Wednesday, March 04, 2015
Doorsteps, Dogs and Doughnuts – A Dozen Worst and Best Election Moments
The General Election will take place two months tomorrow, and while for voters at home it means just two months of wishing it would all shut up, for active political volunteers it’s two months of joy and excitement. Or hell and exhaustion. So from my many election campaigns past, here are my experiences of: worst Lib Dem candidate ever! Best old lady ever! Canvassing moment least likely to be repeated! Election secret I should have admitted at the time! Best and worst police! Best and worst dog bites! Best bakery order! Best conversation in bed! Most racist voter! And more!
Liberal Democrat Voice and the amazing Helen Duffett put out the call yesterday for people’s funniest canvassing stories, and though I immediately commented with a ready-made Eastleigh anecdote, my memories kept erupting. Particularly from the 1992-1997 Parliament, when I volunteered in every mainland UK by-election but one – celebrity visitors were snowed in, and I decided I wasn’t going to hitch-hike in that. Yes, I had even less money than my party and mostly got there and back by thumbing a lift, but in those days I was at least far more healthy and could survive it all (though my studies couldn’t).
And of course the vast majority of those by-elections were won by other parties – we’ve never won more than a handful in any one Parliament, with the four we took in the 1992 Parliament were very nearly our best ever. So next time a report exaggerates some terrible result by saying ‘Of course, in the old days the Lib Dems would have walked it, because they won every by-election’, we didn’t walk any of them – unless you mean until our shoes wore out, because they were all hard work – and remember the facts of how rarely we actually won and how great our joy every time we managed it, and how thankless all the many more (or, at the time, fewer) volunteers in the places we didn’t stand an earthly but still stood anyway. Also remember that by-elections were and will again sometimes be won by standing up for the right thing and not just the far right thing – Romsey in favour of Europe and immigration when the Tories were being UKIP Mark I; Brent against the Iraq War when both Labour and Tories backed spending blood and money like there was no tomorrow.
One – Best Doorstep Canvassing Experience Ever
Christchurch by-election,
A tiny old lady comes slowly to the door. I stand back but lean forward in my best I-am-listening-but-not-looming-threateningly-way. I ask her who she’s voting for. “Well…” the tiny lady says, in an even tinier voice. I lean in closer. “I’ve always voted Tory…” Suddenly she grabs me by both shoulders and shakes me as she yells, “But you’ve got to get the bastards out!”
Two – Canvassing Experience Least Likely To Be Repeated In May 2015
Newbury by-election,
The man who saw me coming and ran out of his front door to beg me for a stakeboard poster to have in his garden… Because every single other house on the street had one and all his neighbours were curling their lips at him. Freedom from conformity!
David Rendel might also have been the best by-election candidate for the troops that I ever saw: seemingly boundless energy on the doorsteps, and however late he finished, he’d always go round HQ and thank every volunteer as if every single one of us had made his day (no, they didn’t all do that).
Three – Best Candidate For Keeping Her Head On Bad News
Christchurch by-election,
A canvassing team out on a lovely sunny day with an enthusiastic candidate in a sharp jacket and all of us feeling the wind was at our backs. What could go wrong? The most sourly Tory street in the most sourly Tory ward in the constituency, where not one single person was voting for us and most of them gave us abuse, ranging from immigration to That London to ‘You’re a layabout, bothering me in the middle of the day – why don’t you have a job?’ (ignoring that we were the ones out and about and they were the ones at home).
We met up on the street corner to report each individual tale of woe from sheet after sheet of unrestrained misery. Diana Maddock, the candidate, stood with her head tilted listeningly and nodded gently at each setback. Depressed, we all looked to her. “They’re all fascists, you know,” she said brightly. “But I think they’re going to vote for me.” And they did.
Four – Worst Lib Dem By-election Candidate Ever
South East Staffordshire by-election, 1996
Jeanette Davy. An utter misery who drove all her aides to distraction, was never seen to smile, tutted loudly at voters when she wasn’t sighing, and was generally impossible to work with. For those who didn’t meet her, she helpfully appeared on TV to say that if people voted Labour to get the Tories out, that was “a price worth paying”. I remember one council leader who turned up to help, heard that, swore, got back in his car and drove all the way home again, saying he wasn’t going to help such a stupid [expletive deleted].
That’s excluding the one who defected to Labour on eve of poll in 1994 and wrecked both by-elections and Euro-elections for us – and I delivered for the git, whose name ironically was a portmanteau of two Doctor Who characters who betrayed humanity to the Cybermen, in a continuity error in the real world. The two of them were in those rosy days the only two Lib Dem by-election lost deposits in England for donkeys’ years.
Five – Most Racist Voter
Eastleigh by-election, 1994
The man one sunny day in a suburban crescent who got more and more heated about immigration while the other two canvassers did the whole rest of the street and all the neighbours stayed out one by one to listen. Never have I delivered so many calm “That isn’t true, sirs” or “I must disagree with you, sirs” at such increasing volume as the voter went from slightly racist to shouting conspiracy theories. After my final “I don’t believe we’re going to agree, sir, so I shall say good day,” he opened his gate and lumbered after me to the corner, screaming of our candidate “Chidgey’s not an English name!!” [Hilarious fact: actually, it is.]
It made my going all Churchillian when people argued about immigration and refugees when I was an actual candidate seem positively tame.
The same by-election gets runner-up awards for two types of paternalism:
The man who growled at the Lib Dems and refused to let me talk to his wife when I politely enquired, because she voted the way she was told. Canvassers, never treat a house as monolithic (even if there’s an opposition poster there – a Labour poster-bearer at a different by-election told me quietly that he was a member and had to, but was voting tactically). The second he slammed the door, the upper window sprang open, and she quickly confided: “I always tell him that for a quiet life. But I always vote for you lot.”
The Labour voter on the next doorstep along from me who thought government should tell the workers what was good for them and hand out what they decreed when Tony Blair got in, because Labour and the unions knew best. And the Lib Dem canvasser I was tag-teaming with stoutly telling him that, no, workers should be involved in management rather than everything being from the top down, and the Labour man’s incredulous cry of “You can’t let workers make their own decisions!”
Six – Worst Evening’s Canvassing
Hexham, 1991 (party of students up to help out)
In my late teens, shortly after I’d unwisely had all my hair buzzed off (and in a snowy January), and paired with an especially camp other Lib Dem in what was then a very Conservative and evidently conservative seat, it was probably the least successful evening’s campaigning I’ve ever had, from the very first house where my canvassing partner exclaimed “Oh, no, you’ll have to do this one!” and there was unstoppable tittering from the gate while I tried to keep my face straight asking, “Good evening – Mr Love…?” right to the point where we called it a night as one man set his dogs on us one way while trying to rev his van into us from the other.
My then-underweight (less than half my present size), skeletal student looks, though with hair grown back, were better deployed canvassing later that year in Kincardine and Deeside – almost as chilly, and shivering pitifully, I kept being sent to canvass old ladies because I got the best ‘mother me’ response from them.
Seven – Worst Day’s Leafletting
Islywn by-election, 1995
Where it never once stopped raining. I’d hitch-hiked there, eventually being picked up by the police while striding along the dual carriageway towards Islywn after being dropped at a motorway junction at 2am, and on hearing what I was there for they kindly drove me to the Lib Dem HQ (making them much nicer than the unsympathetic Leicestershire officers who’d arrested and charged me when hitching back from Bradford South the year before). Disbelieving Valleys coppers: “You’re wasting your time. A donkey with a red rosette gets in round here, and we’ve had one for twenty-five years” (thank you, Mr Kinnock). I snatched a couple of hours’ sleep against a radiator and half-dried one side before going out all day delivering.
