Lib Dems are desperate. But then they always are. In the new Bridgwater constituency they have been trying to con the voters into thinking they are the ‘tactical vote’ to beat the Tories. Sadly, for them, all the polling sites now show a LABOUR win and LABOUR as the real tactical vote to beat the Tories in the Bridgwater area. Put your postcode in here to see for yourself. Lib Dem candidate , imported Mendip Councillor Claire Sully, is claiming that Labour voters are switching to her , which will be news to Labour candidate Leigh Redman and his team who have been out knocking on doors day in day out and getting a fantastic response from people who can now see a Tory defeat being delivered by Labour not only nationally but finally in their own constituency. Bridgwater Town Council Labour Leader, Cllr Brian Smedley, commented “When the Lib Dems start a campaign their posters already say ‘winning here’ even if they’re not and ‘it’s a 2 horse race’, without mentioning the 2 horses are Tory and Labour. Local people can’t be fooled. Not a single Libdem has been elected in Bridgwater for a long time, there’s no Lib Dem councillors in the town, Labour runs the town council, and across the old Sedgemoor District Labour was always the party of opposition to the Tories. The one time the Lib Dems got a glimmer of a handle on power was in 1999 and after 4 years they slumped from 12 seats down to a single councillor. The same thing happened in 2010 when the Lib Dems put the Cons in government and jettisoned all their principles to do so. 5 years later they slumped from 56 seats to 8. We take no lessons from the LibDems apart from they’ll not be terribly honest and then dump the policies they wanted you to think they had. In Bridgwater people are voting LABOUR to get rid of the Tories.”
Tory Tantrums
In Bridgwater Conservative central office (now moved to Wells) there is also a sense of desperation as Turncoat Tory Diogo Rodrigues, who’s travels took him from Labour to pointless independent to Boris Johnson style Tory in 2019, has now actually become the actual Tory election agent. Diogo’s style is to try to present himself as the principled champion of the people, much maligned and constantly persecuted by the evil lefties (who helped him get elected in the first place). Earlier this year he encouraged people to get up a petition against his fellow Town Councillors being awarded £1,000 a year by an independent panel, not mentioning that he himself was already on £20,000 + as a county councillor. He followed that up with trying to present an error in budgeting by the politically neutral town clerk as in fact the fault of the ‘Labour Town Council’. All straight on social media where conservospiracy theorists were waiting to lap it up. This week he is claiming he was ‘removed’ from a town council meeting for asking questions as a ‘critical friend‘.
Cllr Smedley commented “If Diogo’s a ‘critical friend’ I’d hate to find a critical enemy….Clearly it’s election time and Diogo is the agent for the Tory candidate. But this doesn’t give him the right to take over a whole town council meeting with just his questions. He also needs to respect the authority of the chair and constantly trying to speak over him isn’t going to get far with cllr Mick Lerry, an experienced teacher of difficult kids. What actually happened was Diogo wouldn’t shut up when asked and after this went on and on, the chair asked him to leave and he did. Hardly thrown out, and hardly censored as he’d already asked 8 questions while other members were patiently waiting to speak. Sadly, he wasn’t ‘Chucked out’ of the meeting, he left of his own accord, and the only thing bruised was his massive ego.”
Vote Tactically Vote LABOUR
The Tory vote in Bridgwater has already sunk by some 30% and with the rise of ReformUK doesn’t look like that decline will reverse in time for the election. Tory Candidate – Bristol based Grandee ‘Ashley Fox’ , along with Lib Dem Sully is the other non local candidate. Of the 7 candidates standing the Greens, the Workers Party, the Independent and RefUK all are local but it’s Labour’s Leigh Redman that stands out as the only one with years of service to the town whether it’s his time as a town, district and county councillor, his involvement in the Fire Service or in Carnival, his voluntary work during the covid crisis or the fact that he was born bred and schooled in the town. Cllr Smedley concludes “As a matter of principle a winning Labour vote is now within our grasp and if, as also seems the case, you mainly just want to get the Tories out, then in the Bridgwater constituency the tactical Vote is Labour. If you vote Green, Workers Party or Independent they won’t get elected and you’ll have wasted a really crucial anti Tory vote. If you vote RefUK, well, you probably haven’t thought it through that much and I suspect might be a little bit angrier than is healthy for you, and if you vote LibDem you’ll be splitting the anti Tory vote and worse case scenario you might even get a Lib Dem…and then none of us will know where we are…”