1 (3) Hazel Blears. At the start of the campaign I found Hazel’s endless enthusiasm and cheery disposition a little grating. However the fact that she is able to maintain this inspite of several brickbats, especially from the Labour left who usually condemn those who patronise women, yet find it acceptable to belittle Hazel as she is a Blairite. I am impressed by the roll call of Labour MPs and cabinet Minister’s backing Hazel, including John Reid, who would have been my preferred choice for Labour Leader.

2 (2) Alan Johnson. Alan has fought a very energetic campaign, also attracting an impressive list of parliamentary supporters. A master stroke was an email sent out from MPs in surrounding consituencies, to where I vote – Dawn Primarolo, Parmjit Dhanda and Ben Bradshaw. All serious politicians who bring credit and gravitas to the party. Alan could easliy have got my number one vote, but I feel that Hazel needed it more.

3 (4) Peter Hain. Nothing against Peter but I couldn’t actually envisage him in the role. He is a very capable and eloquent minister and I feel would be better suited with a ministerial portfolio. He doesn’t inspire any great enthusiasm or dislike. A bit bland really. He gained a place for refusing to play the Iraq war hindsight card.

4 (1) Hilary Benn. So where did it all go wrong? I started out with the clear intention of voting for Hilary. Unfortunately he appears to have run a ‘can’t be arsed’ campaign. No even a single email. It doesn’t say a great deal for your promised campaigning skills  as deputy leader if you can’t seem to get your own campaign sorted. I have yet to hear from anyone who was contacted by the Benn campaign. Also from the TV debates he seems to be turning in to his father. Banging on about “Socialist values” may play well to the gallery, but we’re not playing a game of Buzzword Bingo.

5 (5) Harriet Harmen. Her big selling point was that she was the only woman in the contest. Well Hazel Blears blew that out of the water. Being a minister in Tony Blair’s government must have been a big strain for Harriet. As soon as she was unleased she took us back the the 80′s, conjuring up images on class war, nuclear free zones, and loony left councils. Her opportunism in backtracking on her support for the Iraq war was truly shocking.

6 (6) Jon Cruddas. If he is elected we are in trouble as we will have a leader and deputy with vastly differing visions of how the party and the country should run. It would be like electing Ted Heath as Thatcher’s deputy. Two aspects of the campaign to ponder. Boasting that you are the only candidate who is not a member of the government, is similar to boasting that you never get picked for the football team. It is not a compliment! Secondly, schoolchildren may be impressed that you are being supported by someone off the telly;I feel it is rather patronising.

One subject on which Gordon has been particularly reticent is his preferred choice of Deputy Leader. As a party  member I would like to know who he feels would be the best choice for the Labour Party. I personally feel that it would be a disaster if Jon Cruddas were elected (in spite of the enthusiastic support of the man off the telly). Would Gordon welcome a deputy with a contrasting vision for the party? Is he hoping that Harriet Harwoman gets the job? Plenty of MPs, Unions, CLPs and individual members (including that man off the telly) have publicly pledged their support for one of the candidates.

Why the silence Gordon? Perhaps he is afraid that we vote in someone other than his preferred candidate and that he looks a bit silly? Or perhaps he has been too busy working out which of our political opponents he wants to join his government?

The same can be said for elections. As a candidate at the count, you have little idea how the election is unfolding outside. Sat up in bed at home in Pontrieux I was watching “Tory Boy” Robinson et al backpeddling from their pre-election predictions of a Labour catastrophe (a 1% increase in Labour’s vote wasn’t in the script). I was also keeping an eye on South Gloucestershire Council’s website, which for the first time was giving a results service.

Having noted that my good friend Matthew Riddle had successfuly defended his seat with a whopping Alan B’stard majority,  a congratulatory phone call was in order. I caught Matthew watching the count for the Thornbury seats. After pleasantries I spent the next ten minutes reading out results from the South Glos website, with Matthew relaying this information to others at the count. “I’ve got Gary Pepworth on the phone calling from France giving me the results”, does have a certain surrealism about it.

