Many congratulations to Henry Cook who won the competition to predict the number of Conservative councillors that would be won on Thursday night. At 5.20pm Henry was spot on when he predicted Tory gains of 316 (although, to keep his feet on the ground, I should tell readers that his prediction of over 450 Labour losses was out by well over 100). Email me your address Henry and I’ll post you your ConservativeHome mug.
The average ConservativeHome prediction of +256 was 81% right. Not bad. Not bad at all. We’ll test the Wisdom of the ConservativeHome crowd at future elections…
Peregrine and Biodun expressed disappointment that they wouldn’t be winning the ConservativeHome mug. I feel their pain because the ConservativeHome mug – bearing the shields of the conservative movement* – is a very, very beautiful thing.
The good news is that anyone giving £30 to ConservativeHome will now receive a free mug as a thank you. All you have to do is send a £30 cheque made payable to ConservativeHome at 16 St Ann Street, Salisbury SP1 2DN or make a secure credit card donation through the PayPal system below.
* In ‘The Right Nation’ Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait likened Ronald Reagan’s coalition to the armies that medieval kings assembled. The soldiers wore the tunics of the noblemen who hired them. The shields that adorn the top of this blog and the ConservativeHome mug attempt to capture the same idea. We come to ‘the party’ with different priorities and we succeed insofar as we can fight together, against the common enemy. We fail when we stopping seeing ourselves as a coalition and start acting like a sect – insisting on litmus tests for membership and excluding those with different priorities.