Monday, September 27, 2004

Prescott now exposed as desperate

In the last throw of the dice, this is all that Prescott has left. Designation by the Electoral Commission to Conservative NESNO has left the Deputy Prime Minister with only one card left to play. Sadly for him, and in light of the statement by the North East Chamber of Commerce, it is no longer an ace he has left...it is the joker. The mountain the Yes campaign have left to climb is now the equivalent of Hannibal crossing the Alps with the elephants on his back!

It's Labour v Tories, party told
Sep 27 2004
By The Journal


Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott yesterday made the North-East assembly referendum party political, as he claimed the choice was to vote `Yes' with Labour or `No' with the Tories.
Mr Prescott urged delegates at the Labour Party conference to get behind the campaign for a `Yes' vote when ballot papers go to voters next month.

He rallied party members by painting the debate as Labour versus Conservatives.
"It's a choice to go backwards with the Tories with a `No' vote or to vote `Yes' with Labour," he said.
His words annoyed campaigners on both sides of the debate, who have tried to keep party politics out of the campaign.
Yes4theNorthEast chairman John Tomaney said: "We have support from across the political spectrum for a `Yes' vote, but this is not about party politics, it's about the future of the North-East."
North East Says No, which is backed by the Conservatives and UKIP, said: "The fact is the `Yes' campaign is finding it increasingly difficult to sell an assembly that will have no power to do any good, so they're reduced to party-political attacks. It's pathetic, but unfortunately not surprising."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

`Yes' with Labour or `No' with the Tories. It was suspiciously convenient then NESNO were made the official NO campaign.More to come on this one.
Never mind the "contorted faces" outside the conference
he'll be gurning for England, sorry, the "regions of Britain".

Anonymous said...

This is exactly how Labour had to (and did...) play it in the Wales ASSembly Referendum. They made it a Labour v Tory issue and the old Labour supporters in South Wales duly delivered for them by the slimmest of margins, aided and abetted by the nationalist dreamers in Plaid Cymru without whom Labour would have been trashed. Fortunately the North East doesn't have an equivalent to Plaid Cymru and Labour will be trashed.

After that we can probably look forward to the gradual collapse of the current unwanted, unelected, ASSembly as Councils, and hopefully others, realise the futility of wasting public money on the useless talking shop and pull out as they have started to do from the Yorkshire & the Humber unelected ASSembly.

Anonymous said...

Neil,

I'd be very surprised if this is the last throw of Prescott's dice.

Watch out for surprise announcements near to the time. And vicious last minute media comment in support of "YES" (I'll never forget the media's hatchet job in the 1975 referendum! Behind some apparent media EU "sceptisicm they'll still back the EU, regions et al, anyday!). Or skeletons, real or imagined, in the cupboards of NO supporters, real or imagined!!

And putting your faith in what "Business leaders" say is very dodgy too. These people have only one creed - and any Government knows that can be bought!!!

Chris Cooke
Tamworth

Anonymous said...

The 'Yes' campaign, and so-called politicians, are running scared, it is for this reason and no other, that Prescott has dragged politics into the argument!

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