Alas, lest we marvel too much at the wonders of technology, the call dropped and soon after, to use a technical explanation, the South Glos elections website went tits up.

So far in each of the 5 seats I have contested I have come bottom, which has included the ignominy of being beaten by a joke candidate. My vote in 2003 was nearly halve that of 1999. I should make it clear that apart from 1950 when Tony Crosland was the MP, Thornbury is not Labour territory.

Even so this is not how I expected it to turn out. I had expected that some of the Pepworth magic that was successfully deployed in my student union election days would rub off. (For the purpose of vanity, I should point out that I was elected in each of the 6 elections I contested and topped the poll in 5. The last election being to become President of the students’ union.)

So tonight I will be spared having to conceal disappointment, listening to mutterings from the counting staff that “the Labour man isn’t doing well”, remonstrating with the returning officer that his staff aren’t counting the votes properly and at 3am Friday morning for a fleeting moment wondering that if I was really that desperate to be on the council perhaps I should grow a beard and/or don a floral print polyester dress and throw my lot in with the Lib Dems. I am not that desperate to be on the council.

Fraternal greetings to Bob Hall, Gillian Foxton, Colin Burgess and Alasdair Hall, your extremely talented and able Thornbury Labour candidates for South Gloucesterhire Council.

So why should I be surprised that the UDF Mayor is supporting the UMP Presidential candidate? Because in the first round of the election, the UDF leader Francois Bayrou was standing as a candidate. Has the Mayor changed sides, or did I witness a convention of French society where the Mayor was fulfilling a civic duty, in the same way that the Mayor of Brighton or Blackpool will give a welcoming address to the Labour or Conservative Party conference when in town?

Why don’t I just ask him? As he is a politician I might. Ordinarily, as I have discovered, one does not ask a French person their political allegiance, it is considered very rude. The French will discuss politics til the cows come home, but keep mum about their voting intentions. As a foreigner I am often excused compliance with French social norms, but in politics I tread carefully. On this occasion the local equivalent of the Thornbury Gazette “L’Echo” has provided the answer. Commenting that Segolene Royal topped the poll in Pontrieux – on the patch of the M. Yves Le Mouer, the UMP Mayor!

So confusion over? Not quite!

On Wednesday the Sarkozy and Royal camps were waiting with baited breath to see which way Francois Bayrou, (who came third in the first round) would advise his supporters to vote in the second round. The answer: neither. On top of which he announced that he was quitting the party of which he is currently the leader to set up a new one. I am still confused.

Despite having only 835 voters, Pontrieux was deemed worthy of inclusion in the final campaign push. Today the Sarkozy cavalcade came to town so I popped out to say hello and wish them well for tomorrow.

Instead of admiring the presentation of Nazi rallys and the work of Speer and Riefenstahl he should have spoken of the spectacle of Stalin’s parades, of the magnificent architecture of Boris Iofan and of the romanticism of socialist realism. No one would have batted an eyelid.

Before I moved to France  last year, I was chair of Thornbury and Severn Vale Labour Party. We often discussed the leadership and I can tell you while there were distinct pro and anti Blair camps, there was no great enthusiasm for Gordon Brown as leader. Some of the most vocal critics were our older members who felt that he had done little for pensioners, others felt that being Prime Minister was quantum leap from being Chancellor and being good at one didn’t necessarily mean being good at the other. My contribution (and a rare personal criticism of the Prime Minister) is that he had been too cautious with his reshuffles and had been too slow promoting newer younger talent. (And yes before his bandwagon began rolling I did cite David Miliband as an example).

