Tomsk79

Exciting times as the Labour Party visited the Tomsk household this evening on behalf of their general election candidate J---- S----. Alas the canvassing did not extend to Andy Burnham and therefore I will not be reporting details of our conversation. No further mayoral election literature has been received, so I guess it's decision time...

The first Libdemalanche since 2015 arrives, but sadly without any mention of the Mayoral election. In line with this blog's strict one-election policy I will present their literature without comment, and with the identities of candidates not standing for mayor obscured. Update 2/5/2017: It seems Labour are so confident of winning the mayoral race that they too are skipping ahead to the general election. Naturally their effort must be appropriately redacted:

With barely more than a week to go before election day the mayoral race has reached fever pitch, with upwards of one leaflet delivered already this week. And it's the Lib Dems again: South Manchester's Focus is clearly turning towards the general election, alongside John Leech's online announcement that he will run again in Withington . But there's still space to mention Jane Brophy at the bottom of the page, complete with Leech's endorsement. Focus makes a big claim that it's the Lib Dems or Labour to win on May 4th, and I have to admit I don't actually have any instinct about who will end up in the top two alongside Burnham. As far as I'm aware there have been no polls to help out on this point. The most straightforward estimate I can think of is a simple sum of all the votes in the 2015 general election across the 27 GM constituencies, which gives you the following totals: Labour: 551,119 Conservative: 315,537 UKIP: 192,470 Lib Dem: 85,1

Mrs Tomsk directs me to this slick ad from the pride of Trafford: Is he insinuating that Big Andy's not a Manc? Even after the exclusive interview with the Burnham for Mayor gazette put the record straight?

So it seems we can't even have a nice relaxed provincial vote without Westminster demanding to be the centre of attention. Poor show! Still, this blog will stay within its remit right up until the 4th May, if only because an election which the Tories surely can't win is so much more pleasant than the feeling of impending doom coming from the other one. The official candidate information arrived through our letterbox today ( it's also available online , in case you're wondering why my scanning skills have suddenly improved). Eight people are standing as follows: The first thing that jumps out of this list is that Withington's own Mysterious Independent is standing again! And not only that, he's opted to remain Mysterious by not submitting an official Election Address. Fair play to him. He's joined by a second Mysterious Independent, Mohammed Aslam, because of course Salford has to have its own Mysterious Independent. UKIP's Shneur Odze is the