Party snatches David Cameron’s spiritual house in West Oxfordshire from overwhelming dominance of the ConservativesChipping Norton on a silent weekday afternoon makes an unlikely setting for an electoral upset. The tea shops in the attractive Cotswold-stone town centre on Friday were doing a steady trade in pots of Earl Grey, while 4x4s idled in bunches to pounce on coveted parking spots. In the Blue Boar, an elderly male dozed beside a fireplace in a scene unchanged for centuries.In its modest path, however, Chipping Norton this week provided one of the more startling headlines of the council election results, when it became one of three wards claimed by Labour from the Conservatives on West Oxfordshire district council.Startling, since these were not just any wards. If Witney Central and Witney East are in the administrative heart of David Cameron’s constituency, Chipping Norton might be described as the prime minister’s spiritual house, the small Cotswold town encircling which his moneyed locate of occasionally troublesome pals cluster. All three wards were turned from blue to red.It was near here, at the house of former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie, that Cameron rode a borrowed Metropolitan police horse, and shared a “tiny” Christmas “side conversation” with the son of a global media mogul about the imminent BSkyB adjudication. Jeremy Clarkson is just up the road, as is cheese-making pop star Alex James. Two of the three ward councillors in “Chippy”, the locate’s nearest town, are immediately Labour.The result was striking, also, since of the overwhelming dominance of the Conservatives in this well-off corner of leafy rural England. Until Thursday’s elections, Labour had just one councillor in West Oxfordshire, against four Liberal Democrats – and 44 Conservatives.So should Cameron be worried? David Value, wrapped up in flat cap, cravat and Barbour against the chill wind, can’t quite choose. On the one palm, he says, these council elections are “always a blip”. “It has no national consequence whatsoever”. To imagine much the smallest threat to Cameron’s own position locally is ridiculous, he says.On the other palm, however, Value – a committed Tory who describes his own politics as “to the fair of Genghis Khan” and believes “the sooner the Liberal Democrats are wiped off the face of the earth the bigger” – detects a growing lack of faith in the Tory leader among friends and neighbours. “He is certainly not being Conservative enough.”He said: “I reckon that regrettably, David Cameron, nice guy as he is, is in grave danger of becoming another Blair — ie someone who is not that keen on principles.”He thinks Tory voters may have stayed away over Europe, and the failure to hold a referendum on withdrawal. Value didn’t ballot – he lives just outside any wards being contested – however takes a extended pause when questioned if he would ever capture his ballot elsewhere. “I reckon there will come a age when the Tories will have to capture Ukip very seriously indeed.”Chris Branson, shopping with her husband, Peter, voted Conservative, since they deserve a chance. “I just feel that the Labour party left us in such a mess, how does somebody expect whoever takes over to sort that in two years?”When she got house, however, “I glance at the blurb from the Labour candidate that I should have glance at before I went, and I thought, that bloke has done a abundance for this town. I said, ‘I don’t know if I voted for the fair person.’”"Well I voted Labour yesterday,” says her husband, to her surprise. In part it was since he felt they had run a bigger campaign, “however it was also the circumstance that he place on his pamphlet that he wanted to balance the balance of ability, which appealed to me.”He is normally a Lib Dem voter, however the party didn’t field a candidate in the ward, nor were Lib Dems standing in Witney East or Witney Central – two Lib Dem gains that were also helped by a lack of Labour candidates standing, facts the Tories blamed on a pact.”We have lost tonight since of a coalition between the opposition parties who got together and [have] not fought each other in seats where they thought they could target us and win,” said Barry Norton, the Conservative council leader. However Chris Johnson, the Labour constituency chair who acted as agent for the Witney candidates, denied that.”There were no deals. We had no discussions with the Liberal Democrats,” he says. “Our policy locally and nationally is to place up candidates wherever we can.” The difficulty they had in deep blue West Oxfordshire, he said, was that willing Labour candidates were not always simple to find.To Rob Evans, the winning candidate, his victory is not such a striking result as it might appear. “Despite the image that it has, this has always been a working town of the Cotswolds. Human beings here reject the ‘Chipping Norton locate’. They have never really been part of it.”On the doorsteps, human beings talked about the budget and the national economy, and also about shops shutting in the town centre, and their worries about community jobs. “It’s really a combination of the two,” says Evans. “We are a vulnerable market town. I reckon human beings just wanted to have a more secure view of the economy.” The Twitter failed to reach Patrick McHugh, his defeated Tory rival.Evans’s victory will be sweet, however it remains a small one. Labour’s four members on the council will immediately join four Lib Dems and 41 Conservatives.”Given the views of the majority of the human beings, it’s fair that West Oxfordshire has a Conservative council,” says Johnson. “However it ought not to be as disproportionate as it was. All those other views demand to have representation also.”Community elections 2012LabourConservativesDavid CameronLocal electionsLocal governmentLocal politicsEsther Addleyguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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