All,
Just in case you haven’t heard the results already:
Shipston – Turnout 42.7%
Richard Cheney (Lib Dem) – 752 Elected
Jacqui Jones (Green) – 61
Jeffrey Kenner (Lab) – 501
Abdul Shahid (Cons) – 423
A good result for Richard and my former party, on a high turnout (compared to the rest of the District).
Jeff Kenner has clearly done well with his pro supermarket but anti housing campaign – much as that’s one of the silliest campaigns (in my view) in recent times. (The supermarket comes with over 180 homes – 50 if you exclude the Extra Care Housing – you can’t have a supermarket without houses). You can’t escape the fact that he increased the Labour share of the vote massively though, and edged into second place.
Richard managed to increase his wafer slim majority to a very healthy 251, despite (or because of) his continued opposition to the supermarket. I suspect that it was more due to his record of hard (voluntary AND political) work in Shipston over the past four years – something none of the other candidates had. Well, that and he’s a very nice man!
The Conservatives rightly should be humiliated by this result.
The Conservatives selected a candidate who, although with strong local links (he lives and owns a business in Shipston) did not have a track record of voluntary work within the town.
Unfortunately this will always be the ‘supermarket election’ – which it was not – but despite the pro supermarket side only getting 32% of the vote I still believe this will make no difference to the final outcome on that issue. Richard doesn’t get a vote on the supermarket at Stratford, and nor would Jeff had. It’s now time that the Planning Committee got on and made its decision based on the views expressed by local residents and the planning rules.
Regards,
Philip
Couldn’t agree with you more Philip, don’t get used to it
but I was 24hrs away from giving my vote to Jeff, my first and possibly only time I would have voted labour (not proud of it). But I was prepared to look beyond party politics in favour of local affairs and how a shakeup may have made the district council pay a bit more attention to Shipston.
However Jeff made the “mistake” of posting a flyer through my door which stated he was pro-supermarket, but strongly opposed to the housing numbers suggested for shipston in the Draft Core Strategy.
Well you can imagine how “Mr. Pro-Development” felt about this! I personally felt that Jeff’s approach was demeaning to developers and sounded threatening as if they are pillaging and plundering their way across the district and Shipston is next!
To state that Shipston is to take proportionately 3 times as many houses as Stratford evoked a sense of fear and hysteria that simply is unfounded or even something that from what I see is of much local concern.
Sadly I felt that the confliction between supporting a supermarket and opposing housing undermines all that hard work that he has done to achieve what is a good result. However had he won he would of faced at some point the very awkward position of having to back pedal on one of these two matters because they go hand in hand.
This for me showed that Jeff’s campaign was opportunistic and he did see a bandwagon and rode it all the way to the election, the test will now be how strong will he still fight for a supermarket and whether he drops off the radar or not?
Posted by mark wildish | May 4, 2012, 11:33 amMark, my letter said exactly the same as my first leaflet. Labour opposes the unfairness of a policy that puts a proportionately three times as much housing in Shipston as in Stratford. This is not opportunism. As you yourself have said Shipston has grown faster than other towns in the District.
Philip Vial issued a leaflet on Richard Cheney’s behalf announcing that Richard was opposed to the Hornsby Close development. This position is wholly incompatible with his oppostion to the supermarket – and the housing that goes with it – and his support for the draft core strategy. It also claimed that Labour’s opposition to the ‘wider dispersal’ strategy would mean more housing in Shipston. My letter put the record straight. It was not opportunistic. It seems strange to me that you did not subject the Lib Dem claims to the same scrutiny.
Posted by Jeff Kenner | May 4, 2012, 4:03 pmYesterday a political earthquake took place in Shipston. Labour, fighting on a pro-supermarket platform, won 501 votes in the highest turnout in Stratford District and knocked the Tories into third place. Most remarkably, a Lib-Dem sitting councillor, with a substantial personal vote, was given the biggest fright of his political life.
No one should underestimate the significance of this result. It is THE story of the night in the Stratford Council elections. A Labour vote of 30% including the postal votes is a remarkable result. I have no doubt that in better weather and up against a less respected Lib Dem candidate I would have won. No one gave me a chance when I announced that I had been selected as the Labour candidate and would run on the basis that I supported the supermarket campaign. The election has shown that the doubters were wrong.
Politics in Shipston will never be the same again. This was not a referendum on a supermarket. It was a remarkable positive vote for a pro supermarket, pro-Shipston Labour platform. I never sought to hide my politics – I wanted to make Labour relevant again to people’s real everyday lives and struggles in a rural town and I hope I have begun this task. This is the beginning not the end of Labour’s commitment to working with the people of Shipston for fairness and progress.
Posted by Jeff Kenner | May 4, 2012, 1:10 pmJeff, congratulations on the result, which is a significant bump in the number of people voting Labour. However, can I point out that Richard Cheney has increased his majority from 13 votes to 251 votes. I would suggest that the biggest fright of his political life was the previous election!
Posted by Helen M | May 4, 2012, 7:36 pmCongratulations to Richard. Given the general disillusionment with the Coalition and the Lib Dems’ involvement in it, a win of any kind would have been impressive; that he won by this sort of margin is a testament to Richard’s standing in Shipston, and no less than he deserves.
In response to Mr. Kenner, I would suggest that your campaign may have been more successful, had you had a more visible presence in Shipston. I take an interest in politics, local and national, and would have been happy to take the time to discuss your views and policies with you, had you come to canvas. However, the one or possibly two leaflets dropped through the letterbox told us little about you as a candidate, beyond your pro-supermarket stance. Although I’m in favour of a supermarket myself, this wasn’t going to convince me to vote for a candidate I’d never met, when Richard has been so involved and visible in the community. Had you knocked the door and talked to me for five minutes, who knows? You might have changed my mind.
I’m proud to have been involved in the campaign that saw Philip Vial elected to District Council in May, 2010, with a similarly healthy margin. In the several weeks leading up to Election Day, Philip must have knocked almost every door in Shipston, taking the time to get to know those residents not already familiar with him, listening to their concerns and issues and talking policies and opinions. Others, like myself, representing Philip, also called at people’s houses to discuss local matters and advise them of Philip’s viewpoints and his vision for Shipston, making his contact details available for anyone who wanted to get in touch with him to talk more. A dedicated team of volunteers walked their feet off delivering multiple leaflets which set out Philip’s stances on a range of local issues. It was an energetic and passionate campaign, and a lot of hard graft was involved from a lot of people. But by
Election Day, the community knew who Philip was and what he stood for, and this was a huge part of his success that year.
Considering the disenchantment with the Coalition, this last election should surely have been a Labour candidate’s political wet dream. Under the circumstances, Mr Kenner, I’d hardly call losing by 251 votes ‘a political earthquake’. This election, in fact, may well have been the easiest shot you’ll ever have on goal, but it seemed like you didn’t really try.
And as for blaming the weather…? It rains just as wet on Lib Dem voters as it does on Labour.
Posted by Stevie Gray | May 4, 2012, 8:01 pmJeff, I must of missed that point on your first leaflet and if therefore if I have made it sound as though you were changing your tune to popular consensus the I apologise.
However this does not defer from the simple fact that your support for a supermarket at some point would conflict with your anti-housing stance, requiring to break at least one election promise.
I do not consider that I have unfairly picked on you and left Richard alone given his objection to the Hornsby Close application and neither do I think that Richard’s objection to this application is contradictory to his views.
Indeed whilst Richard is opposed to large scale development and supports the Draft Core Strategy, it does not mean that he obliged to automatically support any scheme with a lower housing number threshold.
Quite simply though the housing numbers in the Draft Core Strategy are very low and will only deliver 8,000 new homes in total for the whole district over the next 17years with a 5year supply plus 20% already claimed to be in place by the District Council and if you therefore consider this number (which was independently assessed to be a low growth number) too high and your mandate is to lower the figure further you would do untold damage to the recovery of the economy in the area which needs to build its way out of recession.
So when I see your pledge and comments about too much housing I think you are playing to a suspected audience just to possibly gain a few more votes on another hot topic.
I have said that Shipston was the fastest growing town in the District, but you’re spinning this, as it does not mean that I am opposed to this, I make no secret of being pro-development and by stating this fact I am making reference to the towns growth without new infrastructure and that we need to engage with developers in the future to ensure that if their proposals go ahead we make sure that we’re getting a new park or high school out of it etc.
I would like to know how you were going to campaign for the supermarket, but without the housing to which you are opposed?
Posted by Mark Wildish | May 5, 2012, 1:06 am