Friday, 29 March 2013

Always Ready

Durham Big Meeting line-up of speakers: Len McCluskey, Bob Crow, Owen Jones and ... Kevin Maguire, of the Daily Mirror and of the New Statesman. A native of South Shields. I think that we can all see where this is heading.

If it is not him, then it will be Iain Malcolm, the Leader of the Council. Scots names are common in South Shields, going back to the Industrial Revolution. The United Reformed Church has a relatively large following of Presbyterian descent, and the Boys' Brigade will parade in some numbers this weekend. First a by-election at Corby, and now one there. Who'd have thought it?

There has not been a local MP there in living memory, and the Constituency Labour Party is determined to have one this time, for the only seat to have existed continuously since 1832 without ever having returned a Tory.

South Shields has not changed party since 1935. Labour would have won any marginal seat that came up in the North this year. And this is not a marginal seat. The Labour candidate just is going to win, and that by an enormous margin. It may as well be someone local for a change.

And it looks as if it will be.

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