Archives for April 2010

In the final week to polling day, accusations of dirty tricks are flying around in two of our most knife-edge constituencies. The latest spat involves the Tories and Lib Dems in Broxtowe, where there's talk of legal action.

The dispute centres on disclosures in a Lib Dem election email. It claimed that the Tory candidate Anna Soubry attempted to gag a local newspaper from covering Harriet Harman's photo op in the Labour constituency.

Her campaign manager has sent a furious email to the Lib Dem's David Watts demanding an apology and retraction. The Tories point out that Anna is a celebrated former TV journalist and believes in freedom of the press. Such claims damage her reputation, say the Tories

In response, David Watts has told Anna's campaign organiser "not to be so silly". He says his email newsletter never mentioned Anna by name or the Conservative Party.

There's been a similar bust-up in Gedling, another Labour marginal seat. The Tory candidate Bruce Laughton has apologised to some shop keepers after comments he made.

He had allegedly complained about shop window posters that blamed the local Conservative council for imposing car parking charges.

The shopkeepers were so outraged at the alleged comments made to them by Mr Laughton, that the matter ended with the police... courtesy of a tip-off from the local Labour Party.

He was later interviewed by Nottinghamshire police, although no further action was taken.

But both incidents show that nerves are fraying... as the clock ticks to election day.

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To win this general election, the parties need to win over the East Midlands. To find out the concerns of the voters, where better than in the constituencies of our main guests for an East Midlands Today TV election special? Watch it, this Tuesday evening on BBC1 from 10.50 pm.

So here's a taster. First stop, the constituency of Labour's Margaret Beckett in Derby South. Manufacturing industry still matters here. It's a big employer. But recession is taking its toll.

Pete Salloway is a director of a small engineering firm. PromeX Ltd supplies the railway and service sector with engineering components.

The business is five years old, but Pete is worried about the state of the economy.

"The turnover's dropped considerably in the last 12 months and I think we are heading deeper into another recession," he told me.

That'll worry young apprentices learning their skills at a specialist training centre near the Pride Park football stadium of Derby County. They're Derby's engineers of the future. One of the trainees, 18-year-old Darren Thompson from Long Eaton, worries about the jobs market.

"As soon as I left school I looked for an apprenticeship but there was nothing. I had been out of work for three months when I found this course. It's a great opportunity but there's no certainty about finding a job at the end of it all," says Darren.

Jim Glassbrook, of Training Services 2000 Ltd, is an engineer turned tutor and runs a privately-run apprenticeship training scheme. It offers engineering trainee programmes for up to 30 school leavers, like Darren.

"There have been one or two initiatives recently to give employers some help in taking on apprentices, but regretfully there are not enough places for young people that want to work in the industry," he says.

Whoever wins the general election, pressure on government spending is inevitable. Jobs and services will be on the line. It'll be a bumpy ride. So on to the Chesterfield constituency of Lib Dem Paul Holmes.

Here I met pensioners who can go anywhere by bus without paying a penny with their free bus passes. But what if a cash-strapped government was to scrap the free concession?

"I can't imagine going back to paying for it. We wouldn't get out so much," 82-year-old Doreen Philpot told me.

Some of our local bus operators worry that public transport funding could be a target for a Chancellor looking for big savings. Keith West is the marketing manager for Midland Classic, which runs services between Ashby de la Zouch, Swadlincote and Burton on Trent.

"Public transport is always an easy hit. We had an increase in VAT on fuel and a rise in duty on fuel. So far, we have managed to absorb it. But I'm not so sure we can in the future. We are all under so much financial pressure," said Keith.

Final stop and West Bridgford. It's home to Trent Bridge, Nottingham Forest and the Rushcliffe constituency of one of the Tory "Big Beasts", Kenneth Clarke.

This affluent corner of south Nottinghamshire is a hot spot destination for home buyers... if they can afford the houses.

