A Labour candidate counts her chickens…

Interesting post from Iain Dale today (guess what, it concerns one of his apparently endless media appointments with Sky News…) Its not the point about the banking bail-out that interests me, but the Labour Party candidate for Leeds West, Rachel Reeves, who seems to have rather jumped the gun in making references to “my constituency” and “my constituents”, despite the fact the seat is currently held by John Battle, the Labour MP who steps down at the next election.

Leeds West is a pretty comfy Labour seat, with Battle having taken over half the vote in 2005, and the rest of the turnout fairly evenly split among the other parties, with no one achieving more than a third of the winners 18,704. Nevertheless, with polls as they are, and Labour currently predicted to get less than 230 seats, should Miss/Mrs Reeves be showing so much confidence. More to the point, how should Mr Battle, a loyal local MP for more than 20 years, and a city councillor before that, react now that his franchise seems to have been stolen from under his nose in such an undemocratic manner!