The Battle of Central Avenue

Saturday sees all the parties on the main shopping street of West Bridgford, a suburb of Nottingham and the largest part of the Rushcliffe constituency.

There is a lot of apathy on display by the public, which I expect. But also some fire. We hand out mini-manifestos and get rid of the lot. One man, of mature years, casually dressed and balding, refuses his copy thus:

"I'm life long Labour"
"Thought about changing your mind?"
"No - last time you lot were in power we had the General Strike!"

He isn't representative. Many more ex-Labour voters come up to me to tell me they've already voted for us, in one case "After 30 years of voting Labour and a lot of soul-searching."

I chat to the UKIP candidate - he is wildly optimistic. "Expect an upset!" he enthuses. Privately I hope it favours us. I also opine internally that a good showing for UKIP has to be bad for the Tories, given Ken Clarke's views.

I gently point out to one racist old lady, complaining about our (Asian) candidate, that 40% of the staff in the health service she uses are from overseas. She departs, non-plussed.

Ken Clarke appears, slowly moving up and down the street, working the crowd like the old professional he is. He stops to shake hands with me so I take the opportunity to ask him when he'll accept the inevitable and come and join us. He deflects the question with a smile and a typical politician's non-answer. Perhaps I've given him food for thought? Regardless, my suspision is he has little to worry about.

As we enter the final week, our mood is upbeat. We have had a good response and look set to meet the targets we've set for the election. My feeling is that the Labour vote will be reduced here; it remains to be seen how much by. We are fighting hard in out target County seats andbelieve we're in with a shot.

All that remains now is to leaflet, leaflet, leaflet until polling day ...