Opposition is not ‘mission impossible’

During ‘Conference Season’ the political rhetoric is dialled up to 13, as party leaders, surrounded by their own supporters, make bold policy announcements that ‘tickle the tummy’ of the faithful.

The Lib Dems launched their conference with policy pronouncements on gay marriage and increasing the tax threshold to £12,500. Nick Clegg gave passionate defence of the Human Rights Act. The delegate’s tummies were duly tickled.

It was odd therefore that Labour decided to kick off their conference with an announcement that, if elected, they would reduce tuition fees to £6000. Clearly the tuition fees debacle was a disaster for the Liberal Democrats (although I do not believe it will be a disaster for students) and it is sensible for Labour to highlight the difference.

The policy though was the political equivalent of a wet fish, and a massive let down for student supporters.

Labour, who last year voted wholeheartedly against the tuition fee proposals whilst arguing for a graduate tax, have now endorsed the coalition policy whilst suggesting that the top level of fees need to come down a bit.

The announcement is underwhelming in the extreme. Labour has moved from introducing fees, to increasing fees, to being completely against fees to now favouring a reduction in fees.

Opposition should allow a party to come up with eye catching policy that will encourage people, beyond their base, to vote for them. Whilst the faithful, and the wider electorate, would not have been expecting a full blown manifesto, Labour have not even located the political tummy, let alone tickled it.

A Whole New World

First off, I would like to say a big thank you to everyone in Ashford, Tenterden and the villages who voted for me at the 2010 General Election. Whilst I did not win I was delighted to move up from third place in 2005 to second behind the Conservatives. Thanks to your 12,581 votes the Liberal Democrats actually achieved a swing from the Conservatives of 2.3%

Post election, we appear to have entered a ‘brave new world’ in British politics. The formation of the first peacetime coalition government since the days of Lloyd George is something that will delight, divide, annoy and frustrate many across the political spectrum.

In Ashford, I encouraged tactical voting as the best way to challenge Conservative dominance of the seat. Many people who may have voted Labour, Green or UKIP will feel annoyed that their tactical vote did not produce the result they wanted.

Like the general public I could never have predicted the election result or the result of negotiations. Neither a ‘coalition of the defeated’ nor a Conservative minority administration would have given the country a stable or strong government.

I remember Thatcherism and extortionate interest rates. More recently I also remember the steady erosion of civil liberties and target driven politics of New Labour. The prospect of a coalition with either party was galling. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have made a decision that may lose the party millions of votes. The decision though is grounded in the practicalities of the situation faced.

One of the most encouraging pronouncements by the new coalition government is the promise of a referendum on the AV electoral system and the promise of equalising constituencies. AV is not a proportional system but it does do away with the need for anyone to vote tactically.

Ashford has nearly 83,000 electors – despite losing 4,000 electors due to boundary changes. Some Northern seats, in contrast, have little over 50,000 electors. It was virtually impossible, for any party, to deliver leaflets across a constituency that can take more than 45 minutes to drive from one end to the next (although we did manage more than 100,000).

Before any of the above happens we will have local elections in May 2011 and European elections the following year. The constituency will remain enormous. We will be challenging the Conservatives in every seat that they hold. There may be a coalition nationally but competition remains fierce locally.

Campaigning to win to Ashford

A sentence often uttered by political commentators at election time is that you should take all opinion polls with a large pinch of salt. Any poll that promotes their candidate or party is strongly pushed; any poll that makes for bad reading is often disregarded. This is why the ‘poll of polls’ is so important. Polling organisations use so many different methods; telephone, email, face to face – and they use different sample sizes from 1002 up to 2504 (the odd numbers are often to help with rounding). Therefore, combining all the polls and taking an average generally gives you a semi decent guide of how things might turn out.

So, clearly, I’m chuffed to bits that Nick Clegg has come out of the second debate with extremely strong readings. I feared, regardless of the debate, that having built Nick Clegg up over the last week, he was destined for a fall. That fall did not happen. Out of five ‘instant polls’ Clegg won three and came second in two. As an average Nick Clegg was tied with David Cameron; both men were clearly ahead of Brown. Brown did Ok to be fair, he couldn’t do much worse, but the sustained Lib Dem bounce is important because the first voters will do just that, vote, in a matter of days. The postal vote means that people will be voting very shortly and, if they are in any way swayed by the media narrative, the Liberal Democrats are set for a big boost.

Regarding Ashford in particular, we have 10,000 postal voters, more than a sixth of the voting electorate. We’ve delivered a personal letter to many of them and our election address (a free leaflet delivered by Royal Mail) is set to arrive the day before postal votes arrive (I have not rigged this by the way, for whatever reason the Royal Mail have decided to send my leaflets last, after the Greens, Conservative and Labour parties).

I’ve also had a stroke of luck with the local media. I’ve been stuck in the US on business this week thanks to an Icelandic volcano. This event, and my regular conversations with one of the leading local journalists, has meant I received seven pages of coverage this week and took the front page.

Volunteers are flooding in, posters are being erected all over the constituency, I’ve got two solid weeks of meeting and greeting. The gap is large but I am fighting this election to win. I’m looking to cause one of the greatest electoral defeats in modern times – can we do it? – Yes, we can.

Hello, I’d like to be your MP, don’t talk to me…

Following a very successful Lib Dem Conference I’ve joined and been helping the Facebook campaign to have the digital economy bill debated. I won’t list what the digital economy bill is or indeed what it means but, in essence, I and many more have been pressed to contact our MP to ask him or her to give the bill proper scrutiny.

As I’m campaigning against Damian Green I don’t often have a need to contact him as a constituent. First port of call for me (and many millions of voters) was to visit the local MPs website. Unfortunately he no longer can be contacted via his website – http://bit.ly/9Os9mg – oddly there is no number, email or alternative website.

In the end I contacted Damian via www.writetothem.com/ – I wonder though how many people know about www.writetothem.com/ and how many people have failed to make proper contact with their local MP.

The perils of the long campaign…

The General Election road show, particularly for those involved as a campaigner or candidate, began in earnest in January 2010. Received wisdom is that the election date will be Thursday May 6th 2010. That’s 18 weeks of campaigning!

18 weeks means anything and everything can happen. 18 weeks means every comment is scrutinised, reported and discarded. 18 weeks means the polls will narrow widen and often baffle.

Some people will vote tribally, some people will vote based on their own local circumstances and some people will vote based on how much moisturiser David Cameron applies during the leader’s debate.

With at least another 8 weeks to go some Conservatives have already given up  www.tinyurl.com/toryshambles

As a Liberal Democrat looking to unseat a Conservative MP I’d be delighted if the Conservatives continued to have a ‘disaster of a campaign.’ The most telling comment though by one of their ‘leading lobbyists’ Peter Bingle is that David Cameron should be leading the Conservatives to ‘an inevitable election victory.’

What rubbish. If election victories were inevitable then nobody would bother voting.

You don’t win elections with money, marketing and moisturiser. There are 8 weeks to go and all is still to play for.

The Politics of Planning

There is a temptation, when the political tide might not be with you, to imagine that there is a conspiracy afoot to prevent you reaching your aims and objectives.

Locally there is a campaign to prevent a school farm from being moved and subsequently built on. The County Council has admitted publically that they do not have an alternative site or indeed any funds to move the farm. They have also admitted that they need to build on the site because they need the money (the County Council own the land).

There is massive opposition to the plans (and a similar campaign was successfully fought a few years ago) and yet objection numbers are low because objections were called for from between December 18th and January 10th – the exact time when the majority of objectors (i.e. parents of the school) would be away. I’ve written to the planning committee but my words may never be heard as I have objected outside of the consultation period.

So, thanks to the power of the internet, I have reproduced my letter below – the planning officers should not report it – but they might if enough copy, paste and send the letter below to planning.enquiries@ashford.gov.uk

Sir/Madam,

I am writing to object to the proposed outline planning permission for 25 dwellings to the rear of The North School, Essella Road, Ashford, Kent, TN24 8AL.

I appreciate that comments were required by January 10th but I hope that my comments can at least be noted and reported at the planning authority.

I do have a slight issue with consultation and comments being asked for between December 16th and January 10th – the exact period when the vast majority of likely objectors i.e. the parents of children at the school, would be away from the school area (with the snow making this even more likely).

My principle objections relate to the issue of increased car parking in Essella Road and that the land is unsuitable for the proposed use (in that it is currently used as one of the few ‘open’ farms in Kent). The loss of this local amenity would have an extremely negative impact on the local area – I appreciate that Kent County Council have indicated that they will try to relocate the farm when funds allow but even a temporary loss of this local amenity will deprive many children (and adults) from access to the countryside from within a town centre setting.

Having recently attended one of Ashford Borough Council’s Urban Sites and Infrastructure Development Presentations (and where the proposed 31,000 new dwellings might be sited) I struggle to see where a future farm could be located that is still within the Ashford town area.

Thank you,

Reacting to the Minutiae

Harold Wilson said that a week is a long time in politics. With the ever changing financial crisis last year Gordon Brown reportedly reworked the phrase to ‘an hour is a long time in politics.’ You can see his point. 24 hour news, blogs, tweets, rss feeds pushing breaking news to smart phone devices the world over, EVERYTHING can seemingly change in 60 minutes.

For those of us interested in politics viewing the failed Hoon and Hewitt coup last week meant that each passing hour felt very long indeed.

The newspaper commentators, the bloggers, the tweeters and so many others concluded that Labour had committed electoral suicide. Their admittedly slim chances of holding on to power had now evaporated.

