Sadie's Tavern: Henley Was a Triumph, plus Winchester

Here's Sadie's bitter rebuke of New Labour's fair weather careerist friends that weren't out on the front line battering the fash and the green 'uns and fash-lite, in the 3456 run off, with her good self on Thursday:

There was only a couple of hundred votes in it but, interestingly, the sharp-suited Ruperts who had aspired to be "Tony's" right hand man and the poshly-voiced Jocastas with the framed pictures of Alistair Campbell on their desks seem to have other commitments now that being a member of the Labour party means actual work as opposed to merely mincing around wielding mobile phones and trying to look important.

Which is all very well. But the real good news, repeated at the above link was first reported here:

I've returned from Henley (WELL posh, if you're wondering. Oh, you weren't?) in one piece and do have war stories for all, but first I think - as it's Friday - the comrades should down hair-shirts for a while. As Mike Smithson of PoliticalBetting points out, our share of the vote in Henley (3.1) is significantly higher than what was achieved in the Winchester by-election (1.7) a mere six months after a Labour landslide in 1997.

Although we were third in that, if you care. Serious students of the coarse physical science of by-elections will have already read this explanation of the evaporation. Which was, we hear joyfully, and thanks to Sadie and other serious comrades, almost twice as good as Winchester which was a similar two-horse race ... though one where the Lib Dems actually found some traction. Particularly second time round.

Will Mark Oaten go for the early bath and put the Hampshire Fibologists to the test? Interestingly, as I thought I'd blogged here, but not so, both 1997 runnings of the contest involved a character name of Richard Huggett running on a deliberately confusing ticket. As did the MEP election which returned Dave Cam's bosom chum and hand-picked safe-pair-of-hands but fallen sleaze-buster Giles Chichester (above).