Peter Black: Interesting times in Labour leadership contest

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Interesting times in Labour leadership contest

With Edwina Hart and Huw Lewis already declared as candidates to succeed Rhodri Morgan as First Minister it was only a matter of time before Carwyn Jones threw his hat into the ring as well.

And sure enough earlier this afternoon, Carwyn's website appeared on-line together with a video, shot with a handheld camera Hill Street Blues style, and a new twitter account in English and Welsh. No sign of an on-line presence from Huw Lewis yet.

At about the time that Carwyn Jones' first tweet appeared drawing attention to his website, Leighton Andrews, who I believe is involved in running his campaign retweeted a message from Daily Post Correspondent, Tom Bodden:

RT@tombod Carwyn Jones has taken an early lead in the Welsh Labour leadership election - online poll at http://www.dailypost.co.uk/ #NextFM

And indeed at that time Carwyn had over 70% of the votes cast so far. At the time of posting he has dropped back to 55%. Shortly after Edwina Hart's official twitter feed posted a retweet from somebody called Sam Knight:

RT @samknight Fix website polls if you want to but success will come if you really engage with people and give a vision for the future. Agree

And then followed it up with:

For the record. We took a genuine snapshot of yesterday's @WalesOnline poll at the time. We have a policy of non interference on polls.

and:

We do however, encourage participation from all genuine supporters

I think that there is a clear implication in these tweets that may need to be addressed by the Carwyn camp. Perhaps everybody should calm down. After all nominations have not even closed yet.

Update: An anonymous contributor points out that Sam Knight is a Huw Lewis supporter. So both camps are questioning why it was that Carwyn Jones secured such a strong early lead in some on-line polls.

# posted by Peter Black : 8:33 PM