Succession planning in Suffolk Coastal might be a bit of a Gummer...

John Gummer has been around a long time. One of the survivors of the last Conservative government, he continues to represent Suffolk Coastal in Parliament and, despite his problems with expenses, is unlikely to struggle to be re-elected. However, he will be 70 next month, and clearly can't go on forever.

So, some succession planning is called for. Luckily, his son Ben is of the right age and is judged to be fit and able to be a Parliamentary candidate. You shouldn't presume anything in politics, however, and a seat like Suffolk Coastal is an attractive opportunity for an ambitious young politico, so a bit of CV building is called for.

And so, Ben has become the Conservative candidate for Ipswich. Admittedly, he doesn't want to draw attention to what his father does, even if a look at photographs of the two make the link a bit of a giveaway. When he was selected in August 2007, in the aftermath of a change of Labour leader, it didn't look that promising, with the likely swing looking to be away from the Conservatives at that time.

Two years later, with Labour languishing in the opinion polls, and having been virtually wiped out in this year's county elections, Electoral Calculus is predicting that he will win. Good news for Ben, one might think. Well, yes and no. If he wins, he can hardly do the chicken run to Suffolk Coastal in 2014/15, and will be forced to defend what will always be a swing seat.

It is hard to imagine that Labour will remain as unpopular as they are at the moment, and with the Conservatives possibly controlling every level of government for the area (albeit with Liberal Democrat support on Ipswich Borough Council), he wouldn't have anything to run against when the Labour comeback begins.

Ah well, succession planning doesn't always run smoothly. Perhaps Cordelia might be persuaded to take up politics?