The only metaphorical ray of sunshine was the woman who stopped me to ask why she should vote Lib Dem instead of Plaid – I quoted Lloyd George about hating fences and wanting to kick down any he came across, because Liberals don’t like neat little boxes and borders that individuals can’t cross, and that’s what we don’t like about nationalists. I got us that one vote, but eventually had to go back to HQ with half the leaflets undelivered: not because they’d turned to papier-mâché and were coming off in thick clumps rather than one at a time, though they were; not because the highlighter pen had run off the photocopied route map, though it had; but because the toner had run off the map itself.
Hitch-hiking back was even worse, because the time you most need a lift is when no-one wants to spoil their car with a soaking straggler. I remember being dropped, eventually, soaked to the bone and freezing, at Cockfosters – as far out on the Tube as possible – and teeth-chatteringly ringing Richard from a phone booth. He poured a hot bath and peeled me into it at the far end, hours later. When he towelled me down afterwards it was the first time I’d been dry in over two days.
Eight – Worst and Best Dog Bites
Taunton, Local elections 1999
Long narrow garden path, dog suddenly leaps out at the far end. I stuck the leaflet in and ran for it, but spent election evening 1999 in A&E and still have the scar.
Christchurch by-election, 1994
Dog locks its teeth around my thigh; owner comes to the door, pales, and immediately offers to take a super-size stakeboard poster. At the corner of two big roads. Result! And, bonus, no flesh torn, though card wallet punctured and outer card needed replacing from the canine canines’ dent.
Nine – By-election (Lack of) Experience I Shouldn’t Admit To
Winchester by-election, 1997
I’d been there a week, and the night before polling day, the sub-agent who was going to be running the sub-office – the secondary HQ out in the country somewhere, not the central city one I’d been at the whole time – fell suddenly ill. The agent was already worn to a frazzle, and everyone had all their jobs mapped out. Disaster! But, luckily, there at hand was a familiar face from all those by-elections, and a senior-ish figure (then) in the party. “Alex Wilcock will be running the sub-office,” she announced. I went for a late-night pizza with a well-known party staffer and blogger-to-be and confided just one tiny worry. Or, rather, hinted at it, though he immediately guessed what the problem was. In all the elections I’d worked in, I’d delivered leaflets, and canvassed, and done the press, and been a candidate, and even got the doughnuts. The one thing I’d never done was any of the agent-y stuff, so running a committee room or the art of the Shuttleworth were mysteries to me. Should I tell the agent? “Best not,” he said, trying not to spit pizza in all directions with laughter. “She’s got enough to worry about.”
So at 5am on polling day I was taken to be what appeared to be a disused aircraft hangar down a load of tiny roads, across bridges and through fords, and didn’t have a clue where I was or what I was doing. Trying to keep calm, I thought to myself, what can I do? I can learn very quickly on the spot, I can wing it brilliantly, and I can cheer people up. So, surrounded by experienced volunteers both local and national, one side of the room surrounded by ready-to-tear coloured strips that had some mystical connection with the election, I gathered my troops and gave them a brief word before they went off with the Good Morning leaflets. I told them how vital it was we won; I told them that the evil Tory had only challenged the result on a technicality, and that the voters wanted our candidate but couldn’t be allowed to be complacent; I said what we stood for (sadly our key topics from the leaflets rather than anything exciting); and I said something on the spot to make them laugh. All in uncharacteristically bullet-point brevity.
“There’s one more thing,” I told them, very seriously. “I’ll be here co-ordinating the day, taking all the information, reporting it to the agent, and I’m not allowed to tell you how we’re doing – in fact, even if the candidate walks in, I’m not allowed to tell him [he did, and I did as I was told and only told him it was very tight and he had to go out and do more]. Now, I know I’ve been put here by the main party, and that some of you have been working to win Winchester for years and know far more about it than I ever will. So as well as acting on your local knowledge whenever something comes up, one of the most important things I can do is make sure that those of us from outside are working in the same way those of you who live here do. Before you start knocking on doors, then, just so we know everyone’s getting it right, I’d like [potentially stroppy but very experienced local party member I’d been told to keep on side] to quickly explain to us outsiders how you do it here…”
By the afternoon, though I’d been told even I shouldn’t think about the data I was reporting to the agent, my estimate was that we were looking at a majority of well over 20,000, and I was worried that I’d got it all terribly wrong. I hadn’t.
Ten – Best Coming-Out Moment
Kincardine and Deeside by-election, 1991
Surprisingly, my best coming-out moment wasn’t while being an out gay candidate myself (the first time I was quoted as one of only two for the Lib Dems, which I was completely certain wasn’t right, so four years later I put together the list of over two dozen myself because no-one else was doing it), but at my very first Parliamentary by-election. Being driven up to North Aberdeenshire with a coach-load from Scottish Lib Dem HQ and then staying there several days, we all had to be found places to sleep. I was spoiled: unlike many later campaigns, this wasn’t a sleeping bag on the floor, but a big actual bed, with only one other person in it, it being assumed that studenty types wouldn’t mind. Nice bloke, we’d got on well while chatting earlier in the day, and as we tucked in he warned me hesitantly, “While I’m asleep, I tend to grab onto things, but don’t worry, I’m not a homosexual.” I’m sure there were many ways I could have broken it to him more reassuringly, but given a feed line like that I couldn’t resist replying, “Don’t worry – I am.” Which is the first time I’d come out to someone while already in bed with them. He was a good Liberal and absolutely fine, so we nattered away very happily until he said something about Americans and I did it to him again: coming out as half-American, though, made him groan and roll over.
Not a sexy story in the end, then, but back in 1998 I did manage to canvass for the Alliance Party in Belfast, where my accent managed to put off both ‘sides’, when a man in a much-too-small kimono that covered very little of his chest hair and almost nothing of his thighs came to the door, and I had to concentrate hard on remembering every single word of my usually automatic spiel…
Eleven – Best photo-opportunity
Wirral South by-election,
I worked for a couple of weeks in what was going to be Labour’s last by-election gain before the first Blair landslide, and our vote holding up surprisingly well was a good omen. My favourite bit, unusually, was a press conference wheeze I came up with: somehow our mostly-detached technically-Lib Dem local-ish MP David Alton had been persuaded to turn up in support, and wanted to run on law and order. The Major Government had cut police numbers in Merseyside, and we had all the very serious statistics of exactly how many hundred they were short which, amid the blizzard of daily figures from all the campaigns, no-one would listen to. Until I took two police officer pictures (one woman, one man) from our standard artwork, blew them up on the photocopier, and the press trooped in to find the wall covered with a photogenic 236 (or whatever it was) alternating A4 police heads to illustrate the point.
It was the only one of our press conferences that I remember getting decent coverage other than the one that was meant to be our Transport Spokesperson complaining about the trains, and which he had to give via his mobile when the train he was coming on broke down and stranded all the passengers (his researcher was later cleared of putting sugar in the engine).
Twelve – Best Result (ish)
Monklands East by-election, 1994
Squeezed between Labour and the SNP, though we had a great candidate he was never going to be their next MP after John Smith. But after spending a few days helping out there, I went to Germany for a meeting of European Young Liberal Leaders. As Chair of the Liberal Democrat Youth and Students (England and Wales) I was there, as was the Chair of the Scottish Young Liberal Democrats, and in those pre-Internet boom days we tuned in to British Armed Forces Radio first thing on the morning after polling day. We came down to breakfast arm in arm and grinning ear to ear. ‘Another great by-election victory?’ the others asked us. “No, we lost our deposit – but we went up to third and beat the Tories!”
