arthur
Very well known Exeweb poster
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2004
- Messages
- 11,711
One of the reasons Labour won Exeter in 1997 was that Labour had been steadily gaining Council seats all through the nineties and was so indisputably the main challenger to the Tories. The fact that Exeter had Council elections every year also meant that the Labour party electoral machine was constantly working and knew where to target its resources. IIRC the Liberal Democrat candidate, one Graham Oakes, who had been working the constituency assiduously since the strong SDP showing in 1997 suddenly disappeared off somewhere he thought more winnable, leaving Labour a clear run at the Tories. And, let us not forget, Tory Candidate Adrian Rogers who replaced the well respected John Hannam was ridiculous...I concede that with a very good constituency MP it is possible, but I can probably count them on the fingers of one hand how many of them there are. Difficult to prove as well. Exeter was a solid Tory seat, but Bradshaw came in with Blair so can't claim to have won it himself necessarily. We shall have to see what happens next time, although a countrywide swing to Labour will likely see them home.