Tomsk79

So who did I vote for on this historic day? When the campaign kicked off I was sorely tempted to choose based purely on the candidates' views on Brexit, but now it seems a less urgent concern when there's a better opportunity to make that point next month. And if you discount Brexit, there's only one game in town. Burnham is streets ahead of the other candidates both in his experience and his manifesto , so first choice to him. Of course I wasn't going to let my first ever supplementary vote election pass without nominating a second choice (not that there's any chance of it coming into play). That was a tougher decision: other than campaiging on Brexit the Lib Dems haven't been particularly inspiring in this race, and it was a bit of a toss-up with the Greens for me. But in an effort to make an informed choice I looked through Paterson's manifesto and noticed he makes a point of opposing HS2, which is an utterly disastrous attitude for a would-be ma

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?