Posts Tagged ‘Weaver Vale’

Campaign frontline: In Weaver Vale, the Tories might outspend Labour but the party won’t be outworked

29/05/2017, 01:00:15 PM

In a series of reports from the frontline, Uncut looks at what’s happening on the ground. Kevin Meagher visited Weaver Vale, a seat Labour needs to win to form a government

Tidy stone walls and trimmed high hedges in glorious summer colours frame the journey on the road in to Weaver Vale. Interspersed are rows of pretty terraces with brightly-painted doors and big, detached properties with spacious gardens. Every now and then there are hand-written signs hung over gates or staked in the ground advertising ‘New Cheshire Potatoes’ from local farms.

Then the lettering above an old road sign brings it home: ‘Vale Royal Borough’. The previous name for this part of Cheshire, before the old county and district councils were scrapped to create two new unitaries a decade ago.

Cheshire is not ‘the North’ as many would recognise it. A collection of attractive and often very prosperous market towns and villages set in lush farmland and countryside. It is a beautiful part of the country and far more affluent than Greater Manchester to its north and Merseyside to its west, serving as a hinterland for the well-heeled who work in either.

But the county also has odd bits of heavy industry like the giant Ineos chemicals site that seems to take an eternity to pass driving along the M56. And there are still reliable urban redoubts for Labour. Towns like Warrington and Runcorn and Widnes remain safe bets.

Weaver Vale is an amalgam of these two Cheshires, incorporating the smart market towns of Frodsham and Northwich as well as the eastern part of Runcorn. Labour has always had a decent base in Cheshire and held this seat easily enough between 1997 and 2010. Even in 2015, the Conservative majority here was only 806.

I’m here to meet Labour’s candidate, Mike Amesbury, a recent veteran of Andy Burnham’s successful mayoral campaign and a former adviser to Shadow Education Secretary, Angela Rayner.

(more…)

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Wine buff has nose for victory

08/06/2013, 02:58:02 PM

Julia Tickridge has this afternoon been selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Weaver Vale.

The Cheshire West and Chester borough councillor beat off a strong challenge from party organiser Lauren Cassidy, with solicitor Rebecca Long-Baliey coming third. North West Party Board Chair, Sue Pugh was the fourth shortlisted candidate.

The final run off saw Tickridge beat Cassidy by 66 votes to 61.

Tickridge is a languages graduate and formerly worked for chemicals giant ICI in Germany. She also has a background in further education and is a qualified International Wine Challenge judge.

It is believed that just twelve candidates applied for the seat, designated an All-Women Shortlist (AWS) by the party’s National Executive Committee.

However this is the second AWS selection process in the area where relatively few women candidates applied. Nearby Wirral West saw NHS campaigner Margaret Greenwood selected from a field of just a dozen candidates.

The Weaver Vale seat is currently held by Conservative Graham Evans with a majority of just 991.

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