thank you dave.
You're right about christies. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, it was a marginal issue to everybody except a few labour activists (and Yasmin apparently) desperate for some sort of handle against Leech in the absence of anything substantial as they realised they were in danger of losing the seat.
The reasons as we saw it for John getting in - and "we" means myself and a good number of other disenchanted labour voters around west didsbury who switched to john - were (a) overwhelmingly Iraq along with the rest of the country (b) disenchantment with Keith Bradley's half-hearted approach to various local issues we had which would have involved him with standing up to the labour council on our behalf - notably schools issues - (c) the fact that john leech had a long and honourable track record of fighting on our behalf on those local issues, speaking up for us in council, and tirelessly coming to local meetings and being 100% hands on while KB was off playing at being a junior minister.
labour and yasmin do themselves no favours harking on about christies. it's old dead news and of no interest to voters' current thinking. it keeps the contributors here busy perhaps, but it also stops them getting to grips with how to really tackle john leech. As things stand, they arent even close and lucy powell is making no impression whatsoever outside of her own little coterie of supporters. To me it looks like she won't have what it takes, otherwise she'd be making a lot of noise and getting her name known.
