Heston and Feltham by-election update

No one is expecting anyone but Labour to win in the Heston and Feltham by election this Thursday.

Some of the runners and riders

The nine hopefuls may formally range from Bus Pass Elvis to BNP to People Before Profit but Labour’s 43% vote in 2010 would spell victory for them even without healthy recent polling.

Cameron’s tilting at Euro-windmills is unlikely to deliver victory for the Conservative candidate, let alone the English Democrats or UKIP who are probably cursing him to the heavens for stealing their thunder.

While UKIP have been doing relatively well in the polls and the Liberals pretty poorly Cameron’s latest antics is likely to hoover up the anti-Europe vote fairly comprehensively giving the our yellow masters a likely reprieve from a fourth place humiliation.

Despite some attempts to create a scandal that the Labour candidate is distancing herself from her leader, or the laughably wacky claim that the Conservatives “can’t win here” so the “only viable alternative is the Liberal Democrats.” Not the only bit of Lib Dem foolishness. It’s all pretty pedestrian stuff.

At least the top two candidates are locals (Labour and Conservative) with a real connection to the area so there’s been no attempt to parachute in a slick apparatchik. However, there’s been little real politics to speak of.

Our conservative prediction here at Big Smoke villas is that Labour will come an easy first, Conservatives second, Lib Dems third, then UKIP, Greens, English Democrats, BNP, People Before Profit and then Bus Pass Elvis. In 48 hours we’ll know for sure.