Strictly Politics: Reckless move sees backlash.

Yesterday, Mark Reckless was a Conservative MP for the constituency of Rochester & Strood.  Today, he’s the probable UKIP candidate for the seat, in a by-election that could be happening in November.

Just like his name, his move to join UKIP and resign as a Conservative MP, was Reckless.  There’s no guarantee that he will get re-elected.  In fact, based upon what happened earlier today in Rochester, Mark Reckless, might have committed a reckless move of political suicide, by joining UKIP.

Channel 4 News political correspondent Michael Crick, has written about what was supposed to be the former MP’s triumphant return to Rochester with Nigel Farage, and the fact that it turned into a roasting for Reckless, at the hands of a local Conservative constituency organisation that had revenge and vengeance on their minds.

Most of what Reckless heard were Conservative activists who were unsurprisingly disgusted at what he’d done, and gave him a piece of their minds, and there were a lot of those.  Mark Reckless, could well have defected himself out of a job, that he could have held onto for about 8 or 9 more months.

Michael also raises a good point about Labour here.  Should they run a campaign here or let Tories and UKIP fight it out between themselves?  To me, the answer is obvious.  Yes, they should run a campaign in Rochester & Strood and run it hard.  After all, until 2010, it had been a Labour seat.  Reckless may well pull a group of voters to UKIP with him, and hopefully, it will split the right wing vote enough for Labour, or some other party if Labour don’t feel up to it, to go in and potentially win the vote. The Green Party would be a good party to get behind right now, if they decide to submit a candidate.

There have been comparisons made with the final days of John Major’s government in the mid 1990s.  In some ways, this is worse, as the Referendum Party was at the time, an untried, untested movement in electoral terms.  UKIP are tried and tested, and have won some seats, mainly at the council level, but also in the European Parliament.  Some people are expecting UKIP to win at least a seat at the UK General Election next year.  I expect that UKIP won’t win a seat, but their very presence will probably mean the Conservatives will lose seats, mostly to Labour.

Overall, this weekend may have proved that political defections are fraught with danger and if you make a Reckless move, you may just end up paying the penalty.  You have to wonder who was the more reckless, Mark Reckless or Nigel Farage?

Galloway wins Bradford East: Lessons for all parties

So, George Galloway from the Respect party won the Bradford West by-election.  He won it on a 50.8% turnout, which is pretty high for a by-election, with a majority of 10,100.  That's a pretty impressive performance, no question about it.  In fact, George Galloway's 18,341 votes is just 60 less than Marsha Singh got for Labour in 2010, when the turnout was 64.9%, 14% higher.

So, what does this result tell us?

Well, it shows that George Galloway definitely got his vote out.  His Respect team in Bradford worked their socks off and proved that in a contest invloving the major parties, a minor party can still win.  And it also proved that the other parties didn't really try, including Labour, as they assumed it would be a safe Labour seat.  I remember a work colleague once telling me that when you 'assume' you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.  The major parties assumed it was going to go to Labour and the voters made asses of them all.

But it also shows the value of getting your message out there in any number of different ways. He's had a show on talkSPORT for a number of years, but that show has come to an end, not because of the election result, but because talkSPORT is totally removing the remaining non-sport programming from its schedule. 

In New York, George does a 1-hour show on WBAI, on a Wednesday morning.  The show is produced out of London, like all of George Galloway's shows.

But the shows that are most controversial are the ones that are aired on the Iranian international news channel, Press TV.  One is a Press TV original show, called Comment, where viewers phone in to speak to George and his guests.  The other is a show that originally aired on Raj TV before being transfered over to Press TV, George's own news commentary TV show, The Real Deal. 

The shows are now only available online in the UK after Ofcom revoked Press TV's licence. 

Without a doubt, these shows have helped keep George Galloway in the public eye, and kept his viewpoint in people's minds.

But in a sense, this victory also confirms that George Galloway is a political opportunist.  In 1987, George Galloway unseated Roy Jenkins, who had been with Labour before becoming one of the gang of 4 that formed the Social Democratic Party back in 1981.  In the 1997 General Election, the constituencies had changed, and George had to fight to be nominated for the Glasgow Kelvin seat.  But he won that nomination and served another two terms, firstly with Labour, then when he was expelled from the party in late 2003, he joined a newly formed party, known only as Respect.  But he was not going to be able to contest Glasgow Kelvin again, as the constituency was split amongst three new constituencies for the 2005 General Election; Glasgow Central, Glasgow North and Glasgow North West.

And it was then he began his run as a 'parliamentarian of fortune'.  He would challenge and defeat Labour's Oona King in the Bethnal Green and Bow constitiuency.  He chose not to contest the seat again, and instead contested a newly created seat of Poplar and Limehouse in 2010, but came in 3rd. 

It does leave me feeling that George Galloway is a political opportunist, looking for seats that he feels he can make a strong challenge in, because either the sitting MP is seen as weak, or maybe because it is not felt that there will be any strong challengers so the main parties don't spend a lot of money on the campaign, and then Galloway comes in and organises a grass roots campaign that wins out.

And George Galloway does make a reasonable point in saying that was disenfranchisement with the 3 major parties, and he was able to capitalise on that.  But then so should any minor party, or indeed independent candidate.

Overall, there is a lot for all parties and candidates to learn from this.  I hope this makes other elections in future much more unpredictable.

The UK Budget 2012: Winners and Losers

What George Osborne has done today in Westminster, is akin to being a wolf in sheep's clothing.

On the one hand, he's helped everybody, especially the low paid, by raising the allowance, the starting point at which you earn tax, to £9,205 from April 2013, but he'spenalised the middle income earners, by lowering the point where they start paying 40% down to £41,450.  And the rich get the bonus of having the over £150,000 tax rate lowered to 45%.

He's hurting pensioners by freezing their personal allowances until the personal allowance catches up to it.

Child Benefit will be kept by people earning up to £50,000, and there will be a sliding scale, so that when you reach £60,000, you get no child benefit. But that still means two people, earning £49,000 each could get the child benefit, whilst one earning £61,000 would not.  That inherent unfairness has not been addressed.

Corporation Tax, will get reduced to 24% in April 2013 and down to 22% in April 2014.

Adding a 7% stamp duty for houses worth over £2,000,000 is one thing, and I do like the idea that any corporations paying for houses over £2,000,000 will pay 15%, that closes that little loophole.

Unfortunately, this is a budget that rewards the super rich, and penalises middle income earners, families and pensioners.  It has been dressed up as fair, and it is clearly anything but.