Liberal Democrats hold on to Hadleigh

Well we failed to dislodge the Liberal Democrats in Hadleigh.

When I found out yesterday I was preparing to write a piece deprecating the low level tactics employed by the opposition. However looking more closely at the detailed results I find that we actually did quite well increasing our share of the vote. (The turn out was dismal by the way, but that is another matter.)

The nature of the Ward meant that it was always going to be a bit of a struggle. The real problem however was that last time there was a Labour Party candidate, and this time there wasn't. This meant that while the vote was split last time, any Labour enthusiast in the 'anything but the Tories' camp voted Liberal Democrat this time, making it very difficult for our man, Peter Burgoyne to come through on top. He was however a very creditable second and should be pleased with his performance. He fought a strong and very clean campaign.

I WILL be writing that piece about low level tactics from the Liberal Democrats, since being the Chairman of the Committee (The Information Technology Task Group) whose activities they were attacking I know that their campaigning claims were complete rubbish. However, no time this morning!