Still some embarrassment with the Tory brand in the North

 

 

Canvassing yesterday in Farnley and Wortley in west Leeds where there is a by-election on September 18^th.  We were overlapping the Tory candidate who with a couple of chums was delivering his leaflet. One resident, having just got the leaflet, showed it to me and said there is no reference to what party he is standing for. And indeed, on closer examination, there is nothing except at the very bottom of the back page where a 1cm square Conservative logo appears. We agreed that this was extraordinary and showed that despite the apparent Conservative poll lead in the country, in the North, at least, there still seems to be some embarrassment with the Tory brand. There are still very many areas in the North as was evident in the results in local elections in May that the Conservatives are just not relevant and this must be a problem for them when it comes to the next General Election. By contrast, of course, it gives the Liberal Democrats a tremendous opportunity.

The perpetuating myth of Harold Wilson, the 1966 World Cup and his General Election win

James Lawton, a writer I very much enjoy reading, slipped into his piece in  today’s The Independent the recurring myth that England’s World Cup victory won Harold Wilson the General Election in 1966. It is a myth that needs to be debunked.

The General Election was in March; the World Cup final was on July 30th, so England’s success had no bearing on politics that year. However, four years later, in 1970, England’s defeat in the Quarter Final to West Germany was soon followed, just four days later, by Harold Wilson’s defeat to Ted Heath, an outcome that looked very unlikely when the campaign started. Wilson recognised that the result from the World Cup might have had an impact. He could not have made any such claim in 1966 as James Lawton suggest in his piece today. Just wanted to get that off my chest!

Yorkshire’s place in the medal table

So a successful Olympic games for Team GB (what happened to Northern Ireland by the way?) but a particularly good games for Yorkshire which by my reckoning came away with three Golds and two Bronzes (For the record these were: Andy Hodge – rowing; Paul Goodison – sailing; Ed Clancy – cycling;  Joanne Jackson got a bronze for swimming and Sarah Stevenson the same in taekwondo) which puts us in the medal table in 28^th place on Golds won and given we didn’t have a full team there that is pretty remarkable especially as we came ahead of larger European countries such as Austria, Sweden, Bulgaria, Finland, Switzerland and Portugal to name just six. And, of course, Yorkshire finished ahead of South Africa (what a terrible games they had – just a single medal for a country with a population of about 50 million).

I just hope that the London organisers understand that we will want to cheer on our local heroes in 2012 and that they make easy for families to make the drag down to London from the north. I’d like to see, for example, some commercial body subsidise rail travel for people with tickets coming from the north. It would give the games a truly national sense of belonging which I feel it they haven’t got yet and, of course, it would help fill the venues.