Baker’s Dozen – Best Order and Dodgiest Opinion Poll
Eastleigh by-election, 1994
Possibly my favourite by-election memory was striding one morning into the local bakery to utter the unusual but satisfying words, “Could I have two hundred doughnuts, please?” They offered ridiculous discounts for multiple buys, so that, say, one doughnut might be 85p, but you’d get three for £2, or ten for £5, with escalating discounts the more you bought. These were for the cheery campaign HQ and all the hundreds of volunteers rather than personal consumption, but the huge stack of boxes had the advantage of obscuring the rosette that might have put off the opinion pollster who then stopped me on the street. “Oh no,” I remember saying, “I wouldn’t like that Tony Blair as Labour Leader. Margaret Beckett’s the one you want, she’ll be very popular, and John Prescott, he’s a sensible man.”
Since then, I’ve always taken opinion polls – and what people tell you on the doorstep – with just a pinch of icing sugar.
You’d think I’d have lots of stories from the two times I was a Parliamentary candidate myself, and I probably do somewhere, but they’re buried deep in a part of my memory labelled ‘long slog’. My first time, when I was the youngest candidate in the region, I did at least get some media attention, partly because the media wanted someone under thirty and I was it. The other reason was that the Lib Dems’ Regional Media Co-ordinator put me up for radio shows and other places where a candidate might be asked Very Hard Questions (actually, that reminds me of my debates in that campaign, but they’d need a post all of their own) because she claimed that there were only two Lib Dem candidates in the region that she trusted to know all our policies and put them across effectively, and she kept putting my name forward instead of the other one – because he was David Rendel and he had better things to do, like winning his seat, while I could do far more good for the party as a spokesperson than tramping round a Labour-Tory marginal in which I was inevitably dead meat.
If only someone had done a similar assessment for where to put Natalie Bennett!
Labels: By-elections, Gay, Liberal Democrats, Personal, The Golden Dozen
Friday, March 01, 2013
Eastleigh – Proof There’s No Such Thing As a Perfect Storm
In short…
1 Partial winners: the Liberal Democrats, UKIP
2 Total losers: the Conservatives, the Labour Party, the entire British media
3 Voters trust or like none of the above
4 Hard work and authenticity can still win
5 All politics is local. Thank fuck.
1 With a neo-fascist party on the rise, will British politics get nastier and more illiberal?
2 Will the entire UK media change their narrative about the Lib Dems now? Or will they just hold up two fingers to the voters?
…It’s the two fingers, isn’t it?
Just the other day, I put yesterday’s by-election in the context of the previous one in 1994. So how did the comparison go? Last time, the incumbents (Conservative) was pushed into third place, while the main challengers (Lib Dems) won – now Lib Dem and Tory starting points are reversed, the Lib Dem incumbents were punished by staying in first place and the Tory main challengers soared from second to third. Again.
Last time, Labour began the process of Tony Blair’s coronation by leaping from third place to second and gaining 28% of the vote, showing they were on their way to government. Ed Miliband’s Labour Party leapt from third place to fourth and less than 10%, showing he’s on his way down the toilet.
And after the most sustained, hysterical venom from the entire British media against any party in the by-election history, they showed that they still don’t quite have the power they thought they have, but that hysterical venom does help the rise of neo-fascist parties.
One thing that, surprise, none of the headlines tell you this morning is that the entire British media establishment believed, wanted and actively did all their power to ensure that the Liberal Democrats were dead, and they all failed. Instead, the only mention is an outraged ‘How can they still have won?’
I’ve been an active and detailed watcher of UK Parliamentary by-elections ever since the Lib Dems were formed in 1988. The sheer, destructive hailstorm of hate in the last week – was it five screaming front-page attacks on the Lib Dems in a row from the Daily Hate Mail alone? – is literally unprecedented. There are no Lib Dem-supporting media outlets, and even the BBC (terrified after its own failings into becoming identikit hatemongers) lost all sense of proportion.
And it didn’t work.
Out of hate for Liberalism, out of fear of Leveson, out of outrage that so many voters had the temerity not to listen to them last time – in their hunger to pervert the course of this by-election, the establishment was utterly determined that the Lib Dems must be destroyed and the voters put back in their box.
The sane reaction would be for the media narrative about the Lib Dems to have to change.
The almost certain actual reaction is that, now confronted with the fact of their impotence even when at their most brutal and determined, throwing everything at us with a following wind behind them – the media will hate and fear both the Liberal Democrats and the voters even more.
So expect ever-greater hysteria and evil authoritarianism.
Paddy Ashdown, as ever, has wise words: “Don’t panic, Lib Dems. All this manure just makes us grow stronger” goes into the pain, the problems and the press’ ravenous feeding frenzy. Millennium Dome, Elephant puts things in perspective, too.
Congratulations to Mike Thornton – reassuringly calm, local, knowing his stuff and answering questions honestly, unspun and without a hint of shrill hysteria… Yet, against the two most virulently far-right challengers in by-election memory, sticking quietly to Liberal guns on issues like equal marriage. He was exactly what the Lib Dems in Eastleigh, and the voters, needed for what Jonathan Wallace has termed this morning “The Lib Dems’ Battle of Stalingrad”. And congratulations to all the valiant volunteers carrying out that street by street battle.
Without Mike and all the troops, the hurricane of hate would surely have consumed us. With them, it showed that even a “perfect storm” isn’t perfect. While the Tories and UKIP competed to see who could make Britain the littlest by excluding the most people from it – gays, ethnic minorities, Europe, poor people, people who go to state schools, immigrants – and Labour struggled and fell short of being the One-Tenth-of-a-Nation party, at least the Liberal Democrats felt authentically British: complaining about the storm, but still going out in all weathers and not letting it stop them.
All this shows that the Liberal Democrats can’t be assumed to be a write-off at the next election, holding a by-election in the depths of mid-term blues and with the full fury of the establishment bent on annihilating us, aided by terrible real news stories. Even the Daily Telegraph – shellshocked and angry that their attempt to bludgeon the voters into obedience failed – this morning admits, calling UKIP the hammer of the Tories and us the anvil (I wonder if the Torygraph’s Deputy Political Editor actually knows what happens, respectively, to the anvil and hammer?):
The last few weeks have seen the first concerted use – allied to all the local depth – of the new Liberal Democrat message:
Is this message right?
If it is, is it our priority?
Is it sufficient?
Will it help to enthuse – or even win back – any of the idealists we need to do all that hard work?
I’ll return with the answers to such questions (not all of which are “No”, not all of which are “Yes”; I can split the difference, too) and more answers on what the Lib Dems’ core message should be next week.
Update: So, from the following week, What the Lib Dems Stand For Part 1 and What the Lib Dems Stand For Part 2 – 2013.
There’s no doubt about what UKIP, the party with the clearest messaging, stands for. Three things, two the obvious vileness of neo-fascists, one less specific and more tempting. Between them, they show UKIP’s appeal particularly to some former Tory and some former Lib Dem voters.
UKIP’s explicit priorities: The Double Racism. No to Europe! No to immigrants!
Yes, we know what you mean.
UKIP’s handy new market opportunity: the anti-politics, ‘none of the above’ protest.
