18/04/2017 Points West

Our headlines tonight: Rolling out the big guns.

The Lib Dems vow to bounce back in the West after

But could it be curtains for the West's last three Labour MPs

Also tonight: After this incident, Avon and Somerset Police are warned

The countdown is on, and we in the West could be

at the very centre of the political battle to come.

The landscape here is currently blue with just three Labour seats.

Tonight, we'll assess the prospects for the three main parties

Teresa May addressed the nation from Downing Street, London.

I have just chaired a meeting of the Cabinet, where we agreed

that the Government should call a general election.

And Brenda from Redland, Bristol, answered right back.

Today's surprise announcement caught everyone on the hop.

I'm not sure I can take it again after the referendum.

The Labour mayor of Bristol watched on the telly with the rest of us.

The city has three Labour MPs at the moment, but the polls

It is a Westminster conversation and agenda taking place without any

regard for the very real-life impact we have at a local level.

I find it irritating, to put it mildly.

In fact, it was 2015 that the West delivered its verdict.

We've got one big argument about the economy,

He said he was all pumped up and held rallies,

He scored a solid victory across the West - at the expense

He wiped them out - every one of them here.

Ben Howlett took Bath from the Lib Dems.

What I don't want to see is people thinking that this

People shouldn't be under any other misinterpretation that that could be

the case and unfortunately I think the Liberal Democrats have been

Labour had a new woman on the block, Thangham Debonnaire -

she won Bristol West, once more at the expense

And we're going to be in every part of Britain over the next weeks!

But soon, she fell out with Jeremy Corbyn, clashing

with his Momentum followers who backed him to the hilt.

All three of the city's Labour MPs refused to serve with him

Now they'll have to campaign for him to enter the door of Number 10 -

that is if they're chosen by the party to be candidates again.

The Lib Dems see this is as a huge opportunity to make a comeback.

After the bruises of Brexit plus the toil of the local

and mayoral elections, the politicians will soon be

Some of them will be as weary of all this as Brenda from Bristol.

Well, the polling organisation YouGov says the West Country will be

one of the major battlegrounds in this election.

I asked their head of Political and Social Research, Joe Twyman, why.

It's because it's important to so many different parties.

It of course was a heartland for the Liberal Democrats for some

time but, in 2015 the Conservatives did extremely well in winning back

some of those tight seats in the region that propelled them

to the unexpected majority that they achieved.

And this time around, some of those seats in areas

like Bristol and Bath are the kind of areas that the Lib Dems will need

to win if they are going to have any chance of electoral success.

What about the pollsters themselves, people like yourself?

You've kind of got it wrong in the past, haven't you?

Well, we are not always right, we are certainly not always wrong,

and we've made a lot of changes to ensure that we have an accurate

I expect that, this time around, certainly on current polling,

it won't be as close as a result as the EU referendum

or the 2015 general election, and so we shall see exactly

Our political editor, Paul Barltrop, has been watching

The last time there was a general election in the West,

The Conservative success here was a key factor

in their winning an overall majority in Parliament.

The only seats they didn't win were in Bristol.

Labour will need to hold onto their three MPs in the city.

But if they're to make progress, they've got to make gains.

Places like Swindon and Stroud, which they failed to take in 2015,

As for the Liberal Democrats, the only way is up.

Having lost all their seats last time, they'll be gunning to take

back places like Thornbury and Yate, Bath and Wells.

Restoring their fortunes across the South West

Party leader Tim Farron has been touring the region today.

The focus was meant to be the local elections taking

They're optimistic of making gains then,

Doubled in size since the general election, it's added another 5000

since Theresa May called the election earlier this morning.

Bear in mind in the last quarter, for the first time in history,

the Liberal Democrats had more donations than the Labour Party.

We are in a position where we are the only credible,

decent alternative to the Tories, not just in the West Country,

but around the country, and we are up for this election.

Britain needs us to do well otherwise, even if you are a Tory,

surely it's awful for us to have a 1-party state

But setting up and running a full general election in just 50 days

Election officials across the West have been rushing to draw up

new plans to have polling stations and counts functioning

And for the parties, it's a huge challenge.

Some like UKIP have been hard pressed to find enough candidates

One senior figure told me calling an election was "a cynical and even

"irresponsible maneouvre for political advantage."

And even Labour will have to hurry to fill some key gaps; the important

Swindon seats are among places where they've yet

It's going to be a very, very busy seven weeks.

On to some other news tonight and Avon and Somerset Police have

admitted they need to improve race relations in the West.

It follows the high-profile tasering of a campaigner two months ago

and warnings that the relationship between the black community

Here's our home affairs correspondent, Charlotte Callen.

This video made headlines around the world.

The man is 63 and a grandfather, he's tasered by an officer

He was a race relations adviser to the police.

I think what happened has taken any sort of relationship with the police

and the community and has taken it back 20 years.

Michael Jenkins worked with the police three years ago

to make this video about stop and search

The idea was to break down the fear and reduce the number of stop

In 2013, black people were nearly four times more likely to be

Now in 2016, they are over six times more likely to be stopped.

Their Chief Constable is unable to comment on the incident

It is being formally investigated by the IPCC,

but he says he is pleased with the performance of his force.

There are too many black men being stopped and searched

but it is something we are taking great steps to ensure fairness

Her Majesty's Constabulary have reviewed stop and searches

across the whole country and found that 96% had reasonable grounds

Social media makes this kind of incident very public and very

high profile and shines a new light on how officers police

There's more news on the BBC website and on your local BBC radio

We're back with you in breakfast tomorrow from 6:30am.

But for now, I'll say goodnight and leave you with Ian,

Tomorrow should be a fine day and dry conditions all underpinned the

forecast throughout this week. A number of you are desperate for rain

but one thing you are not desperate for is frost, and that will be a

quite wide risk across southern England. We could well see

temperatures drop down below freezing in a few spots and all of

us are in the chilly start tomorrow morning. A bit of fog back-ups and

one or two spots all clear, good deal of sunshine to get us underway

on Wednesday. We will find more cloud developing through the second

half of the day but still sunny conditions either side of that.

We're not expecting any rain at all. A dry day with a light breeze and

temperatures higher than today. After that cold start, 13-14 C. As

we look further into the rest of the week, temperatures will climb up as

we get through towards Thursday, on into Friday, but likely to be

accompanied by cloud. On Thursday morning, a few spots of light rain

in the air but not much of it. The weather hasn't been too dramatic

of late. That is not say it's not without problems. One of those could

occur as early as tonight. There could be a sharp rural frost around

especially so in