One interesting fact from the two by-elections is that there is no “Conservative candidate” standing in Ealing Southall. In Sedgefield, the guy the Tories are backing is down on the ballot paper as the “Conservative Candidate”. In Ealing and Southall, the person who is known to some as “Tony Lit” is down on the ballot paper as “Cameron’s Conservatives”. Is this just over-clever marketing or is Cameron distancing himself from the Sedgefield candidate?
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Is putting Cameron’s Conservatives on the ballot legal? I thought that the party name on the ballot paper had to correspond with the name of the party as registered with the Electoral Commission. In the 2002 local elections every Lib Dem candidate in Harrow was rulled out of order because they called themselves ‘Liberal Democrat Focus Team’, not Liberal Democract Party candidate.
You can register a series of approved descriptions for ballot papers with the Electoral Commission.
Perhaps only CAmeron knows that he is a conservative because I think he only joined a few days ago? and he fails to pass some internal guideline on how long a member must be a member before they can be chosen to stand for office?
I sort of hope Tony Lit *is* listed as a candidate for “Cameron’s Conservatives” because that is not a party description registered with the Electoral Commission.
They *have* registered “David Cameron’s Conservatives” though, along with:
“Conservatives: stop the hospital cuts”
“Conservatives: vote blue, go green”
“Local Conservatives”
“Conservatives: hunt the poor with dogs”
and many others.
Actually I may have made one of them up…
Please cut out the bitching, it doesn’t make anyone look good – particularly yourself. I’m not going to vote for anyone that thinks they’ll get brownie points by sniping at the opposition.
Grow up!
Just on a point of info – the problem in Harlow those years ago wasn’t that the candidates called themselves Lib Dem Focus Team, which is a perfectly good description. The problem was this: nomination papers include multiple different forms which must be filled in, and the information must be the same on each of them. The forms they handed in weren’t consistent with each other, so the returning officer ruled them out of order.
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