It’s clear that the Twenty-First Century has created one opportunity, with angry old privileged people feeling left behind now that everyone else is getting uppity and equal (hence other policy priorities of kicking the gays back down, Mr Farage’s incredible misogynistic sneering, and so on). Even Andrew Neil – so utterly shit as a host of the BBC By-election Special that he made you pine for a pompous but competent Dimbleby – managed to expose UKIP’s man last night by asking “Why run so hard on immigration with so few immigrants in Eastleigh?” and leaving him floundering for any answer than wasn’t the obvious ‘Because we’re racists’. It’s unfortunately clear that, though in most respects the Lib Dems are UKIP’s polar opposite, for the visceral anti-establishment voter the Lib Dems’ transformation into a dull, respectable governing party has opened the other flank – though I doubt very much if UKIP would have succeeded in peeling votes equally from Tories and Lib Dems yesterday were it not for the hailstorm of hate. But then, hate breeds hatemongers.
The media establishment will love to talk up UKIP, and have been doing nothing but all day. They’re the establishment’s wet dream of an ‘anti-establishment’ party: viciously prejudiced, nearly all white, male defenders of privilege. It’s like a party of newspaper editors. The Labour Party has already shown its usual commitment to principle by rushing to the far, far right of the Coalition, again, with John Denham now promising Labour will shameless pander to racism on immigration to compete with UKIP as a trailer for his Leader’s next cynical courting of the crumbling BNP vote in the hope that those ex-Labour voters won’t go to the middle-class purples.
All this mixture of gloating viciousness and craven pandering will, too, unfortunately move British politics in a more nasty and authoritarian direction, but UKIP really isn’t worth it. I’d assumed before the last election that if Mr Cameron won, UKIP would do very well. With the LiberaTory Coalition handing him a brilliant opportunity to get the anti-politics vote as well as the disgruntled Right, I expected UKIP to be regularly scoring 20+% in the polls – as Lib Dems always did against a Tory Government in dire straits – and to take several seats from the Conservatives in by-elections. To look at their adoring press coverage and the craven panic of both Labour and Tories, you’d think that was where they are. Instead, they’ve been underperforming to an amazing degree – something that shows the voters aren’t as stupid or as nasty as the whole media establishment likes to think they are.
Can you believe that UKIP’s greatest ‘success’ so far is to still be on just 20+% in their best ever by-election, and still never to have won one? Even George Galloway’s taken more people in than that. Can you believe that, with all the massively orchestrated press hyperbole, UKIP still struggles to break double figures in the opinion polls? If they’re supposed to be the ‘replacement’ for the Lib Dems as the party that makes the sort of protests the establishment likes to hear, just imagine if in the ’80s, ’90s or ’00s the best the Lib Dems ever managed was squeaking a second place but never winning, squeaking to 10% but never staying there, not having a single MP, not having more than forty-three elected local councillors in the entire UK – rather than four thousand? Imagine what the media would have said about that as a bandwagon, and you’ll see how much, much further down UKIP would be without the heavy support given by the media establishment’s bias to neo-fascism.
What can you say? It’s as bad as it could possibly be for them. If they couldn’t win yesterday, then when? As the Daily Mash puts it:
And then, despite being identical to a UKIP candidate in all her views, she lost even to them when UKIP managed to find a candidate who seemed more competent. Yes – UKIP seemed more competent and less insanely illiberal than the Tory.
And despite the Tory being so far from Mr Cameron’s position that it’s hard to believe they’re in the same party, the wet dream candidate of the Tory Right who believe that all the electorate needs is shrill attacks on gays, ethnic minorities, Europe, immigrants, poor people, state schools and so on to come to the Tories in droves but which actually drives them away, all of which reason suggests Mr Cameron’s attempts to detoxify his party are right and the Right are wrong… Despite all of that, all the narrative is that poor Mr Cameron is in trouble and the Tories, totally rejected with their most extreme candidate in recent by-election memory, were beaten only because they weren’t extreme enough.
This proves how stupid Mr Cameron was to pander to his extremists on Europe and other issues – feeding them only makes them hungrier. Making the Tories sound like UKIP only makes UKIP seem a respectable choice – and choosing a Tory less competent than UKIP’s choice suicidal. And, of course, it proves again that the media establishment love to talk up neo-fascism and hate not just Liberalism but reality.
Oh dear. Poor Ed. Again. Eastleigh is only the latest result to put the Mili into humiliation.
Only a few weeks ago, Labour were talking of Eastleigh as a test for Mr Miliband’s “One Nation” idea. Failed. When Tony Blair was headed into government he went from third to second here – now Labour goes from third to fourth, just scraping a third of Blair’s vote share (but not scraping into even double figures).
But then, everyone always knew John O’Farrell would have a Weak Ending. It’s only by being awarded points for turning up that he rises above the level of the Tory hustings-dodger as a terrible, incompetent, foot-in-mouth candidate.
Labour had two messages last night:
Five Lessons From Eastleigh:
1 Partial winners: the Liberal Democrats, UKIP
2 Total losers: the Conservatives, the Labour Party, the entire British media
3 Voters trust or like none of the above
4 Hard work and authenticity can still win
5 All politics is local. Thank fuck.
Two Questions After Eastleigh:
1 With a neo-fascist party on the rise, will British politics get nastier and more illiberal?
2 Will the entire UK media change their narrative about the Lib Dems now? Or will they just hold up two fingers to the voters?
…It’s the two fingers, isn’t it?
Just the other day, I put yesterday’s by-election in the context of the previous one in 1994. So how did the comparison go? Last time, the incumbents (Conservative) was pushed into third place, while the main challengers (Lib Dems) won – now Lib Dem and Tory starting points are reversed, the Lib Dem incumbents were punished by staying in first place and the Tory main challengers soared from second to third. Again.
Last time, Labour began the process of Tony Blair’s coronation by leaping from third place to second and gaining 28% of the vote, showing they were on their way to government. Ed Miliband’s Labour Party leapt from third place to fourth and less than 10%, showing he’s on his way down the toilet.
And after the most sustained, hysterical venom from the entire British media against any party in the by-election history, they showed that they still don’t quite have the power they thought they have, but that hysterical venom does help the rise of neo-fascist parties.
The Biggest Loser: The Media
One thing that, surprise, none of the headlines tell you this morning is that the entire British media establishment believed, wanted and actively did all their power to ensure that the Liberal Democrats were dead, and they all failed. Instead, the only mention is an outraged ‘How can they still have won?’
I’ve been an active and detailed watcher of UK Parliamentary by-elections ever since the Lib Dems were formed in 1988. The sheer, destructive hailstorm of hate in the last week – was it five screaming front-page attacks on the Lib Dems in a row from the Daily Hate Mail alone? – is literally unprecedented. There are no Lib Dem-supporting media outlets, and even the BBC (terrified after its own failings into becoming identikit hatemongers) lost all sense of proportion.
And it didn’t work.
Out of hate for Liberalism, out of fear of Leveson, out of outrage that so many voters had the temerity not to listen to them last time – in their hunger to pervert the course of this by-election, the establishment was utterly determined that the Lib Dems must be destroyed and the voters put back in their box.
The sane reaction would be for the media narrative about the Lib Dems to have to change.
The almost certain actual reaction is that, now confronted with the fact of their impotence even when at their most brutal and determined, throwing everything at us with a following wind behind them – the media will hate and fear both the Liberal Democrats and the voters even more.
So expect ever-greater hysteria and evil authoritarianism.
Paddy Ashdown, as ever, has wise words: “Don’t panic, Lib Dems. All this manure just makes us grow stronger” goes into the pain, the problems and the press’ ravenous feeding frenzy. Millennium Dome, Elephant puts things in perspective, too.
The Main Winner: The Liberal Democrats
Congratulations to Mike Thornton – reassuringly calm, local, knowing his stuff and answering questions honestly, unspun and without a hint of shrill hysteria… Yet, against the two most virulently far-right challengers in by-election memory, sticking quietly to Liberal guns on issues like equal marriage. He was exactly what the Lib Dems in Eastleigh, and the voters, needed for what Jonathan Wallace has termed this morning “The Lib Dems’ Battle of Stalingrad”. And congratulations to all the valiant volunteers carrying out that street by street battle.
