Strategic rebellions

It's interesting: despite his twelve-year history of conspicuous loyalty to New Labour's Whips, my opponent, Andrew Smith, occasionally seems to suffer a rush of blood to the head, and find himself indulging in a bit of strategic rebellion. It happened to him last week - he turned out to oppose the government's decision to build a third runway at Heathrow - and he's lost no time in publicising the fact.

Well, it's nice that Andrew's started showing a little interest in the environment. However, a few well-chosen differences with the whips (on matters where the government is assured of winning anyway) don't suddenly make you an independently-minded MP: in over 2,500 votes he's cast in the Commons since 1997, Andrew Smith has voted against the government line precisely nine times, according to the excellent publicwhip.org.uk website.

Publicwhip also divulges that Andrew voted 'very strongly' for introducing foundation hospitals; 'very strongly' against an investigation into the Iraq War (I'll bet he did); and 'strongly' for introducing ID cards (and 'moderately' for laws to stop climate change, which is odd considering his newly-discovered concern for the environment). That's besides his vote last year to close down hundreds of post offices nationwide having claimed the week before to be trying to save them in Oxford. So nice try - but it'll take a lot more indpendently-minded votes before Andrew loses his status as Gordon Brown's man in Oxford.

Bookies: Oxford East a two-horse race

I was interested to find that Bookmakers Ladbrokes have opened a new betting market confirming Oxford East as a knife-edge marginal between the Lib Dems and Labour. Ladbrokes made the Lib Dems narrow favourites at 4/6, with Labour lagging behind on 5/4. Ladbrokes’ odds confirmed the Greens and Tories were clearly out of the race on 20/1 and 33/1 respectively.

We've said for some years now that Oxford East is clearly a two-horse race (good to be able to use that well-worn phrase in such an appropriate context) between Lib Dems and Labour: the Tories have no councillors in the seat - they haven't had for years - and both they and the Greens have chosen candidates based in London, which gives a strong hint how they rate their own chances. But it's still interesting to see it confirmed by the bookies - certainly the people of Oxford East know that if they want to be rid of this fag-end Labour government, voting Lib Dem is the only option.

History repeating itself...

For anyone yet to be convinced that this is a fag-end government, Baroness Vadera's comments today that she believes she can see "green shoots of economic growth" should provide food for thought. Baroness Vadera may not be a household name, but she's a Business minister and one of Gordon Brown's most important economic advisers - so it's worrying if, on a day when yet more job losses are announced, she's either so out of touch as to think things are on the mend, or so addicted to spin as to pretend they are.

Still, it's a bit rich for the Tories to feign outrage at the Baroness's comments, given that the last politician to detect the "green shoots of economic spring", way back in 1991, was their Chancellor Norman Lamont - the last Chancellor to preside over a recession in Britain.