The Battle for Luton South
I find myself in the middle of what will be one of the most interesting contests of the general election. The constituency of Luton South is an exciting battle between the candidates of the three main parties, several independents including Esther Rantzen, and candidates from some of the minor parties. All this takes place against a background of scandal created by the expense claims of disgraced Labour MP Margaret Moran.
I will be covering the battle for Luton South here on ‘Strange Thoughts’ blogging about the candidates, the media coverage, and the key campaign events. Although, I admit I will not be blogging from an entirely unbiased perspective.
Essential posts:
Introduction : The candidates : Constituency profiles : Twitter
It is significant to note that the independent candidate in Luton South being endorsed by former independent MP Martin Bell and the Independent Network he is fronting is Joe Hall not Esther Rantzen.
More on this on the BBC, in the Mail, and in Simon Hoggart’s sketch in the Guardian.
This is getting beyond a joke. I’ve heard the news that another independent candidate has entered the race to be the MP for Luton South. I don’t have many details yet as the new person is rather unknown but I believe his name is Faruk Chudury. Who this guy is and what his platform will be I’ve no idea. One thing I do know is that the voter of Luton South aren’t short of choice in this election!
I noticed that today this blog’s story about Esther and the Lib Dem posters has been written up in ‘Tim Dowling’s election diary‘ in the Guardian. That’s the first time something from this blog has reached the national media.
Liberal Democrat candidate Qurban Hussain’s campaign for Luton South is “an impressive effort” according to Newsnight’s political editor Michael Crick.
Crick, who visited Luton earlier in the campaign, made the comment in a post on his blog last Friday. You can read it in full here; ‘Will Lib Dems gain seats on strength of Clegg’s performance?‘.
The video below from the Telegraph shows Esther Rantzen out campaigning on the door steps of Luton South.
However, the real star of the video is the “Lib Dem canvasser” she meets about halfway through. I can reveal that this mystery canvasser is in fact Luton councillor Martin Pantling. Martin being a friendly sort of chap wishes Esther good luck – that is – good luck on her saving her deposit!
I am grateful to Liberal Cynic for pointing out, in a comment on my previous post, the curious incident of Esther and the Liberal Democrat posters. Intrigued I followed up on this by asking around our local campaign team to see if they knew anything about it. It turns out they did and this is what was reported back to me;
Last Saturday one of Luton Liberal Democrat’s local activists Haji Abid, a former Mayor of Luton, supplied two posters to a shop run by a supporter of Qurban Hussain the Liberal Democrat candidate for Luton South. These poster were duly placed in the shop’s window.
On the following Monday the shopkeeper got a phone call from independent candidate Esther Rantzen asking if ITN News at Ten could film her there. The shopkeeper, being a friendly chap, said that she could.
Later that day Esther turned up with the ITN film crew in tow. They set up an began filming Esther who started to take down the Liberal Democrat posters and replace them with hers. In the screen shot from the broadcast below you can see one of our posters laying to the side.
Apparently our supportive shopkeeper friend was more than a little shocked at Esther’s cheek. So, when Esther and the film crew had left, he quickly returned our posters to the window.
A minor incident perhaps but a good reminder that, especially during elections, not everything you see on TV is what it seems.
Compare and contrast these election campaign launches:
Liberal Democrat candidate Qurban Hussain launched his campaign for Luton South by speaking about local and international issues at a packed public meeting at the Dallow Community Centre;
“Over 400 people from all walks of life in our community attended the open meeting to show their support for the Liberal Democrats and my campaign to proudly represent our home in Westminster. During the meeting local residents themselves made speeches about the change our town and country needs and why they are supporting the Liberal Democrats.”
Labour candidate Gavin Shuker launches his campaign by … er … having dinner with Lord Kinnock;
“Gavin formally launched his campaign last night at the Empress of India restaurant in York Street, High Town……Gavin is pictured below with his campaign team, talking with Lord Kinnock and enjoying dinner with his wife Lucie….”
Somehow I forgot to blog about this, but the number of candidates declared to be standing in Luton South has now reached 11 with the addition of Frank Sweeney from the Workers Revolutionary Party.
The Luton Today website has a video report on Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s visit to Luton South yesterday. You can watch the video in the original report here; ‘VIDEO: ‘We’re the party to trust’ claims Lib Dem leader‘.
In it Nick says;
“The only party who can clean up Westminster politics from top to toe is the Liberal Democrats.
“I think there’s now a very strong chance that Qurban Hussain will be the MP for Luton South. He’s established an incredibly strong reputation on the doorstep. I’ve visited Luton many times, Vince Cable visited too. He’s the one who told me about this company which I was very keen to visit, and it’s been a very dramatic turn around in the fortunes of the Liberal Democrats.
“We’ve grown from strength to strength to strength. People feel so let down by the outgoing Labour MP, so betrayed, they know they are not going to get any real different politics from David Cameron’s Conservatives and they don’t trust David Cameron’s Conservatives.
Esther Rantzen is a colourful sideshow to this contest.”
