I don't know what odds the bookies are offering but I think he has a good shot of saving his deposit but he won't be helped by the fact that the current Tory MP is quite well regarded.Originally Posted by SomersetYokel
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
I don't know what odds the bookies are offering but I think he has a good shot of saving his deposit but he won't be helped by the fact that the current Tory MP is quite well regarded.
On his page he looks like the guy on the front page of MAD MAGAZINE
Let us deal with the known facts. At the G.E. 2001. Ludlow fell to the Lib-Dem. and that would be, if my memory serves correctly for the firat time since the 19c, Ludlow did not return a Conservative. Green, Lib-Dem. 18620. Taylor-Smith 16,900. C. Knowles Lab. 5785. Gaffney Green. 871. Brown UKIP. 858. In the 2005. GE. The Conservative's took back the seat. Dunne, Con. 20,979. Green. Lib-Dem. 18,952. Knowles, Lab. 4,974. Gaffney, Green. 852. ZUCKERMAN UKIP. 783. Sorry, the portents are not good.
Ludlow is the most beautiful small town in England, in my opinion, but conservative in every meaning of the word. I fear that Gill will be seen the Conservatives as the 'spoiler candidate'. Did Zuckerman have Gill speaking for him in 2005? I don't know. What Gill could do, if he has any local following, is lose Ludlow for the Conservatives. That may be good, bad, or indifferent. But what other scope to influence the election does he have?
Other known facts are that Gill increased the Tory majority in 1987 and 1992, years when the Tories lost seats across the country as a whole. He also suffered a less than average swing against him in 1997.
He may or may not have endorsed Zuckerman in 2005 but he didn't actively campaign for him. Zuckerman would never have done well in Ludlow where to be an "outsider" is a serious weakness in a candidate.
If I have this right what I know about CG is that when he had the real chance to bring down Major over Maastricht he bottled it.
Do others see it this way??
What happened is significantly more complicated than you claim. Without going into a lengthy description of the parliamentary process basically what happened was as follows.
The government needed to pass one final vote in the Commons in order to sign up to Maastricht. The Tory rebels voted with the opposition and the government lost the vote. The following day the government re-tabled the motion but worded it as a confidence motion. Had the Tory rebels stuck to their guns they would have brought down the government. With the exception of Rupert Allason (who abstained) they decided to back the government. Their reasoning was that if the government fell the proceeding election would have resulted in a Labour government who would have signed the treaty anyway.
That is as I understood it apart from I thought Allason voted NO and I hadn't appreciated, which I suppose is obvious now I think about it, the bit about Labour would have signed it anyway.
Even so we don't KNOW Labour would have won and if Major had lost the vote of confidence who knows what the outcome?
What we know for sure is that regardless of all the 'B@ST@RDS' huffing and puffing they did NOT stop the Maastricht Treaty being signed which they say they were opposed to.
Again they put PARTY before COUNTRY.
Yes they should have brought the government down in the intrest of the country, we are on this issue in agreement.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Gen 1:1
I have some sympathy with the view that they should have brought the government down over the issue but in the end it would have been a futile gesture that wouldn't have stopped the treaty going through.
For the record Allason did abstain rather than vote no.
House of Commons Hansard Debates for 23 Jul 1993
The No votes start about a quarter of the way down the page.
Thank you for the link Richard, wether the treaty went through would of course depended on the result of the GE
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Gen 1:1
Posting Permissions 
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks