Labour’s Arrogance Could Cost Ed Miliband The Election

Ed Miliband - Austerity - TUC March For The Alternative - Arrogance

 

With less than a month to go until the 2015 general election, the London Evening Standard (print edition) is currently running a Constituency Focus series, exploring the different dynamics and personalities at play in London’s diverse boroughs and constituencies.

Yesterday saw the focus on the constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, this blogger’s home turf, with Labour candidate Tulip Siddiq featuring prominently. My own interview with Tulip Siddiq is here, and this blog’s overview of the electoral battle for Hampstead and Kilburn can be found here.

Today the focus moved to the west London constituency of Brentford and Isleworth, an area covering Chiswick, Isleworth, Brentford, Osterley and Hounslow, close to Heathrow Airport. Unsurprisingly, all of the main local candidates are proudly displaying their NIMBY credentials by opposing a third runway at Heathrow.

From the Standard:

In the Tory stronghold of Chiswick, the issue of school places dominates; while in the traditionally Labour-supporting parts to the west, NHS waiting times are the hot topic.

But the one issue that is a major talking point across the whole of the Brentford and Isleworth constituency is the proposed Heathrow expansion, which both the main candidates oppose.

Conservative candidate Mary Macleod won by just 1,958 votes in 2010, making this the 65th most marginal seat in the country. The constituency … is also one of the Tories’ 40/40 seats – 40 to win, 40 to keep.

But it is on the subject of austerity that a real difference is revealed between Labour and Conservative philosophies.

Ruth Cadbury, a long-serving Labour councillor and part of the Cadbury chocolate dynasty, is standing as the Labour Party candidate in the general election. And when she spoke about the level of Conservative support in the wealthier parts of her constituency, she had this to say:

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