whether wittingly or unwittingly, rejected the spin and opportunistic ways of Tony Lit. Therefore, at the next election the Conservatives have an opportunity of selecting a real conservative to fight the seat, not some opportunistic chancer who fancied the idea of being an MP.

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Yesterday, Warwick and Breckland, the final two councils yet to conclude their counts, returned their results and brought an end to the English local elections.

In total, the Conservative party took 41% of the vote and gained an extra nine hundred and eleven councillors across England, which was substantially more than had been projected. At the same time Labour dropped five hundred and five seats and the Liberal Democrats suffered a humiliating loss of two hundred and forty six seats.

In Bath, the Lib Dems lost three seats overall while the Conservatives gained a total of five. Labour made a net loss of just one and two independents lost their seats. Therefore, the Conservatives are now the largest group on the council, though they do ran in just two seats short of an overall majority and thus Bath & North-East Somerset remains in No Overall Control.

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Now that the results of the elections from all over Britain are known, the time has come to draw some conclusions.

With approximately 41% of the votes, it is fair to say that the Conservative Party is the winner of the local elections which took place in England. No less than 38 new councils are now under control, including some like Chester, Blackpool and East Riding of Yorkshire. Other prominent councils won, include Dover and Plymouth in the south. Overall the number of Conservative Party councillors is up by 875, a very good result considering the target of 600 extra seats set by some.

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And so, late last night, the results came in that Bath & North-East Somerset council remained in No Overall Control. Our friend, Brook Whelan was elected in Widcombe with a fantastic result against the Lib Dems, and Gavin Bishop doubled the Conservative vote in Twerton though was unfortunately not elected.

Closer to home, unfortunately the two Liberal Democrat students in the University ward of Bathwick took both seats off previously incumbent Conservative councillors, John Bailey and Sir Elgar Jenkins. However, this was more than made up elsewhere with the Conservative party taking 31 seats on the council, while the Lib Dems slipped to 26. More coming soon…

Firstly, apologies for the lack of updates recently. Those people writing for this website have been very busy lately with University work and local election campaigning.

Boris Johnson, the Conservative Shadow Higher Education secretary and Member of Parliament for Henley in Oxfordshire is coming to Bath on the 4th of May to make a speech. The event is taking place at St. John’s Hall on Pulteney Road. Tickets cost £10 each, but if you bring a valid student card then it is only £5. Refreshments will be provided.

Boris will, no doubt, take the opportunity to celebrate Conservative gains in the local elections, and the Scottish and Welsh assemblies. The speaking event should run from 5:30pm to 8pm.

Tonight, local Conservatives approved the Open Primary selection of Fabian Richter to fight for Bath at the next General Election.

Fabian made a strong speech that probably went a long way to winning the support of the hall. What’s more, many probably found it incredibly rare, as Fabian put it in his own speech (to great amusement,) to find ‘a German with a sense of humour!’ Congratulations therefore must go to Fabian. We are sure that he will make an excellent candidate and we look forward to working with him to win Bath and prise the seat from the Liberal Democrats grip.

Also, our commiserations to Flick Drummond, Jessica Lee and Harry Morley who missed out on the seat. We wish them the best of luck in the future and we’re sure they will make excellent candidates for another constituency.

Current opinion polling would suggest that, at number 128 on the Conservatives’ projected target seat list, Fabian is in with a very good chance of becoming Bath’s next MP.

The Lib Dems often like to claim that they are against discrimination in any form. Of course, the vast majority of people realise that in light of their actions, what they claim is far from the truth.

It certainly is therefore particularly illuminating to see the local Lib Dem students prove the above point in their latest campus newsletter by making jokes about the ‘old Tories’ on the local council. Tell me again, just how old is their leader Menzies Campbell..?

When their own leader has one foot in the grave, it is frankly saddening to read their hypocritical and intolerant spiel condemning those older themselves just because of their age. This is yet more proof that the hypocritical Liberal Democrats preach against discrimination, but actively advocate it themselves – another one of their great many deceptions.

Best of all however, by their own argument, no student should vote Lib Dem at the forthcoming General Election because, due to his age, their ‘old’ leader does not really represent students. Brilliant advice that we can wholly recommend – though not necessarily the discriminatory reasoning behind it!

Yesterday, some members of Bath Conservative Future attended the Bristol North West event ‘How To Be An MP’ organised by Nick Webb. The meeting included short but insightful speeches by Member of Parliament for the Forest of Dean, Mark Harper, and Conservative South West campaign director Carys Parry.

After both speakers had said their bit, the meeting was then opened up to questions from the floor. Topics covered included the slightly contentious issue of the sacking of Conservative MP Patrick Mercer from the frontbench by David Cameron, the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons and the upcoming local council elections.

Around ten or so members of Conservative Future from across the South West made it to the event – so the turnout was reasonable considering that unfortunately a few people apparently dropped out at the last moment. A few pictures of us at the event can be found in our Photographs area. There is also an interesting document compiled by the Conservative party on becoming an MP.

The next UK General election is predicted to be in 2009; probably in July to coincide with the European Parliamentary elections. Should the Conservative party wish to form a majority Government at the next election, then seats such as Bath must be won.

Very recently, the local Bath Conservative association has been engaged in selecting candidates to go forward to an open primary to be held at the end of March.

The final four candidates are:

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As the results of the last elections for the Assembly of Northern Ireland are known for sure, we are now able to have a clear picture of what could be the next devolved assembly.

The main parties would be; the Democratic Unionist Party with 36 seats, the Sinn Fein with 28 seats, the Ulster Unionist Party with 18 seats and the Social Democratic and Labour Party with 16 seats. If a power sharing agreement is to be concluded, Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams would be respectively First Minister and Deputy first minister with a government composed by members of the four main parties.

After years of disagreements, scandals, rows over nothing and before that almost thirty years of what can only be called in my opinion, a civil war. Normal political debates may resume for good, in Northern Ireland, more than ever the needs for this are huge if we believe. A recent BBC Newsnight document by Jeremy Paxman, is showing that now more than ever the issues, of tax rates and schooling matter more than anything else in Northern Ireland. Yet when some politicians and Mr Paisley is among them, are still rambling about the ghosts of the past and even if the climate has now changed separations between the communities are on the rise.
Sectarian politics, will never provide an answer to the actual problems of Northern Ireland and entrenching division will only create more waste, by dividing resources in schooling and health provision. When in order to allow tax rates to be as low as possible, the public services must be as efficient as possible; this is not possible when everything needs to be doubled. The time has now come for Northern Ireland, to get out sectarian politics and to enter in a new era of genuine ideological debate.

The trend in polarisations to the extreme ends of the existing spectrum, has now reached an end. Clearly both the DUP and the Sinn Fein won’t be able to increase their share of the votes in the future, since the swing was not as big as some envisioned and turnout is even lower than for the previous elections. In the mean time, the Green Party was able to gain its first seat in Stormont and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland gained another seat.

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