Without Mike and all the troops, the hurricane of hate would surely have consumed us. With them, it showed that even a “perfect storm” isn’t perfect. While the Tories and UKIP competed to see who could make Britain the littlest by excluding the most people from it – gays, ethnic minorities, Europe, poor people, people who go to state schools, immigrants – and Labour struggled and fell short of being the One-Tenth-of-a-Nation party, at least the Liberal Democrats felt authentically British: complaining about the storm, but still going out in all weathers and not letting it stop them.
All this shows that the Liberal Democrats can’t be assumed to be a write-off at the next election, holding a by-election in the depths of mid-term blues and with the full fury of the establishment bent on annihilating us, aided by terrible real news stories. Even the Daily Telegraph – shellshocked and angry that their attempt to bludgeon the voters into obedience failed – this morning admits, calling UKIP the hammer of the Tories and us the anvil (I wonder if the Torygraph’s Deputy Political Editor actually knows what happens, respectively, to the anvil and hammer?):
“It’s the ‘sheer bloody resilience’, as one Tory put it earlier this week. ‘They just won’t lie down and die.’When you’ve been in the wilderness for ninety years, still not being all that popular but actually being in government and getting something done is hardly going to make Liberal Democrats give up. There’s a massive relief to be had that, even under the worst possible conditions, the fall in the Lib Dem vote was limited and hard work held the seat. In future seats, we can hope for similar hard work, now given a morale boost by a slogging victory, and that neither real news stories nor the screaming hate of the establishment can repeat such force. There’s hope based on reason that this is the worst they can do to us, and we’ve withstood it. But that’s not enough. We still took a battering, though we stood up to it. There’s a strong likelihood that our anti-establishment vote is gone, leaving us competing for the much more crowded ground of dull, respectable governing parties. The good news is that this win can’t be called a protest vote, but a successful defence by Lib Dems as a governing party. The bad news is that that’s what you say when you’ve lost a shedload of what were very useful protest votes.
“Eastleigh is yet more proof of an old adage: in the event of a nuclear holocaust, all that will remain of life on earth will be cockroaches, and Lib Dem activists handing out Focus leaflets attacking the cockroaches for not being local.”
The last few weeks have seen the first concerted use – allied to all the local depth – of the new Liberal Democrat message:
“Only the Lib Dems can be trusted to build a stronger economy in a fairer society, enabling every person to get on in life.”Nick Clegg used the line when campaigning and in victory. We saw “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” on posters – something I heartily approve of, as it’s about time national messages were consistently and succinctly integrated with local campaigning. It gives the lie to those who say we won only on local issues. And it clearly reflects the party leadership’s desire to compete as a dull, respectable governing party: it’s a new – and sharper, more priority-driven – version of the Alliance’s ’80s ‘Head and the Heart’ message, saying we can split the difference between Tories and Labour and give you only the nice bits of each.
Is this message right?
If it is, is it our priority?
Is it sufficient?
Will it help to enthuse – or even win back – any of the idealists we need to do all that hard work?
I’ll return with the answers to such questions (not all of which are “No”, not all of which are “Yes”; I can split the difference, too) and more answers on what the Lib Dems’ core message should be next week.
Update: So, from the following week, What the Lib Dems Stand For Part 1 and What the Lib Dems Stand For Part 2 – 2013.
The Loser That Looks Like A Winner Because the Media Can’t Bear To Give Credit To Lib Dems: UKIP
There’s no doubt about what UKIP, the party with the clearest messaging, stands for. Three things, two the obvious vileness of neo-fascists, one less specific and more tempting. Between them, they show UKIP’s appeal particularly to some former Tory and some former Lib Dem voters.
UKIP’s explicit priorities: The Double Racism. No to Europe! No to immigrants!
Yes, we know what you mean.
UKIP’s handy new market opportunity: the anti-politics, ‘none of the above’ protest.
It’s clear that the Twenty-First Century has created one opportunity, with angry old privileged people feeling left behind now that everyone else is getting uppity and equal (hence other policy priorities of kicking the gays back down, Mr Farage’s incredible misogynistic sneering, and so on). Even Andrew Neil – so utterly shit as a host of the BBC By-election Special that he made you pine for a pompous but competent Dimbleby – managed to expose UKIP’s man last night by asking “Why run so hard on immigration with so few immigrants in Eastleigh?” and leaving him floundering for any answer than wasn’t the obvious ‘Because we’re racists’. It’s unfortunately clear that, though in most respects the Lib Dems are UKIP’s polar opposite, for the visceral anti-establishment voter the Lib Dems’ transformation into a dull, respectable governing party has opened the other flank – though I doubt very much if UKIP would have succeeded in peeling votes equally from Tories and Lib Dems yesterday were it not for the hailstorm of hate. But then, hate breeds hatemongers.
The media establishment will love to talk up UKIP, and have been doing nothing but all day. They’re the establishment’s wet dream of an ‘anti-establishment’ party: viciously prejudiced, nearly all white, male defenders of privilege. It’s like a party of newspaper editors. The Labour Party has already shown its usual commitment to principle by rushing to the far, far right of the Coalition, again, with John Denham now promising Labour will shameless pander to racism on immigration to compete with UKIP as a trailer for his Leader’s next cynical courting of the crumbling BNP vote in the hope that those ex-Labour voters won’t go to the middle-class purples.
All this mixture of gloating viciousness and craven pandering will, too, unfortunately move British politics in a more nasty and authoritarian direction, but UKIP really isn’t worth it. I’d assumed before the last election that if Mr Cameron won, UKIP would do very well. With the LiberaTory Coalition handing him a brilliant opportunity to get the anti-politics vote as well as the disgruntled Right, I expected UKIP to be regularly scoring 20+% in the polls – as Lib Dems always did against a Tory Government in dire straits – and to take several seats from the Conservatives in by-elections. To look at their adoring press coverage and the craven panic of both Labour and Tories, you’d think that was where they are. Instead, they’ve been underperforming to an amazing degree – something that shows the voters aren’t as stupid or as nasty as the whole media establishment likes to think they are.
Can you believe that UKIP’s greatest ‘success’ so far is to still be on just 20+% in their best ever by-election, and still never to have won one? Even George Galloway’s taken more people in than that. Can you believe that, with all the massively orchestrated press hyperbole, UKIP still struggles to break double figures in the opinion polls? If they’re supposed to be the ‘replacement’ for the Lib Dems as the party that makes the sort of protests the establishment likes to hear, just imagine if in the ’80s, ’90s or ’00s the best the Lib Dems ever managed was squeaking a second place but never winning, squeaking to 10% but never staying there, not having a single MP, not having more than forty-three elected local councillors in the entire UK – rather than four thousand? Imagine what the media would have said about that as a bandwagon, and you’ll see how much, much further down UKIP would be without the heavy support given by the media establishment’s bias to neo-fascism.
The Other Big Loser: The Conservative Party
What can you say? It’s as bad as it could possibly be for them. If they couldn’t win yesterday, then when? As the Daily Mash puts it:
“Tories beaten by perfect storm’ of Huhne, Rennard and nutjobs”The Conservatives chose a candidate to give their Leader the finger, a far-right ideologue who disagreed with Mr Cameron on every single issue. That, in itself, was arrogant stupidity when they needed to appeal to Lib Dem voters. And then the candidate made the implicit message that they took the seat for granted explicit with her spectacular arrogance, incompetence and snobbery, from slagging off every state school to turning her nose up at the prospect of any voter talking to her and hiding from most of the hustings. She surely was the worst mainstream party by-election candidate for at least a decade.
