Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Allen
As for the Iraq war protest vote, It is virtually non existent in this seat. Don't mistake Birmingham Yardley for an inner city seat that went Lib Dem because of Iraq and other issues that angered the hard left.
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How do you know that the Iraq 'war' protest vote "is virtually non-existent" in Yardley? Done a canvass of every house in the constituency on this matter have you?
The anti-Iraq 'war' protest vote exists in in every constituency in the land - it pushed up the national Liberal Dim party vote share from 18% (2001 to 23% (2005).
It is not - as you naively imply - confined to just "inner city" (your words) seats. Labour lost some rural seats to the Conservatives at the last General Election without the Conservative vote going up at all on 2001 - simply because some Labour voters angry about Iraq switched to the third-place Liberal 'Democrats'.
Labour will get back most of the anti-Iraq 'war' protest voters next time which it lost in May 2005 and this - together with the Conservatives pushing hard to get votes from people who voted Liberal 'Democrat' at the last General Election - will squeeze the vote of the europhile Liberal 'Democrats' at Yardley, Somerset-Frome and and in all the other seats they hold (as well as in their target constituencies they hope to gain).