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Published: 29 April 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY, TOM FOOT and JOSH LOEB

GLENDA Jackson faces the toughest week of her political career as she tries to stave off a double threat from the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.

For the first time a significant number of “old Labour” voters say they will – or will at least consider – voting for the Lib Dems in Hampstead, the party many of them now see as potentially the best way to block the surging Conservative campaign.

Straw-poll surveys by the New Journal suggest Ms Jackson’s reputation for rebelling against some of Tony Blair’s most unpopular policies no longer holds the same stock it did at the 2005 elections and that she is understood to be struggling to convince the so-called “progressive”, left-leaning vote to stick with her this time. 

An informal doorstep taste test finds large numbers of people who would never countenance a vote for the Conservatives  drifting towards the Lib Dems in the final run-in.

In contrast, Frank Dobson, also known for his independent spirit within the Labour ranks, is said to have managed to dig in with his traditional support base and is still regarded as a committed constituency MP.

There, in Holborn and St Pancras, his canvassers know Labour can still be beaten if a doomsday night for the party were to unfold but his opponents would see victory as a surprise bonus on a night when scores of other red seats will be lost in the House of Commons.

In what has become one of the hardest outcomes to predict even for seasoned pundits, there is now  a confused picture in Camden where the Tories are within sight of returning an MP, but voters with a common aim to halt a Conservative march to power will vote for different parties to try and stop them.

In the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency the Lib Dems are trying to seize the lion’s share of this section of the vote, while Labour are retaining it in the south.

The Conservatives were clicking through the gears in the north of the borough this week with renewed confidence that they will win here for the first time since 1987. 

Their candidate Chris Philp’s latest high-profile guest on Saturday afternoon was shadow chancellor George Osborne. 

Central office will be horrified if this constituency does not turn blue next Thursday after noting encouraging signs in Hampstead village where there are expanding pockets of rejection for Gordon Brown and his government. These are the kind of seats that David Cameron needs to win to make sure he does not get bogged down in a hung parliament.

But a victory for Mr Philp is not assured and observers of all political persuasions suggest he could still be vulnerable to defeat if non-Tory voters concentrate their support with either Ms Jackson or Mr Fordham. In the past, these ‘progressives’ – the Conservatives hate the label they have given themselves – would have been drawn to Ms Jackson but the Lib Dems now believe they are cornering that agenda. 

In the Guardian today (Thursday), a collection of left-leaning writers, artists and lawyers insist the Lib Dems offer what is again called a “progressive” alternative to the Tories.

Many of the signatories to the letter, clearly designed to woo long-term Labour and possibly Green Party voters, have connections to Hampstead and Kilburn including John Le Carré, Susie Orbach and Philippe Sands QC.

And our rough surveys, random knocks on more than 500 doors this week, suggest Mr Fordham has the edge.

The great unknown, however, is what the many genuinely undecided between Labour and the Lib Dems will do. Minds still haven’t been made up with a week to go.

In one possible outcome, this split in areas like the neighbourhood around the Kilburn High Road could actually give Mr Philp an easier margin of victory than the three-way billing for this constituency suggests. 

There is now talk of ‘progressive’ coalitions surfacing, both nationally and locally. Despite squabbles between the two groups in Camden, amplified by the nature of the Hampstead and Kilburn contest, and several personality clashes at the Town Hall, a significant percentage of people on the doorstep who are not backing the Conservatives said they would be happier to know that the Lib Dems and Labour could work together in some way beyond the election.

The fluid nature of the election nationally is now encapsulated in the north of the borough. 

One of our poll sample, the historian Christopher Wade, 89, opened his door in Hampstead and told our reporter: “I was brought up Tory, turned Labour and gave up because of the Iraq War and Gordon Brown’s failure to get the economy under control. I will be voting Lib Dem at this election.”

Labour insists the Lib Dem challenge is exaggerated and when it comes to actual polling day loyalists believe weary supporters will not want to risk a personal switch somehow triggering a Tory win.

Ms Jackson’s campaign team are certainly looking back to 1992 when she first won the Hampstead and Highgate seat from the Conservatives as an underdog. She now finds it  “offensive” that her credentials as a constituency MP are being challenged.

“It’s so tight here,” said one Labour source. “We are in a place where someone could win with about 30 percent. That would mean 70 percent of the constituency voting against the Tories – but they’ll all still get a Tory.”