And then, despite being identical to a UKIP candidate in all her views, she lost even to them when UKIP managed to find a candidate who seemed more competent. Yes – UKIP seemed more competent and less insanely illiberal than the Tory.
And despite the Tory being so far from Mr Cameron’s position that it’s hard to believe they’re in the same party, the wet dream candidate of the Tory Right who believe that all the electorate needs is shrill attacks on gays, ethnic minorities, Europe, immigrants, poor people, state schools and so on to come to the Tories in droves but which actually drives them away, all of which reason suggests Mr Cameron’s attempts to detoxify his party are right and the Right are wrong… Despite all of that, all the narrative is that poor Mr Cameron is in trouble and the Tories, totally rejected with their most extreme candidate in recent by-election memory, were beaten only because they weren’t extreme enough.
This proves how stupid Mr Cameron was to pander to his extremists on Europe and other issues – feeding them only makes them hungrier. Making the Tories sound like UKIP only makes UKIP seem a respectable choice – and choosing a Tory less competent than UKIP’s choice suicidal. And, of course, it proves again that the media establishment love to talk up neo-fascism and hate not just Liberalism but reality.
The Other Other Big Loser: The Labour Party
Oh dear. Poor Ed. Again. Eastleigh is only the latest result to put the Mili into humiliation.
Only a few weeks ago, Labour were talking of Eastleigh as a test for Mr Miliband’s “One Nation” idea. Failed. When Tony Blair was headed into government he went from third to second here – now Labour goes from third to fourth, just scraping a third of Blair’s vote share (but not scraping into even double figures).
But then, everyone always knew John O’Farrell would have a Weak Ending. It’s only by being awarded points for turning up that he rises above the level of the Tory hustings-dodger as a terrible, incompetent, foot-in-mouth candidate.
Labour had two messages last night:
- They will try to be as racist as UKIP, because being as shockingly anti-immigrant as Gordon Brown’s disastrous campaign wasn’t far-right enough
- They talked to tens of thousands of people in Eastleigh, which shows they’re making contact! Though, er, it also shows that the more people hear from Labour, the less they vote for them.
- And, er, that’s it.
Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, By-elections, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Newspapers, The Golden Dozen, UKIP
Monday, February 25, 2013
Eastleigh Memories – Time To Go There and Make New Ones!
Liberal Democrats! Have you been to Eastleigh yet? There’s still time, for the most hotly-contested by-election of the decade. Remember their last by-election? The incumbents (Conservative) was pushed into third place, while the main challengers (Lib Dems) won – now Lib Dem and Tory starting points are reversed, will they meet those same expectations? Labour leapt up from third place to second with 28%, showing Tony Blair was headed to government – where is Ed Miliband headed from his third place? I spent weeks there when I was younger and fitter, and remember a few things that might encourage you…
This time round, the Liberal Democrats have an excellent local councillor as candidate, from an excellent Lib Dem local council. Mike Thornton is the candidate with the best local record – as well as fighting on national issues, field-testing the new Lib Dem slogan “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” and committed to being the 401st MP to support equal marriage. Whereas the bigots are spoilt for choice, with not just mouth-foaming minor candidates but the Tory (who disagrees on every single issue with her Prime Minister, except that they both know both their political futures depend on her winning) and, obviously, the bigot UKIP candidate threatening her are both making homophobic and xenophobic bigotry their top campaign priorities.
It’s a remarkable by-election, in that the Lib Dems have a strong local candidate, strong local issues, strong national issues (we believe in fairer taxes – the Tories don’t), and a bloody awful week of national publicity. The Tories and Labour, on the other hand, are simultaneously competing for the title of ‘Worst mainstream party candidate in a by-election since 1996’ (Jeanette Davy, South-East Staffs. She was a Lib Dem, so it’s about time one of the others won the wooden ballot paper). The Tory is an appalling snob who brays that no local school can possibly be good enough for her child, then demonstrates that no local voter is good enough for her to talk to by refusing to bother showing up for the BBC hustings. The Labour candidate is a minor comedian who says Labour supporters should “Go for it” and vote tactically for Lib Dems in seats like this – except, er, if he’s standing – and embodies the Labour Party’s Two-Minute (Thirty-Year) Hate by wishing Margaret Thatcher had been killed by terrorists.
At least George Galloway isn’t standing, having already won one by-election this Parliament and so not due to flip over to his 56th different constituency until 2015. That vile, bullying racist apologist for rapists and dictators is living proof that you can fool a lot of the people some of the time… But, after they get to know him, never more than once. UKIP with a beard and a red carpetbag.
So if you can get to Eastleigh and help (or make phone calls from your area), or donate if you can’t do either, do it today. I’m twice the age and weight I was in 1994, and have been particularly ill in the last week – but if I’m up to going out the door tomorrow or Wednesday, I aim to make it. You can read Lib Dem Voice’s or Mark Pack’s continuing reports from the campaign, and I personally recommend Liberal Youth’s “Today I Made A Difference” EastLY campaign to inspire you!
The 1992-97 Parliament was the period when I was young and healthy enough to spend more time helping out at Parliamentary by-elections than in the rest of my life put together – sixteen out of the eighteen that were held, in the days before parties took to tapping their older MPs to retire out of fear of lost seats. It was also the time when the largest number of policy motions I’d written got through Conference, for those foolish Lib Dems who believe campaigners and policy wonks can never mix (and are one Focus short of a delivery route). For some of the crucial ones, I spent weeks sleeping on people’s floors, or freezing to death hitch-hiking, or not being highly regarded by university tutors whose courses I was unaccountably absent from. Eastleigh was one of the friendliest, happiest, and didn’t have much rain. For all those reasons, I recommend going there yourself. And there was one more big attraction…
The bakery in town is my most indelible memory, which is odd, because though the smell of a bakery is one of the most wonderful in the world, I like pies and cream cakes, but have never cared for doughnuts. And yet, one morning I strode in and uttered the unusual but satisfying line, “Could I have two hundred doughnuts, please?” They offered ridiculous discounts for multiple buys, so that, say, one doughnut might be 85p, but you’d get three for £2, or ten for £5, with escalating discounts the more you bought. These were for the cheery campaign HQ and all the hundreds of volunteers rather than personal consumption, but the huge stack of boxes had the advantage of obscuring the rosette that might have put off an opinion pollster on the street. “Oh no,” I remember saying, “I wouldn’t like that Tony Blair as Labour Leader. Margaret Beckett’s the one you want, she’ll be very popular, and John Prescott, he’s a sensible man.” Since then, I’ve always taken opinion polls with just a pinch of icing sugar. Can any 2013 volunteers enlighten me as to if that baker is still there?
Eastleigh was also an excellent town for outspoken residents – much more exciting for a canvasser than shrinking violets. Last week, Boris Johnson failed to find a single Tory voter when knocking up the most Tory street in the constituency. I did rather better with Lib Dems last time I was there, but here are three canvassing experiences that stayed with me:
And finally, one word of memorial to Chris Huhne. He’s probably not a good man, and may not be a nice one. But I’m grateful to him for two things that he was good at. He was a bloody good minister – as I’ve written before, even his Tory enemies found him (far too) effective, and we should all be grateful for the hard work he did for the country and the planet as Secretary of State For Energy and Climate Change. And before then, within the Liberal Democrats, he did more than any other individual to make raising allowances and taking the lowest-paid out of tax altogether into what became our biggest priority in the last election, our biggest priority in government, and now our biggest priority in the by-election. It was briefly a Lib Dem policy in the 1990s, swiftly dropped because it cost too much. For much of the early 2000s, I was literally the lone voice on the Federal Committee calling for it – as the bit in italics in this piece forlornly demonstrates. It took a far more powerful policy wonk than me to get it on the Lib Dem agenda, and as the bits not in italics demonstrates, that was Chris. Lib Dems with gritted teeth and freezing delivery rounds will feel they have little to thank Chris for this by-election. Millions of the lowest-paid who now pay no income tax won’t know it, but they have quite a bit to thank Chris for, actually.