Kimberley Morris, a 28-year-old hairstylist, rents a home nearby with her partner Mark, a bakery engineer. They have a nine-month-old son Callun and would love to afford a mortgage to buy their first home.

"It is really difficult because house prices in West Bridgford are so high. We like the area but it would take us 10 years to save enough for a deposit," she told me.

So is the answer to build hundreds more affordable homes in Rushcliffe; homes that
Kimberley and Mark could at least hope to buy?

The prospect of such developments alarms people in commuter villages such as Barton-in-Fabis. It's six miles south of Nottingham, near the M1 motorway junction with East Midlands Airport.

The village has a population of 300. In fact, there's been a small community here since Roman times. But now the locals face a very modern invasion with plans to build 5,000 new homes on the doorstep.

It's part of the government's housing target to build more than 400,000 new homes in the East Midlands by 2026. That's the equivalent of 22,000 a year.

Local Barton resident Paul Kazmarczuk believes the targets are nonsense. He hopes a future government will scrap them. Paul is also chairman of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England in Rushcliffe.

"The idea of building 5,000 new homes near us is completely unjustified. It would ruin the village for forever and create a new town. The green belt would also be trashed. You can still deliver all the affordable new housing necessary with far fewer housing numbers. It's about time the politicians saw sense," he said.

So there's pressure to build more homes. There's pressure on public spending and economic pressure caused by recession. And there's also pressure on our politicians to come up with solutions. That's what this election is about.

Watch the East Midlands Today Election Special this Tuesday on BBC One at 10.50pm with Labour's Margaret Beckett, Ken Clarke for the Conservatives and the Lib Dems' Paul Holmes.

The programme is in front of an invited audience at Nottingham's Albert Hall and presented by Marie Ashby.

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After Nick Clegg's breakthrough in the leaders' debate, could the Liberal Democrats' surge have an impact on marginal constituencies like Gedling?

I was with local Lib Dem activists today, watching them stuff envelopes with election leaflets. Such back room tasks can be part of the routine grind of an election campaign, but the Lib Dems were beaming.

They're confident the party can boost the 14% share of the vote they achieved in 2005.

The Lib Dem candidate is Julia Bateman, who commutes between her Kettering home and the London offices of the Law Society, where she works.

"I think people are fed up with the switch from red to blue, and blue to red. I'm here to offer an alternative. We already have former Labour Party members in Gedling who are now working for my campaign," she told me.

Bruce Laughton, the Conservative candidate, is a Nottinghamshire county councillor. As photo ops go, the site of the former Daybrook laundry is pretty downbeat. Until a few years ago, the laundry employed 300 people. He blames such factory closures on Labour policies.

"The first thing this government should do is not to increase national insurance. It's a tax on jobs. We need a government that understand business and has the expertise necessary," he says.

This Labour-held Nottingham constituency has its mature leafy suburbs. It also has pockets of some of the highest unemployment in the East Midlands. The final batch of unemployment figures before polling day is unlikely to show a dramatic change in some of the worst hit wards.

The Conservative have spent heavily in negative campaigning in seats like Gedling. Images of Gordon Brown are plastered on many poster sites in the constituency.

Labour's Vernon Coaker defends a majority of just over 4,300. A former deputy head teacher, he's now the government's schools minister. He won the seat off the Tories in the Labour landslide of 1997, and dismisses the poster campaign. Mr Coaker says it's the government's investment in public services that is the key message.

"Just look at the investment we have put into the schools and the hospitals, Sure Start and tax credits. This has far more impact on the lives of ordinary people than a few Tory posters, he says.

Marginal Gedling used to be a two horse race. Labour v Conservative. But with another leaders' debate this Thursday and Nick Clegg's star still rising, all bets are off.

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This general election has already shown its uglier side. Alan Duncan tells me that up to one hundred of his election posters and signs in his Melton and Rutland constituency have been vandalised.

The posters were ripped apart or defaced with particularly abusive graffiti. What's unclear at this stage is whether the incident is mindless juvenile behaviour or deliberately politically motivated.