Lib Dems a ‘real threat’ to Dobson

LABOUR’S Frank Dobson was warned last night (Wednesday) that the Liberal Democrats now consider his seat winnable.

They believe a surge in the opinion polls, a sustained jump in support since the start of the TV leaders’ debates, has changed the landscape in Holborn and St Pancras.

The constituency was previously rated in Lib Dem lingo a “moving forward” seat – an area where the party tries to weaken a majority so it can target it properly next time – but is now a “winning here” chance.

Labour strategists, however, do not calculate that Mr Dobson is in the same level of peril as Glenda Jackson. He has a stronger starting majority and his own redrawn constituency takes in parts of Highgate village and Gospel Oak where the Tories and the Greens will possibly be more of a threat than the Lib Dems.

Unlike Ms Jackson, he also has the advantage of a longer connection with the borough. Even Ms Jackson’s 18 year stretch at Parliament pales in comparison to Mr Dobson’s 30 year run. He lives in the borough – in a council flat, opponents often remind voters – and has the link with Camden politics that goes back to his time as a councillor and Town Hall leader in the 1970s. Ms Shaw’s campaign team are nevertheless dreaming of their own “Portillo moment” where on a night of shifting sands and unpredictable results even opponents needing sizeable swings have reason for hope.

George Lee, the Conservative candidate has not enjoyed the same resources and shadow ministerial visits that Chris Philp has been awarded by Tory Central Office in the north, but insisted this week that his tilt was considered a successful campaign.

The former policeman joined Mr Dobson, Ms Shaw and Natalie Bennett, the Green Party candidate at hustings chaired by CNJ editor Eric Gordon at the Irish Centre on Thursday.

Full list of candidates

Holborn and St Pancras

Natalie Bennett (Green), Robert Carlyle (BNP), John Chapman (Ind), Frank Dobson (Lab), George Lee (Con), Iain Meek (Ind), Jo Shaw (LD), Max Spencer (UKIP), Mikel Susperregi (Eng Dems)

Hampstead and Kilburn

Gene Alcantara (Ind), Beatrix Campbell (Green), Ed Fordham (LD), Glenda Jackson (Lab), Victoria Moore (BNP), Magnus Nielsen (UKIP), Tamsin Omond (Tamsin Omond To The Commons), Chris Philp (Con)

Grim echoes of the past as axe is raised

by ILLTYD HARRINGTON

A CLOSE friend, deep within Gordon Brown’s Number 10 bunker, has accused me of being a Cassandra, that dismal woman who stood on the walls of besieged Troy prophesying disaster.

I refuse to be Dr Pangloss, who wrote all’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds. 

But it is always a dangerous omen for Labour leaders to go into working clubs and imitate the members, holding pints of beer, which is alien to their nature.

Blair held his like a debutante. Even Gordon allowed himself to be upstaged in Corby’s Labour Club by an Elvis double.

Checkout girls in supermarkets are weary of Cameron buying boxes of cereal. Thankfully, Nick Clegg hasn’t commandeered the local laundrette with a sack of dirty washing. The Parliamentary pantomime is playing to empty houses. If this goes on we will see Gordon doing his Perry Como, Clegg in Boyzone attire, while Cameron is a certainty for Take That. All this popularisation will end up in tears.

But little, it seems to me, is disturbing the political somnambulance of Camden – from the heights of Hampstead to the plains of Great Russell Street, nothing seems to be stirring. Do not disturb is the command of the day. 

A third of the inevitable Tory group in Parliament, will have all gone to public schools. Such self sacrifice. When I ponder, I wonder what happened to alternatives? Gordon Brown wants us all to think of ourselves as middle class. I call to mind Albert Doolittle in Pygmalion pouring scorn on “middle-class morality”.

After the betrayal of the Labour government’s leadership in 1931, Ramsay Macdonald, the Prime Minister, formed a National Government with the Tories and fraternised with 

old-fashioned Liberals.

Their answer to that collapse is being revived today. Then public spending and services were cut. Minuscule benefits, even war pensions were savaged. A man called Geddes wielded his axe. 

Now Sir Philip Green, the billionaire owner of BHS, has taken up the cudgels and told Cameron this year while passing on a hefty donation, to extend the “means test”. His words ring down from the 1930s. Not to be outdone, Lord Digby Jones, an unnatural member for a small time of Gordon Brown’s Government, talks of starving out benefit cheats.

I remember from my own background in South Wales, how these prescriptions for success were met. The people of Merthyr Tydfil organised a mass demonstration of 30,000 and burnt down the social security office of the day. Two days later the payments were restored. 

