Boston By-election (yes, another one!)

A local election is being held in the Fenside ward of Boston, Lincolnshire to replace a disgraced councillor who resigned after being convicted of drink driving.

Boston Borough Council is controlled by the Boston Bypass Independents, a local pressure group turned political party. Local pressure groups are becoming increasingly popular at a local level although it is unusual for them to control councils. Their main success is in gaining enough support to hold the balance of power on councils although Save Kidderminster Hospital managed to get an MP elected and then re-elected.

Voters have 6 candidates to choose from - Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, UKIP, BNP and Boston Bypass Independents. The borough has been independent controlled for some time with the Tories generally being the largest party on the council until the Boston Bypass Independents group was formed. UKIP did well in 2006, beating Labour and the Lib Dems and taking second place. Subsequent elections have been terrible for UKIP although the last by-election in Boston, held in July this year, saw UKIP finish second from bottom above Labour.

I'll go out on a limb and give a prediction for this election:

Conservative
Boston Bypass Independents
Lib Dems
Labour
BNP
UKIP

The Tories are riding high at the moment - they're taking control of councils that have never voted Tory before, let alone councils that they've always been the largest or second largest group in.

The Boston Bypass Independents have a strong following in the borough but they will be tainted by their leader's drink driving conviction.

The Lib Dems's sole reason for existance, if we're honest about it, is to provide a moderate "on the fence" party for disaffected Tory and Labour voters to give protest votes to. There will be a lot of protest votes.

Labour are dead in the water in England despite the media hyping their unexpected victory in Glenrothes but some people will be stupid enough to believe Gordon Brown is capable of dragging us out of the recession he helped to cause.

The BNP have a reasonable following in Boston and they will attract disaffected Labour votes. Only 1.6% of the population of Boston is from an ethnic minority and the BNP generally do well in areas like this, as the previous election results from Boston demonstrate.

Finally, UKIP will do badly I think. The last few by-elections have been poor and the EU has been relegated to the bottom of most peoples' list of priorities by the credit crunch, recession and immigration. The more votes the Tories get, the less UKIP will get.