It is commonly said that the reason for the sickening fawning and genuflection towards Brown is to ensure continuity of employment in their existing cabinet role. I offer an alternative hypothesis; the Labour machine have realised that the game is finally up, the British people have become bored with Labour and have no interest in what Labour has to say and that we are definitely going down at the next election. With this knowledge they feel duty bound to allow Gordon his place in the sun, if only for a few years. Despite what he may say, Brown will step down and then we can have our proper debate about the leadership and direction of the party. Not now,  but in two year’s time.  So that’s why Neil Kinnock is telling Charles Clarke to shut up.

In the past ten years or so we have become complacent and taken for granted those things that we used to desire; like stable employment or at least the knowledge that if one job comes to an end we can easily find another; that next year our house will be worth more than it is this year.

No-one  seems too concerned that should they become unemployed they will have little chance of finding a new job;with record interest rates  finding themselves unable to pay the mortgage and finding that they have to sell. They don’t have to worry that there a many thousands of people in the same position as you and nobody wants to buy your house. They don’t have to worry that even if you do sell, it will be worth less than you paid and you still owe money to the mortgage company.

At this point younger viewers may remonstrate that I am being far-fetched and spouting a lot of nonsense. In fact only 14 years ago this was a sad reality for many thousands of people. A sprawling housing estate near Bristol called Bradley Stoke had the ignomany of being known as ‘Sadly Broke’ – the negative equity capital of the UK.

John Major’s Conservative government never recovered from their incompetence in handling the economy. To make matters worse the then Chancellor appeared to find the whole espisode quite amusing. He is famously reported to have “sung in his bath “when we forced out to the ERM, and when asked if he had any regrets when campaigning at the Newbury by election replied with a smug grin “Je ne regrette rien”. Hilarious.

Thankfully we hear little of these people afterwards and they retire to their many directorships and head up obscure organisations. It was in his capacity as Chairman of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce, that Lord Norman Lamont popped up on Channel Four News.

Did he have some words of criticism of Iran for the kidnapping and detention of our sailors? Not at all. The only person he criticised was our Prime Minister for seeking support from the United Nations.

Then I recalled that the last time we saw Lord Lamont gracing our TV screens was over the deportation of General Pinochet back to Chile. So that what was OK then, Lord Lamont can’t have been that bad if he was welcoming the news that the man charged with ordering the death or “disappearance” of 3,000 political opponents and the torture of 30,000 others, is being sent back to his country to face justice?

Were it to be true. In fact our hero was outraged that General Pinochet could no longer seek safe haven abroad.

From being the pariah Chancellor Lord Lamont has turned into the “pariah advocate of the despicable”. A modern day Lord Haw-Haw if you will. Germany Calling! Germany Calling!

If he wipes away the mist he may see something else – the unsmiling eyes, the rigid jaw. Yes, unfortunately Charles Clarke has got a bad case of Short’s disease.  This disease is fortunately not widely spread and usually only afflicts those who leave Government under a cloud.  Released from the responsibilities of high office, sufferers of Short’s disease are compelled to maintain their media appearances in the belief that there are thousands of us, mourning their unfathomable loss of status,  waiting to nod sagely at their words of wisdom.

If you agree with the commentators, Charles Clarke has a particulary virulent strain of Short’s disease, he has been mocked for 2020 vision, for setting out his view of how the Labour Party should proceed and for intimating that he will stand to force a leadership contest.

But has he?

The commentators haven’t explained why the only open ‘debate’ about the future of Labour is the preserve of the loony left.  Charles may be exacting revenge, but I also believe that he recognises the damage to the Labour Party of the various disciples of Rev.  Sun Myung Brown popping up telling us that there is no need for a debate, no need for a contest.

Were it to be the case that Mr Brown really is the best candidate for leader, then this is understandable. Unfortunately to those of us outside of the Westminster Village, it looks like a desperate attempt to ingratiate by those who realise that their ministerial careers are already past their sell by date.

If Charles Clarkes contribution is no more than ensuring that we avoid a ‘Coronation’, he should not be derided but applauded.