This week the Bridgwater Mercury ran a front page headline claiming that the new Bridgwater Constituency was ‘not a priority seat for Labour’. The article by the paper’s Liberal Democrat reporter, sorry we mean ‘Local Democracy’ reporter, claimed to have asked the local branch. But hadn’t. Bridgwater Labour Branch Press Officer, Brian Smedley, who is also the Leader of Labour controlled Bridgwater Town Council and a Labour County Councillor for Bridgwater said “If the Reporter had asked us we would of course have told him that winning the new Bridgwater Constituency was indeed a priority for us. All the polls are showing it as a ‘Labour Gain’ and it’s the best opportunity for decades to finally win the seat and that the new geography means we have lost the Tory heartlands of West Somerset and gained the old Labour areas in Highbridge. Bridgwater is a Labour Town and our priority is to make it a Labour Constituency at the next election.”
Why Labour Can win Bridgwater
- The heart of the new Bridgwater Constituency is the town of Bridgwater which has always been solidly Labour.
- At the last election 13 of the 16 Town Councillors elected were Labour.
- The bulk of the new constituency , which stretches along the coast to Burnham and Highbridge and laps the Polden Hills around Woolavington, is more than half of the former Sedgemoor District Council where Labour was the main opposition to the ruling Conservatives – and it’s the bit where all the Labour seats were.
- Even on the ‘old’ Bridgwater constituency Labour came second and are now lapping hard on the heels of the discredited Tories.
- The Tories, sinking badly in the polls, are running scared and trying to desperately win back votes with any dangerous populist policy going – but even sitting MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has given up the ghost of winning here again and has now been selected in the new Tiverton and Minehead constituency where he thinks he stands a better chance (despite the worrying ‘tractor porn’ legacy of the former Tory MP there.
Why voting ‘Lib Dem’ just helps the Tories
- The Liberal Democrats have been wiped out in the Bridgwater area long ago and have just had one lone councillor elected for a 4 year period in the town throughout the past 20 years (and that was during one election where the Tories didn’t stand candidates in their safe ward)
- The Lib Dems of course helped the Tories back to power with their Coalition of 2010 and have never recovered from the stigma of bringing in the austerity programme that we still are suffering from today.
- The Lib Dems now run Somerset county council and are making a hash of it -although it’s true that they inherited a run down county after years of Tory mismanagement
- This doesn’t of course mean that as soon as the election is announced you’ll not see the ‘no-hope’ Lib Dems pushing thousands of leaflets around saying ‘winning here’ and ‘it’s a 2 horse race’
In Bridgwater ‘Vote Labour’
Cllr Smedley added “People in Bridgwater know that voting Lib Dem just helps the Tories. If people want the Tories out – and they do -they need to vote Labour. The polls are showing Bridgwater as a Labour gain. But not just Bridgwater, also Weston Super Mare and North Somerset. So far from not being a priority it’s pretty important that Labour campaigns hard in these seats.”
“Anyone listening to the Tory conference this week will have been astounded to hear Rishi Sunak saying ‘there needs to be a change’ and ‘how bad things have been’ – but…that’s him! That’s them! They’ve been in power for 13 years!”
“During the coming weeks Labour will be announcing our candidate to fight the Bridgwater election while the Tories seem to have yet again taken the people for granted by parachuting in Sir Ashley Someone or other who’s best known for just being yet another Tory Grandee given some ‘safe seat’. How wrong they are!”