Mr Duncan is defending one of the safest Conservative seats in England. But his outspoken comments and appearances on TV's "Have I Got News for You" have given this top Tory a high national profile.

He made headlines at the height of the expenses crisis when he told a constituent that MPs would end up having "to live on rations". Mr Duncan may have been jesting, but it backfired. He was being secretly recorded at the time.

The election posters will be back in place very soon. As for the culprits, he described them as " poor, sad people".

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If you want to find the typical East Midlands marginal, then come to Gedling. It sweeps across the leafy suburbia of north Nottingham, taking in communities such as Arnold, Carlton and Burton Joyce. Once a safe Tory seat, the voters switched to New Labour. But is this swing seat about to swing again?

More importantly, which group of voters could be decisive in this sort of constituency? It's been held by Vernon Coaker since New Labour's landslide victory of 1997.

In this election, the target voters are "motorway man and woman", according to the Nottingham-based research company Experian.

They tend to be young couples who backed Tony Blair, but have become disillusioned with Labour. Their finances are stretched and they are significantly over-represented in the key constituencies that cluster around the motorway network.

"It's certainly worrying for Labour because some of these key groups have changed allegiance. In 2005, they were very much Labour. Now we are looking at them turning blue," Experian's Bruno Rost told me.

"Motorway Man and Woman" make up 15% of the electorate. But it's the voting intentions of another group that will cheer the Tories. These voters are grouped as
"industrial heritage" and are found in the former industrial and coalfield areas of the East Midlands.

"They are typically people who have worked in manufacturing.They are highly skilled manual workers and those jobs have gone in recent years," Bruno explained.

This group represents 7.5% of the UK households. That number doubles in many of those East Midland Labour marginals.

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Alan Duncan tells me to dismiss talk of a celebrity independent candidate standing against him in his Melton and Rutland constituency.

The former Independent MP Martin Bell has been drumming up interest in finding a suitable candidate, but it's proving quite a challenge. A local campaigner who originally showed some interest has now pulled out.Mr Bell is in Nottingham later this week.

It'll be interesting to find out from him then if the independent cause in Alan Duncan's seat is having more success, particularly the search for a credible candidate.

Perhaps it's the Conservative majority that's a huge disincentive.

At the last general election, Alan Duncan enjoyed a Conservative majority of nearly 13 thousand, one of the biggest in the East Midlands. The sole independent candidate in 2005 only attracted 37 votes and lost her deposit.

Elections can be an expensive business.

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So here we go. There are 44 constituencies in the East Midlands. Labour will be defending 25 of them... some of the most marginal seats in Britain.

The Conservatives will have to increase their tally of 17 seats from the last election if David Cameron is to become PM.

The Chesterfield MP Paul Holmes is only Liberal Democrat MP in the East Midlands .

So where are the key seats?

Loughborough is one of the region's most marginal. Labour's Andy Reed defends a slender majority of 1,996.

There's Gedling, just north of Nottingham. Schools minister Vernon Coaker could see his 3,811 majority vanish if the Conservatives maintain the scale of leads in recent polls.

Other seats to watch out for: Derby Northwhere Bob Laxton is standing down. Both the Lib Dems and the Tories are targeting this Labour marginal.

Ashfield, where Geoff Hoon was the MP. Will the voters go for Labour's celebrity candidate Gloria De Piero, the former GMTV presenter?

North West Leicestershire, where Labour's David Taylor died at Christmas. He was planning stand down at this election anyway. The Tories need to overturn a 4,477 Labour majority.

Corby, seat of Phil Hope the government's Minister for the East Midlands, is particularly vulnerable. Labour's majority of 1,517 is the smallest in the region.

And there's a brand new constituency to get to know: Mid Derbyshire. It includes suburban Spondon and Belper. Boundary changes in Derbyshire could also be a factor in the outcome in those marginals.

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