Comments on Obsolete: End of the beginning.

Having spoken to my aunt in Lancashire, and she me...

2012-05-12T19:09:32.561+01:00

Having spoken to my aunt in Lancashire, and she mentioned this very thing (although not in huge detail) I have to admit that it must have had more coverage than I spotted. I would've come back here sooner, but your archive links seem broken somehow - a PHP error? - so it's been a bit difficult to rediscover this post.

I would say: the dirty secret about Chipping Norton is that the town often returns Labour, at different levels of local government. We looked at historical trends across a few years, and "Chippy" tends to have quite a mix of red. So I think the Chipping Norton results are themselves less surprising than Witney's own.

Last century, Witney frequently had a hung town council; whether the recent swing is a sign that the long-lasting clique that turned it an unhealthily pure blue is finally losing its grip or not, I don't know. But if that rhetorical flourish isn't informed by my own political prejudices, I don't know what is.

I did see that, and it is fascinating. I'd ha...

2012-05-05T15:17:33.129+01:00

I did see that, and it is fascinating. I'd hazard it could be a backlash against the whole idea of the Chipping Norton set among the locals and embarrassment at the portrayal of their home, but that might be a slightly shallow reading.

It's not entirely surprising that the Tories h...

2012-05-05T10:30:14.530+01:00

It's not entirely surprising that the Tories have started fighting, and occasionally quite viciously too: very much like cats in a sack.

Why? because even the ones I quite like are terrible losers. One of the jokes about the Green Party (disclaimer: I'm a member) is that we're such good losers because we do it so often. But it's sort of true: that experience means don't have the sense of massive entitlement that I think the Tories - especially in the heartlands - have to a local council seat.

After all, their chums in the local Conservative Association often have seats on multiple levels of local government all at once. So why haven't they been presented with one this time round? It's just not fair!

One story, that's gone a little under-reported as far as I can tell, is that Witney and Charlbury district council votes - in the heart of Cameron's constituency - have swung rather violently towards Labour and, to our pleasant surprise, the Green Party. Someone less partisan than me might provide an interesting narrative of why. The word is, though, that this swing made the atmosphere at the count was really rather hostile, for the very reasons of entitlement that I mentioned above. It's a shame, if only because back before it was dominated by a Tory clique, the local town council was certainly much more healthy and multipartisan.