Huge Conservative advance in South Shields
Karen Allen takes second place
It’s been a while but the Conservatives are back as the main opposition to Labour in the South Shields constituency, she polled 7886 votes compared to the 5207 received for Richard Lewis in 2005. Somehow the Foreign Secretary David Miliband found a few handfuls of extra votes to hold the seat with 18995 and his future will now be the subject of intense speculation.
I was at the count but after a long day campaigning my feet and knees were about to give up, I have a few pictures which I will bring to you tomorrow. Amazingly some sour faced folks at the count objected to my using a camera, apparently because I did not have official press accreditation, this didn’t prevent others from taking pictures with their camera phones of course. Anyway you will get to see what they were complaining about after I’ve had some sleep.
I had intended live blogging the local council results too for South Tyneside, but perhaps it may be better if I got to bed and caught up with some sleep.
Now thoroughly expecting David Cameron to be asked to form the next government, and I’d like to think that huge congratulations are in order to local girl Karen Allen who added more than 50% to the Conservative tally compared with five years ago, she worked tremendously hard to achieve this and it now remains to be seen whether the local Conservative Association in South Shields uses this as a platform to attract and interest many many new members to their ranks.
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Curly's Corner Shop, the blog! 
Huge advance? You’ve swapped places with the Lib Dems, that’s all. For all the Tory rhetoric, they couldn’t even take Tynemouth.
Cameron “has a right to govern”? Not from the people of North East England he doesn’t!
Michael
May 7, 2010 at 6:41 am
Labour lost 91 seats and have no majority in England at all, Gordon Brown has still not won an election to be Prime Minister. He was appointed by the Labour Party without a vote, and when at last he faced a vote he could only find a majority in Wales and Scotland. What right does he have to govern?
curly
May 9, 2010 at 9:33 am
hope the lass finds a seat she can win …somewhere miles from here please
david robinson
May 7, 2010 at 2:38 pm
She did run a great campaign, I hope the powers that be were paying attention. I think it’s a really good achievment to add 50% to the Tory vote in a town like this.
If we’re honest David Miliband won not through any campaign or his own actions but just because it’s Shields and people go Labour. Karen’s campaign was much better focussed on the local area and deserved to be succesful.
Pete
May 7, 2010 at 5:40 pm