Across England in the General Election to come there will be three parties slugging it out and it's not unreasonable to expect all MPs from these areas to come exclusively from Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.
As far as I am aware, the three parties who have the best chance of messing with this expectation are the Green Party, UKIP and, sadly, the BNP.
For the Greens, although they do have a chance in some other seats (Norwich South springs to mind), the main hope of sending its first MP to Westminster lies in Brighton Pavilion where their PPC and party leader Caroline Lucas is to looking to build on the party's 3rd place finish in 2005:
David Lepper (Labour) - 15,427
Mike Weatherley (Tory) - 10,397
Keith Taylor (Green) - 9,571
Hazel Thorpe (Lib Dem) - 7,171
The Lib Dems may well fall full square behind Lucas if they decide their candidate can't win and some of the Labour support of 2005 might fall into the Green camp. David Lepper MP has lost ~5000 votes in each election since 1997 after all.
Perhaps, in the absence of proportional representation the Brighton Pavilion constituents may even believe they have a duty to vote for Caroline to ensure the Parliament is more fairly represented, albeit only very slightly.
Ladbrokes has Caroline's chances down at 13/8
In Buckingham, Speaker John Bercow is coming under a bit of pressure from UKIP's Nigel Farage. Nigel is standing against John who already has potential problems with his wife standing (elsewhere) as a Labour candidate and spending £45k on redecorating his abode when he set himself a £20k limit.
In 2005, the Buckingham results were:
John Bercow (Tory) - 27,748
David Greene (Labour) - 9,619
Luke Croydon (Lib Dems) - 9,508
It's difficult to say where those 19,000 Labour and Lib Dem votes will go if these parties respect the convention of not standing against the Speaker, perhaps Buckingham will see a very low turnout.
The Tory vote may be a personal backing of John Bercow or it may be a died-in-the-wool Tory vote. If it's the latter, perhaps Buckingham constituents are precisely the type that will take to Nigel and UKIP.
Furthermore, can John count on party activists to help him knock doors? I'm not sure how that works exactly.
I have to say, I find Nigel more charasmatic and more interesting than John by a country mile so a part of me hopes he wins even though I'm strongly pro-EU. The Speaker comes across as full of his own importance and worryingly insincere and I wouldn't be sad to see the back of him, particularly with Sir George Young waiting in the wings.
Ladbrokes has Nigel's chances down as 9/4
Nick Griffin has decided to stand in Barking, a constituency that the sitting Labour MP Margaret Hodge once said 8 out of 10 residents would consider voting BNP.
It seems that, sadly, there is an outside chance that the BNP could make a breakthrough here though I'm confident many Tories and Lib Dems would vote Labour to keep the threat of Griffin out.
Ladbrokes has Nick's chances down as 7/2
My opinion is that, of the three challengers above, Caroline Lucas has the greatest chance of being elected and I have backed it up with a fiver (a lot of money, I know) on the Green party leader to win through in Brighton Pavilion.
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I suspect Nick Griffin's primary aim in Barking is not necessarily the constituency but the council. The BNP did exceptionally well in 2006 (and again in the 2008 London Assembly election) and some think they would have won control with more candidates.
The anti-BNP campaigners can be relied on to turn up in Barking and basically do half the BNP's work for them. The campaigners will run around telling people in an area they don't understand that having a BNP representative will be the end of civilisation as they know it (which won't convince voters in an area that has many BNP councillors and is the base of the BNP assembly member), that it will send bad signals about London (a lot of people in Barking think they're in Essex), that it will be damaging for London's multicultural reputation (again not something to gain traction - this is Barking not Camden) and that stopping the BNP is the *only* thing that matters in the election (so the voter is expected forget about the problems of unemployment, crime, poor housing, limited opportunities etc...). It will go down worse than a lead balloon - it will just reinforce the BNP message that they are a party with answers & solutions that the political classes don't want the people to hear.
I hope that the other parties will take the BNP on over the issues rather than letting the whole thing degenerate into another circus that gives them sympathy.
The Greens have a chance in two seats, Hove and Norwich South. Outwith these two seats they don't have any real chance. UKIP won't win anything and having lived near Dagenham and Barking I cannot see the BNP winning any Westminster seats.
'Across England and Wales in the General Election to come there will be three parties slugging it out and it's not unreasonable to expect all MPs from these areas to come exclusively from Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.'
Well, it's fairly unreasonable to expect that Plaid will win none at all!
Good stuff, Jeff, I stuck a tenner on Caroline Lucas when the Greens were out at 4/1 - so I get 50 smackeroonies back if you're right... :)
Unfortunately I think Griffin will stand a chance in Barking. The BNP are deeply embedded in that area, as were their predecessors the National Front.
It's a shocking prospect but I think it's real.
Why do you say "Across England and WALES" and not just in England Jeff?
Plaid will probably have more seats in Wales in the next Westminster election than they have ever had before and neither UKIP nor the BNP will even get a fourth place in Wales. Your comments are totally irrelevant to Wales!
I think the BNP will stand a pretty good chance in Barking. The locals are just bloody-minded enough to ignore all the wailing from the mainstream parties and go for it.
How I hope Farage beats Bercow. The man was on his arrogant and patronising best form on The Marr Show this morning ... what an odious character. He needs bringing down a dozen pegs.
Another cuff round the ear from me viz. Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales (clue is in the title)...
I am genuinely deeply, deeply ashamed of myself regarding Wales and Plaid Cymru.
I don't know the Welsh for sorry so let me just say muchos apologiosodos and hope that that is somewhere close. (Probably too many vowels)
Jeff
You have revealed yourself as one of those Scots who refers to the Netherlands as Holland!
Oldnat, regrettably that's true. Not only that but occasionally call NI 'Ireland' and RoI 'Southern Ireland'. It doesn't matter really anyway.
Did you know Chinese uses the same word to label England as it does United Kingdom? I suppose I shouldn't complain too much as there's probably not even a language called Chinese.
If you're going to cover your tracks by taking "and Wales" out of your first line, you might at least keep the post grammatical by amending or deleteting "these areas"
Crikey, everyone's a critic these days. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that "these areas" can relate to Liverpool, London, Loughborough etc etc...
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