Labour's best ever result in Ryedale

Hello and welcome to the Ryedale Labour Party web site. My name is Paul Blanchard and in May 2004 I was selected by the local party to be their Parliamentary Candidate for the election on 5th May 2005. You can find out more about me here and the governments achievements here.

I enjoyed the 2005 campaign very much. At a time when the Labour vote declined by 6% nationally, in Ryedale we managed to actually increase it by an unprecedented 6% - in one of the most ‘conservative’ of all constituencies. We received 9,148 votes, which is up a massive 41% on 2001’s result of 6,470. Tony Blair thanked me and my team for the Labour's most successful election campaign (in terms of swing to Labour) in the whole General Election.

This website remains as an archive of our campaign for the 2005 election.

If you would like to know what I am up to now, I have a personal website available here

STOP PRESS: (amended 25 May 2008) - At the next General Election, the constituencies of Ryedale and Vale of York will cease to exist, and will be replaced by the Thirsk & Malton constituency. My friend Jonathan Roberts is the candidate, and you can access his website by clicking here. I wish him all the best - he is an excellent candidate.