Justine Greening
This weekend Conservative Future held their annual dinner in the Marine Hotel ,Aberystwyth with Justine Greening ,the Member of Parliament for Putney, as their guest of honour. Justine had previously had engagements in Monmouth and Brecon and Radnorshire and a crowded programme and got the milk train back to London the next day.In 2005 Justine’s result in Putney as a Consevative gain had shown that the party was at least and at last making some modest headway at Westminster.
She spoke very well about the interesting dying days and months of Tony Blair’s Prime Ministership and how things are shaping up at Westminster.
Also at the dinner was the CF chair for the UK, Mark Clarke,who is the candidate for the next door seat of Tooting. This is the seat which would notionally give David Cameron a working majority in the next parliament. The seat is profiled in the Sunday Telegraph today. It has a population of 90,000 and is considerably larger in population terms than Welsh seats.The poll is interesting as a snapshot of opinion and confirms that the direction of travel is the right one but is not otherwise of any significance– or so politicians are accustomed to assert.
That last statement is in fact another of those lines that politicians say but never quite believe ( the Western Mail is only read by people who have made their minds up and so doesn’t really matter is another such ). I suspect just like the Sunday Telegraph’s Patrick Hennessy politicians of all parties have been analysing the poll ‘to death’. I am sure it will have been compulsory reading for the Brown campaign but of great interest too for Reid, Johnson and Milliband supporters. It may well have put a spring in Cherie’s step and was interpreted as a call to arms by Michael Meacher ( misreading of the message in that last case!)Not since that Michael Portillo draft order has BT been on such a crucial standby for phonelines!