Last night co-editor of Lib Dem Voice, the “independent website for Lib Dems”, Mark Pack wrote a post about Luton South in which he made some rather good points;
“If a party’s leader visits a constituency it doesn’t hold three times…
… in the space of a few months, it’s a pretty big clue that the party believes it has a strong chance of winning – and almost certainly has polling or canvass data analysis to back it up.”
One of the things raised in Michael Crick’s Newsnight story on Luton South was a criticism that the Liberal Democrats in Luton weren’t attacking enough on the issue of disgraced Labour MP Margaret Moran’s expenses. This was an unfair criticism. Luton South candidate Qurban Hussain and the Luton Liberal Democrats have been at the forefront of the campaign against Moran’s abuse of the expenses system.
The evidence can be found online. For example;
As far back as last May, as the scandal broke, Qurban Hussain was condemning Margaret Moran over her excessive expense claims; ‘Lib Dem challenger condemns Luton South MP Moran for expense claims’. He was saying;
“This is not the first time that Ms Moran has been in trouble over her expenses. It is time she stopped trying to defend her indefensible and immoral lining of her own pocket at the taxpayers expense”
In October 2009 Qurban was one of the first people to sign up to a local paper’s anti Moran campaign; ‘Qurban Hussain supports Luton and Dunstable Express’ Margaret Moran Campaign’. He then proposed a motion to Luton Borough Council that condemned Moran and called on her to resign, a motion that the Labour Councillors rejected and amended.
In November Qurban wrote to Gordon Brown demanding that Moran have her resettlement grant cut; ‘I write to Gordon Brown over the Margaret Moran affair’. And then in December Qurban was demanding that the newly selected Labour candidate come clean about his attitude to the Moran expense scandal; ‘Where Does the Labour Candidate Stand On Moran?’
Finally, you can find the statements made by Qurban in response to the recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme and her expulsion from the Labour party here. Including;
“So, after not working for her constituents for ten months the Labour Party has suspended Margaret Moran.
Far too little and far too late.
This will not stop her getting her payout in six weeks time and this certainly does not make up for for their total lack of concern for Luton South residents for the last ten months. Once again she has caused national outrage and the Labour Party should apologise to every single resident in Luton South.
We have been neglected while the Labour Party protected their own.
If she had done the last honourable thing she could have done for her constituents once the expenses scandal broke then she would have not been in a position to neglect us while trying to make money for herself. The Luton Labour Party should have stood up in support of local residents and called for her to resign, but they never did.”
As part of his general election tour around the country Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg visited Luton yesterday.
He met with Liberal Democrat candidate for Luton South, Qurban Hussain, and together they looked around the factory of 2K Manufacturing, a luton based company that makes products from recycled plastic.
Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg speaks to workers at 2K Manufacturing in Luton with Luton South candidate Qurban Hussain. Credit Alex Folkes
You can see more photos from this visit here.
Another example of poor journalism in the reporting of the election in Luton South is the latest article from The Times; ‘Make this general election Independents’ Day, says Esther Rantzen‘.
The article is essentially a puff piece for Esther Rantzen without any realistic discussion of her chances in the seat. It mentions the Labour and Tory candidates and even Stephen Rhodes, but doesn’t talk about the Liberal Democrats at all.
I don’t expect The Times to back the Liberal Democrats or declare we are set to win. I wouldn’t mind if they said our chances were unlikely. But not to mention the Liberal Democrats at all gives a completely unrealistic picture of the reality of the constituency. It is just bad journalism and clearly demonstates bias.
Last night’s ITV News had a story about the election in Luton South. It concentrated a lot on Esther and the expenses scandal, but I think it gave the Liberal Democrats and our candidate Qurban Hussain a decent go.
You can see the report on the ITV News website.
Nich Starling, know as the Norfolk Blogger, has written a post previewing the election battleground in the Eastern Region. Initially he missed out the two Bedfordshire seats of most interest, Bedford and Luton South, but he has since updated the post with descriptions of both. He is reasonably accurate on Luton South, although over harsh on Esther Rantzen and misses out the fact that the Liberal Democrat vote doubled at the last election. What he isn’t aware of will be how the campaign is playing out on the ground, particularly the strength of the Liberal Democrat challenge, and, aside from Esther, the strengths and weaknesses of the various candidates.
“Luton South is at a council level a Lib Dem target and with the scandal involving Margaret Moran’s second home claims, the Labour Party will do well to hold the seat. The major problem for the Lib Dems is that they start in third place having failed to overcome the Tories last time who remain in second place. Given that until 1997 Luton South was a Tory seat, the Tories might expect to be the main challengers here this time. Again though, the Tories are not in the shape they might expect to be with a shaky local organisation and little in the way of local council success on which to hang any claims of being the main alternatives. Given the plethora of independents seeking to muddy the waters including the dreadful Esther Rantzen, whose stated reasons for standing appear to me to have all gone, except seemingly the number one reason (her ego), it seems that this seat will provide some interest to the press.”
Strange Thoughts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Published by Andy Strange using WordPress. The views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organisation. Hosted by Grit & Oyster Ltd.
22nd April 2010
17:56