Of course, I do not condone arson to anybody. But the warnings are there – and not even the approaching euphoria of a 2012 Olympic Games can save us.

• Illtyd Harrington is a former deputy leader of the GLC

Batman-style hologram to hail the final push as Vogue editor reveals her allegiance to loafers

Election diary by RICHARD OSLEY

HAMPSTEAD looks set to get a new Conservative MP whether Chris Philp wins his shootout with Glenda Jackson next week or not. Lawyer Stephen Phillips QC, last seen standing up for Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children as a governor, looks a dead cert to be elected in Douglas Hogg’s old Sleaford and North Hykeham seat. He told local papers he was hoping to “become a local” in Lincolnshire but he hasn’t severed all his links with Hampstead, where he lost a council by-election in 2008. He’s well known to local members and still has a house  in NW3.

WHEN Gotham City needed Batman, the local council beamed a giant bat emblem into the night sky and he came running. In Somers Town this week the call sign will be a little different: a giant hologram of Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Jo Shaw is to be projected onto a flat in Hampstead Road as part of her final push for the line. I was scolded for asking the Lib Dem brains whether it would be akin to the time a lads mag beamed a nude picture of Gail Porter onto the side of the House of Commons? Jo, I can confirm, will be fully clothed.

TALKING of scoldings... Ed Fordham has been given one ear-bashing after another for the brown loafer shoes he has been wearing on the campaign trail. His helpers hate them. He appeared to have the last laugh on Saturday however when fashion expert Alexandra Shulman, UK editor of Vogue, was reported to have swung  behind his campaign in Hampstead and Kilburn. 
She’s been addressing campaign envelopes in her sun-trap garden, The Times explained.

IF Labour members and the Lib Dems find themselves in post-election power sharing negotiations, there are clearly a few local grudges that need ironing out. Former Labour council leader Dame Jane Roberts minced few words describing local Lib Dems as “shameless” and “unscrupulous” in a feisty letter to the Guardian this week.

MONEY to be made for Labour campaigners convinced Glenda Jackson will hold her place in Parliament. Ladbrokes are offering 5/1 on victory in Hampstead and Kilburn. Tamsin Omond, the independent, is a 50/1 bet.

‘Heavyweight’ independent to go a few rounds with bankers?

by TOM FOOT

HE has exposed corruption in the City and won awards for his campaigning journalism on pensions.

Now John Chapman wants to be elected as an independent MP for Holborn and St Pancras.

The 69-year-old, who has lived in Highgate for 30 years, believes there is “no outlet for left-wing voters” and the mainstream political parties’ are “too soft” to properly regulate the banks.

“I’m a heavyweight kind of guy,” he said. “I worked as a civil servant in Whitehall for 33 years and I have master-minded a financial exposé for World in Action, worked on the Financial Times business magazine and won two pensions financial journalist of the year awards in 2002 and 2006.

“Hedge funds have done enormous damage. It has corrupted our city and left us living in one of the most unequal societies in the world. The NHS is under-funded – compared to western standards, there is a huge shortage of doctors. The pupil to teacher ratio is also markedly different.”

Mr Chapman – a former Highgate tennis champion in 1970 – has come up with a five-year national plan he believes could prevent the impending cuts to public sector funding.

He proposes a wealth tax on top earners, curbs on inheritance tax levels and a levy on private schools.

He said: “I’m standing because there is no radical left-wing party in this country.”

‘My god!’ – Voters in late rush to register

by JOSH LOEB

A FLUSTERED woman blustered through the entrance. “My god,” she gasped. “I had so much trouble finding this place.” 

A man athletically vaulted over a rope cordon as a receptionist cried: “Excuse me, excuse me. You’re not allowed to do that!” 

“But I'm late,” panted the man, who dashed towards the voter registration office. 

Election fever hit the Town Hall last Tuesday as the deadline to get registered slammed shut.

Kate Williamson, who works in a coffee shop, was one of the last to register before the (official) closing time of 5pm. She said was in a rush because she had only just realised there was an election on. “I don't have a TV or a radio,” she said.

Another potential voter seemed equally confused. “I need proof I'm me,” he told a receptionist. “It really is quite important.”

Between 4pm and 5pm, around 40 people were registered – the office's normal opening hours were then extended to midnight. An official at the registration office said: “There’s been a big increase in interest in the past few days. People have been coming in to register, but also to ask how they go about voting.”