The 2013 Choices
This time round, the Liberal Democrats have an excellent local councillor as candidate, from an excellent Lib Dem local council. Mike Thornton is the candidate with the best local record – as well as fighting on national issues, field-testing the new Lib Dem slogan “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” and committed to being the 401st MP to support equal marriage. Whereas the bigots are spoilt for choice, with not just mouth-foaming minor candidates but the Tory (who disagrees on every single issue with her Prime Minister, except that they both know both their political futures depend on her winning) and, obviously, the bigot UKIP candidate threatening her are both making homophobic and xenophobic bigotry their top campaign priorities.
It’s a remarkable by-election, in that the Lib Dems have a strong local candidate, strong local issues, strong national issues (we believe in fairer taxes – the Tories don’t), and a bloody awful week of national publicity. The Tories and Labour, on the other hand, are simultaneously competing for the title of ‘Worst mainstream party candidate in a by-election since 1996’ (Jeanette Davy, South-East Staffs. She was a Lib Dem, so it’s about time one of the others won the wooden ballot paper). The Tory is an appalling snob who brays that no local school can possibly be good enough for her child, then demonstrates that no local voter is good enough for her to talk to by refusing to bother showing up for the BBC hustings. The Labour candidate is a minor comedian who says Labour supporters should “Go for it” and vote tactically for Lib Dems in seats like this – except, er, if he’s standing – and embodies the Labour Party’s Two-Minute (Thirty-Year) Hate by wishing Margaret Thatcher had been killed by terrorists.
At least George Galloway isn’t standing, having already won one by-election this Parliament and so not due to flip over to his 56th different constituency until 2015. That vile, bullying racist apologist for rapists and dictators is living proof that you can fool a lot of the people some of the time… But, after they get to know him, never more than once. UKIP with a beard and a red carpetbag.
So if you can get to Eastleigh and help (or make phone calls from your area), or donate if you can’t do either, do it today. I’m twice the age and weight I was in 1994, and have been particularly ill in the last week – but if I’m up to going out the door tomorrow or Wednesday, I aim to make it. You can read Lib Dem Voice’s or Mark Pack’s continuing reports from the campaign, and I personally recommend Liberal Youth’s “Today I Made A Difference” EastLY campaign to inspire you!
Eastleigh Memories of 1994
The 1992-97 Parliament was the period when I was young and healthy enough to spend more time helping out at Parliamentary by-elections than in the rest of my life put together – sixteen out of the eighteen that were held, in the days before parties took to tapping their older MPs to retire out of fear of lost seats. It was also the time when the largest number of policy motions I’d written got through Conference, for those foolish Lib Dems who believe campaigners and policy wonks can never mix (and are one Focus short of a delivery route). For some of the crucial ones, I spent weeks sleeping on people’s floors, or freezing to death hitch-hiking, or not being highly regarded by university tutors whose courses I was unaccountably absent from. Eastleigh was one of the friendliest, happiest, and didn’t have much rain. For all those reasons, I recommend going there yourself. And there was one more big attraction…
The bakery in town is my most indelible memory, which is odd, because though the smell of a bakery is one of the most wonderful in the world, I like pies and cream cakes, but have never cared for doughnuts. And yet, one morning I strode in and uttered the unusual but satisfying line, “Could I have two hundred doughnuts, please?” They offered ridiculous discounts for multiple buys, so that, say, one doughnut might be 85p, but you’d get three for £2, or ten for £5, with escalating discounts the more you bought. These were for the cheery campaign HQ and all the hundreds of volunteers rather than personal consumption, but the huge stack of boxes had the advantage of obscuring the rosette that might have put off an opinion pollster on the street. “Oh no,” I remember saying, “I wouldn’t like that Tony Blair as Labour Leader. Margaret Beckett’s the one you want, she’ll be very popular, and John Prescott, he’s a sensible man.” Since then, I’ve always taken opinion polls with just a pinch of icing sugar. Can any 2013 volunteers enlighten me as to if that baker is still there?
Eastleigh was also an excellent town for outspoken residents – much more exciting for a canvasser than shrinking violets. Last week, Boris Johnson failed to find a single Tory voter when knocking up the most Tory street in the constituency. I did rather better with Lib Dems last time I was there, but here are three canvassing experiences that stayed with me:
- The man who growled at the Lib Dems and refused to let me talk to his wife when I politely enquired, because she voted the way she was told. Canvassers, never treat a house as monolithic (even if there’s an opposition poster there – a Labour poster-bearer at a different by-election told me quietly that he was a member and had to, but was voting tactically). The second he slammed the door, the upper window sprang open, and she quickly confided: “I always tell him that for a quiet life. But I always vote for you lot.”
- The Labour voter on the next doorstep along from me who thought government should tell the workers what was good for them and hand out what they decreed when Tony Blair got in, because Labour and the unions knew best. And the Lib Dem canvasser I was tag-teaming with stoutly telling him that, no, workers should be involved in management rather than everything being from the top down, and the Labour man’s incredulous cry of “You can’t let workers make their own decisions!”
- The man one sunny day in a suburban crescent who got more and more heated about immigration while the other two canvassers did the whole rest of the street and all the neighbours stayed out one by one to listen. Never have I delivered so many calm “That isn’t true, sirs” or “I must disagree with you, sirs” at such increasing volume as the voter went from slightly racist to shouting conspiracy theories. After my final “I don’t believe we’re going to agree, sir, so I shall say good day,” he opened his gate and lumbered after me to the corner, screaming “Chidgey’s not an English name!!”
Chris Huhne
And finally, one word of memorial to Chris Huhne. He’s probably not a good man, and may not be a nice one. But I’m grateful to him for two things that he was good at. He was a bloody good minister – as I’ve written before, even his Tory enemies found him (far too) effective, and we should all be grateful for the hard work he did for the country and the planet as Secretary of State For Energy and Climate Change. And before then, within the Liberal Democrats, he did more than any other individual to make raising allowances and taking the lowest-paid out of tax altogether into what became our biggest priority in the last election, our biggest priority in government, and now our biggest priority in the by-election. It was briefly a Lib Dem policy in the 1990s, swiftly dropped because it cost too much. For much of the early 2000s, I was literally the lone voice on the Federal Committee calling for it – as the bit in italics in this piece forlornly demonstrates. It took a far more powerful policy wonk than me to get it on the Lib Dem agenda, and as the bits not in italics demonstrates, that was Chris. Lib Dems with gritted teeth and freezing delivery rounds will feel they have little to thank Chris for this by-election. Millions of the lowest-paid who now pay no income tax won’t know it, but they have quite a bit to thank Chris for, actually.
Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, By-elections, Conservatives, Gay, History, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Liberal Youth, Personal, Polls, Tax
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Blogging, Gambling and the Perils of Delivering Leaflets
Today there’s an exciting all-day meeting of the Liberal Democrats’ Federal Policy Committee, so there’s just time to say ‘Hooray!’ for this being the first anniversary of my taking up blogging. A day crammed with scattergun policy detail seems curiously appropriate, then, though my participation in our early discussion of the next Manifesto may be a little limited: no papers have been circulated, so it’ll all be on the projector and I’m currently blind as a bat. Before I go, though, I’ve noticed the Lib Dem blogosphere sizzling with two issues in the last few days – gambling and letterboxes.
