The battle for Sunderland

Sunderland has a Labour Council with a third of the seats up for election on May 6. It spends £4 million a year on publicity- the 11th highest out of over 450th councils. The local Conservatives are fizzing with radicaland positive ideas. Even the local Labour MP Chris Mullin has criticised the Council's jobsworth culture. The Council is overloaded with 143 middle managers on over £50,000 a year.

So far as the General Election is concerned the Sunderland Central seat may be the first to declare. Unless there is a recount, of course. Of the nine relevant wards the last time they were contested the Conservatives won five, Labour three and the Lib Dems ones. Furthermore some of the Conservative victories were by very substantial margins. 

Yet this is our 256th target seat. Chris Mullin must certainly have builtt up a personal vote, but he is standing down. Suffice to say that victory for the Conservatives in this seat would get the night off to an encouraging start. Did you stay up for Sunderland Central? CCHQ are taking it seriously devoting some backing to our candidate local councillor Lee Martin.