Brent North

I met this chap while out on the Unlock Democracy / Hang-em rally this afternoon. Barry Gardiner’s £198,500 dwarfs Dawn Butler’s £66,000 expenses claims.

The voters of Brent have returned Lib Dem Sarah Teather with a majority of 1,345, a swing of 11% from Labour, and Labour’s Barry Gardiner with a majority of 8,028, loosing 2.5% of the vote to the Conservatives (+2.2%) and other parties. I was at the count on Thursday night tally marking for the Lib Dems and in-between boxes of ballot papers talking with candidates and journalists about the political economy of Brent as a borough....

Is Barry Gardiner standing as an independent? You’d think he doesn’t want to be associated with Labour from the look of his campaign materials. See the full leaflet at The Straight Choice.

The Straight Choice election leaflet project is an archive of election leaflets distributed throughout the campaign. This is a helpful thing to be doing as ….. Promises that candidates make in their leaflets can be compared to what they promise to do elsewhere. In the future we can also compare the voting record of MPs with what they promised on the campaign trail. It helps catch parties or candidates who are breaking electoral law - 2 parties have been reported to the authorities based on leaflets uploaded to TheStraightChoice....

Democracy Club website helps us to hold candidates to account, and stimulate public engagement in the campaigns for local and national elections. Big job… lots of small tasks. The website helps residents to track and contact candidates, create local issue lists and track the responses from candidates. Check out Brent Central, Brent North and Hampstead and Kilburn at the DemocracyClub website and join in.