Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Our nomination accepted

The nomination papers for our candidate were handed in and accepted this morning. So far ours is the only nomination. So, if there are no others, Danny Lsmbert will be elected as the first Socialist councillor in Britain. But of course there will be more -- the usual suspects, Labour, Liberal, Tory, Greens and UKIP.

No doubt TUSC too though they won't have been planning to contest Vassall since they were courting Kingsley Abrams, the resigning councillor, who had been suspended by the Labour Group for opposing the cuts. Here's the Brixtoblog on why he resigned (to try to move further up the greasy pole by becoming an MP).

The result the last time we contested the area in which Vassall wards falls -- the Greater London Assembly elections in May 2012 -- was as follows (not including postal votes):

Labour 1683 (56.7%)
Cons 430 (14.5%)
LibDems 379 (12.8%)
Greens 336 (11.3%)
Socialist 82 (2.8%)
UKIP 52 (1,9%)

A safe Labour seat then.

Monday, October 28, 2013

We are standing

It's been decided. We will be standing a candidate in this by-election. The Socialist candidate will be Danny Lambert.

The 10 signatories to nominate were obtained this afternoon and the nomination papers will be handed in tomorrow morning.

Two of those we asked mentioned if we had anything to do with Russell Brand who in a BBC interview with Jeremy Paxman last week called for a revolution to establish an "egalitarian socialist society". We replied not exactly, but we will be contesting this time under the slogan "Revolution the only solution". One of the signatories revealed that he had voted for us in a previous election.

The manifestos are already at the printers and the 5000 will be delivered later this week or early next week. Then we start distributing them with the aim of delivering them all by 13 November when the postal ballot papers will be sent out.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Change of date

The Notice of Election has now been published and the date has been changed to Thursday 28 November, with nomination papers having to be in by noon on Friday 1 November.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Yet another local by-election in Lambeth

This time in Vassall ward, due to the resignation (to move on to higher things) of one of the Labour councillors. Election date will be Thursday 5 December. We are considering contesting, especially as Vassall ward is in the Vauxhall parliamentary constituency which we regularly contest.