Turning The Tweed Blue

It would not be all that surprising to see the Conservatives pick up not only Berwick-upon-Tweed, but also Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, thereby unseating a Cabinet Minister.

In any event, it looks as if they are going to take the seat being vacated by Sir Alan Beith. That will be proclaimed by our allegedly national media as the storming of a Labour bastion because "It's Up Norf, innit". 

But every Conservative gain next year is going to be from the Lib Dems, and Labour is expecting to make at least as many.

Don't take my word for that. Ask Lord Ashcroft. The Conservatives are fully resigned to no gains, anywhere, from Labour. Not a single one. And to barely, if any, more from the Lib Dems than Labour will also be managing.

There is an extent to which ever going into government was always going to alienate the old Liberal areas, which are defined by an aversion to all existing centres of power even in relation to each other (the many in Scotland all voted solidly No in the recent referendum), and to the politics of the entire period since the end of the First World War.

They regard Labour as something essentially foreign and exotic. They do not understand, or quite trust, the Labour Party. But nor do they have cause to hate it.

The Conservatives, by the starkest of contrasts, are the party of the landlords against the tenants and the farmhands, the party of Church against Chapel, and so on.

A rich, posh Leader who came up through that party, who switched over an EU with which they have no affinity, and who sits for the university end of an inner city, has taken them into coalition with their most visceral enemies.

Enough of them will simply refuse to vote for his candidates, that in many cases their seats will instead be handed over to those very enemies.

Labour has been too lazy to select strong local candidates with or without any previous party background, and to campaign hard for them.

Previously unimaginable gains could have been made in the wake of the cuts as experienced in the countryside. Not only from the Lib Dems, but also from the Conservatives.

Ho, hum. Labour could have done better. But it is still going to win hands down.

Later today, the Conservative Party Conference will be lectured on "Winning In The North" by Anne McIntosh MP, of Thirsk and Malton.

Where the Conservative Association has deselected her.