How did the Left List really do in Manchester?
May 4th, 2008 by Chris
Apparently, to quote Dave Sewell on his blog Complex System of Pipes:
I think the message to take home is this: in Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield, where we could effectively canvass and reach out to people, Left List did very well. In London, no-one had heard of the new name, and still looked for Respect; where they saw the Respect name, that candidate did very well.
Interesting analysis. I couldn’t even find any candidates standing under the name “Left List” in Birmingham, let alone any candidates doing well. In Sheffield, the Left List stood one candidate (elections in 28 wards), who came second with 25% of the vote (the Liberal Democrats didn’t stand in the ward because of Labour dirty tricks, and probably would have taken many of the votes going towards the Left List and other parties).
In Manchester, the Left List stood two candidates, in Rusholme and Gorton South (elections in 32 wards). In Rusholme, they finished a poor third with 13% of the vote, just 30 votes ahead of the Tories. In Gorton South they also came a distant third, with 10% of the vote. If “very well” is a decrease of 5% that might explain Student Respect’s hilarious analysis of their routing in the students’ union elections.
The Left List are going nowhere in Manchester. Defeated in elections in both Man Met and Man Uni students’ unions, defeated in their attempt to ban military groups from campus, defeated in the local elections, and fortunately defeated in their attempt to force a restrictive free education policy which would only lead to defeat for all of us when the government’s review comes around. It’s hard to see how it could get any worse for the Left List.
