All Hang Together

Immigration is an issue.

There are several others, and they deserve to be discussed and debated at least as much.

The results at Copeland and Leigh will show that Labour was still secure in the North while UKIP was pretty much finished everywhere.

Along with the defeat of Gerard Coyne for General Secretary of Unite, those results will mark the occasion for the changing of the record, or at least for the broadening of the playlist.

Sam Stopp makes the case against some "Progressive Alliance" featuring the Lib Dems, late of the Coalition; the SNP, the party of austerity and of lost educational opportunities in Scotland; and the Greens, who are opposed to economic growth altogether, and to whom I always pose the Yes-No question, "Do you regret the defeat of the miners in 1985?"

But the SNP is sitting as pretty in Scotland as Labour is in the North, in Wales and in London, while the Lib Dems are on course to take dozens, or even scores, of Conservative seats across the Remain heartlands of the South.

We are back in hung Parliament territory.

I am contesting the new seat of Durham West and Teesdale, most of which is in the present seat of North West Durham, where the Labour MP, Pat Glass, is retiring.

This has been planned for some time, and it is well-advanced.

A candidate from among the Teaching Assistants ought to contest every other seat in the Durham County Council area apart from Grahame Morris's Easington, and every seat in the Derby City Council area other than Derby North, assuming that Chris Williamson will be trying to win that back.