This afternoon Sir Peter Soulsby, the MP for Leicester South, won the contest to be the Labour candidate in the city's first Mayoral election. He immediately announced that he will be resigning his Westminster seat to concentrate of this contest.
Well, I did warn you.
David MacLean, the Leicester Mercury's political correspondent, tweeted the voting figures in the Labour selection.
In the first round (they used AV, of course) they were:
Rita Patel 28
Abdul Osman 64
Veejay Patel 85
Ross Willmott 104
Peter Soulsby 248
Rita Patel eliminated
And in the second round:
Abdul Osman 69
Veejay Patel 85
Ross Willmott 104
Peter Soulsby 269
Peter Soulsby wins
As David went on to say, the question now is who will be Labour's candidate in the by-election. He suggests it will be either Ross Willmott or Rory Palmer.
That by-election will be a test for the Liberal Democrats too. This is a seat what we held between 2004 and 2005. If we come sixth here we really will be in trouble.
The good news is that the premises we used last time should still be available.
The population of Leicester Unitary Authority is around 300,00. So who were the electorate for this Mayoral election that garnered only just over 500 votes?
ReplyDeleteThis was an internal Labour contest to choose the party's candidate. The public vote will take place on 5 May.
ReplyDeleteCould be an interesting by election - there was a Lib Dem to Lab swing of 5% last year - and the Tories were a pretty close third.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many members each political party has among that UA popn of 300K...
ReplyDelete