On gambling, I’ll join the blogging consensus of Stephen Tall and Iain Sharpe; I can’t see myself ever entering a casino (even with our elephant’s James Bond fixation), but the Liberal Democrats seem to have been needlessly nannyish over them. It’s not the first time; I remember Andrew Stunell chiding me years ago over the unpopularity of my stance on the monarchy, and my retort that he wanted to ban the National Lottery, and that would wind up far more people on a weekly basis. I like Don Foster, but seem to have a habit of disagreeing with him; I like Blackpool too, for all its shabby charms (well, mainly for the Doctor Who exhibition and fond family holiday memories), and can’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to build a ginormous casino if they want one. If there’s a risk of addiction, by all means regulate them, as you would with any addictive substance. But prohibition? Nah. Let people and communities make their own choices, and if it’s your view that a choice is wrong, their own mistakes.
With such a libertarian strand around the blogosphere, I have to admit I was a little surprised at the tide of (occasionally tongue-in-cheek) support for interfering in people’s homes. No, not sex this time, but the idea that the state should go round micro-managing people’s letterboxes. I’m as fond of Chris Young’s song as anyone else (haven’t seen him for years; wonder how he is?), but while I’m all for regulation of, say, energy-saving standards in new build, I really don’t think ‘Ooh, that caught my fingers once’ is a sufficiently major issue of public policy to unleash an army of bureaucrats with rulers. So, Paul, Stephen, Peter, er, ‘Action’ and all, sorry, but I won’t sign the petition.
Besides, though I’ve had many bruised knuckles over the years, letterboxes are only about the fifth nastiest hazard to FOCUS (make sure you stick ‘Green Action’ on every leaflet) deliverers. What about confusing road layouts so you get lost and tire yourself out – of all the routes I’ve delivered up and down the country, the worst numbering in Britain still remains the Offerton estate, five minutes’ walk from my parents’ house – or those great long walks up very narrow gardens, separated by fences, so you’re knackered after just a few doors within feet of each other? Should we have a petition for subsidiary gates in all walls and fences that stretch more than five metres? And what about dogs – oh, I could tell you about dogs. The voter in the Christchurch by-election who agreed to take a full-sized stakeboard for his corner house facing right down a busy road, because I had the presence of mind to request it when his dog’s teeth were embedded in my jeans? Or the scar I still have on the other leg nearly a decade after an unleashed dog bounded out to bite me for delivering a leaflet in Taunton (yes, I dragged it, on my leg, up as far as the door to make sure I could pop the FOCUS through before getting away)? Or the most miserable delivering experience I’ve ever had, slopping round Islwyn in torrential rain, delivering until not only had the highlighter pen come up my map, but the print on the map itself, and the leaflets were now not coming away from the bundle in sheets but in thick clumps of papier-maché? Twenty-four hours in that town, and not a moment when I was dry… Or, of course, altercations with voters, the most vivid memories still being by-elections like Eastleigh – the foaming anti-immigrationist who, after I’d pointed out the factual inaccuracies with or politely agreed to differ on every single thing he’d said, ended up howling down the road after me “Chidgey?! That’s not an English name!” – or Christchurch, where after one dispiritingly Tory street, Diana Maddock listened to the bad canvassing news with a calm “They’re all fascists, you know. I hope they’re going to vote for me.” But what made up for it was not banning them, but the tiny old woman who confidentially disclosed, “Well, I’ve always voted Tory…” then seizing me and shaking me as she cried “But you’ve got to get the bastards out!” And that we did, of course.
The answer, dear Lib Dem, is to grin and bear it, and to climb every tower block ’til you win your seat. Not take a saw to every voter’s door, even in fun, and however much you want to do it.
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Gambling
On gambling, I’ll join the blogging consensus of Stephen Tall and Iain Sharpe; I can’t see myself ever entering a casino (even with our elephant’s James Bond fixation), but the Liberal Democrats seem to have been needlessly nannyish over them. It’s not the first time; I remember Andrew Stunell chiding me years ago over the unpopularity of my stance on the monarchy, and my retort that he wanted to ban the National Lottery, and that would wind up far more people on a weekly basis. I like Don Foster, but seem to have a habit of disagreeing with him; I like Blackpool too, for all its shabby charms (well, mainly for the Doctor Who exhibition and fond family holiday memories), and can’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to build a ginormous casino if they want one. If there’s a risk of addiction, by all means regulate them, as you would with any addictive substance. But prohibition? Nah. Let people and communities make their own choices, and if it’s your view that a choice is wrong, their own mistakes.
Letterboxes and other Election Hazards
With such a libertarian strand around the blogosphere, I have to admit I was a little surprised at the tide of (occasionally tongue-in-cheek) support for interfering in people’s homes. No, not sex this time, but the idea that the state should go round micro-managing people’s letterboxes. I’m as fond of Chris Young’s song as anyone else (haven’t seen him for years; wonder how he is?), but while I’m all for regulation of, say, energy-saving standards in new build, I really don’t think ‘Ooh, that caught my fingers once’ is a sufficiently major issue of public policy to unleash an army of bureaucrats with rulers. So, Paul, Stephen, Peter, er, ‘Action’ and all, sorry, but I won’t sign the petition.
Besides, though I’ve had many bruised knuckles over the years, letterboxes are only about the fifth nastiest hazard to FOCUS (make sure you stick ‘Green Action’ on every leaflet) deliverers. What about confusing road layouts so you get lost and tire yourself out – of all the routes I’ve delivered up and down the country, the worst numbering in Britain still remains the Offerton estate, five minutes’ walk from my parents’ house – or those great long walks up very narrow gardens, separated by fences, so you’re knackered after just a few doors within feet of each other? Should we have a petition for subsidiary gates in all walls and fences that stretch more than five metres? And what about dogs – oh, I could tell you about dogs. The voter in the Christchurch by-election who agreed to take a full-sized stakeboard for his corner house facing right down a busy road, because I had the presence of mind to request it when his dog’s teeth were embedded in my jeans? Or the scar I still have on the other leg nearly a decade after an unleashed dog bounded out to bite me for delivering a leaflet in Taunton (yes, I dragged it, on my leg, up as far as the door to make sure I could pop the FOCUS through before getting away)? Or the most miserable delivering experience I’ve ever had, slopping round Islwyn in torrential rain, delivering until not only had the highlighter pen come up my map, but the print on the map itself, and the leaflets were now not coming away from the bundle in sheets but in thick clumps of papier-maché? Twenty-four hours in that town, and not a moment when I was dry… Or, of course, altercations with voters, the most vivid memories still being by-elections like Eastleigh – the foaming anti-immigrationist who, after I’d pointed out the factual inaccuracies with or politely agreed to differ on every single thing he’d said, ended up howling down the road after me “Chidgey?! That’s not an English name!” – or Christchurch, where after one dispiritingly Tory street, Diana Maddock listened to the bad canvassing news with a calm “They’re all fascists, you know. I hope they’re going to vote for me.” But what made up for it was not banning them, but the tiny old woman who confidentially disclosed, “Well, I’ve always voted Tory…” then seizing me and shaking me as she cried “But you’ve got to get the bastards out!” And that we did, of course.
The answer, dear Lib Dem, is to grin and bear it, and to climb every tower block ’til you win your seat. Not take a saw to every voter’s door, even in fun, and however much you want to do it.
Labels: By-elections, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Liberal Democrats, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Personal