A few days later an ICM poll saw Labour lose one point to ‘others’ whilst the Tories and Lib Dem’s stayed the same. The electoral suicide was no such thing. The narrative changed. The Labour base was now hardening. Labour were concentrating on their base (no we are not, declared Lord Mandelson – “we must broaden our appeal.”)

No doubt there will be further slip-ups and successes by all parties in the run up to the election – if the Tories had fallen by a point then it would be due to Cameron’s ‘bungle’ on marriage tax breaks, had the Lib Dem’s gone up a point or two it would be because he performed well toward the ‘mumsnet’ crowd.

Political anoraks like to study the minutiae of political events and extrapolate these events to movements in the polls. These are spurious correlations. Most of the general public are vaguely aware of what is happening in the political sphere (and most are already ‘sick of it’ after the news programmes announced that the ‘long general election battle’ started last week).

Now, a series of TV debates watched by 10 million people, that’s not political minutiae and that, could certainly be a game changer.

Tis the season to be jolly?

It’s been a somewhat depressing year for politics. Who would have thought that we’d be looking back at Northern Rock’s collapse and musing ‘those were the good old days?’ Who would have thought that our MPs would be on the rack, not defending political policies, but expense claims for carrier bags and second homes? Finally, who would have thought that the international community would blow their ‘last chance to save the planet’ at Copenhagen with a fudged agreement that would make any confectioner proud (Ok, I’ll grant you that last one was always quite likely).

2010 is not expected to bring with it much cheer. Whilst the turn of the year is normally one of renewal and resolution even the most rose tinted be-speckled commentator knows that 2010 means dealing with considerable economic, political and environmental disasters (as well as awful, ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq).

At Christmas there are always a slew of Grumpy Old Men/Women programmes complaining that every aspect of the Holiday Season is dreadful and that nobody ever has a good time. Everyone is overworked and underpaid, nobody gets on with their family and there’s always too much/too little food/telly repeats/crowded shops etc.  I even had one friend bemoan that I’d sent 500 Christmas Cards and it would have been far better for me to email people instead.

Christmas though is a time for escapism. For a couple of days at least I hope you can all enjoy some time off, reconnect with old friends and enjoy Christmas cards from far and wide. Happy Christmas everyone – have a great end to 2009 and all the very best for 2010!

A change is not always as good as a rest

I struggled with the title for my blog this week – I knew what I wanted to write about, parliamentary change, new MPs and the vast turnaround in personnel that is expected on May 6th 2010, but how do you summarise that in a few words? I decided on ‘a change is not always as good as a rest’ because the Oxford Proverb Dictionary defines ‘a change is as good as a rest’ as ‘to mean that a change of job/work is as good as a rest/holiday.’ May 6th 2010 will see a lot of change in MP personnel, but, based on my experiences this week, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are many rubbish MPs out there and there are a lot of very good parliamentary candidates who would make very good MPs – but there is an underlying media narrative that all politicians are bad and that all established party candidates or contenders should be punished. There is plenty of talk of UKIP, The Greens and independents getting their highest vote share ever (though not necessarily electing any MPs) – this is crucial as the more independents there are the higher the likelihood of a split vote (and the possibility of a rotten MP retaining a seat).

On Friday I attended a parliamentary training session hosted by DODS, the publisher of political publications. Candidates from all political parties were invited, including independents.

Some candidates were nothing short of dreadful. They could not speak to an audience, they were unable to put together a concise argument and some appeared to simply sulk when a guest speaker tore apart their arguments (guest speakers included ex MPs, economic gurus and political pollsters). More often than not it was the independent and minor party candidates that fell into the dreadful candidate category.

The majority of the great voting public will not have the chance to scrutinise all of the candidates that stand in their constituency. For the fifty or so people that read this blog there will be thousands, even in Ashford, that do not know me from Adam.

My hope is that the internet and the local press will expose the failings of some fringe candidates and voters can distinguish between the real alternative candidates and those that just seem to be involved because they hate the political process.

National Petition hand-in

Tomorrow I’ll be one of six speakers at The Sheltered Housing UK Rally and National Petition hand-in on 7 December. Whilst I’d normally ‘blog’ here I thought you might instead be interested in what I’m saying tomorrow!

“First of all, an enormous thank you to all for being here today. The message to the government and to local authorities across the country could not be clearer – to those authorities who have removed wardens already, we will continue to fight your decision every step of the way, to those authorities debating, discussing or even considering warden removal, get ready for one hell of a fight.

I had the pleasure last week of meeting with a group of local residents that still currently enjoy a permanent warden. Their situation though is under review and it is likely that their permanent warden will soon be a thing of the past.

They explained to me some of the ways that replacing a permanent warden with a floating warden would impact on their lives.

From the most serious issue of a resident falling and unable to contact anyone through to the seemingly mundane issue of who organises the rota of the spare accommodation on site, removing a permanent warden will have such a major impact on residents quality of life that it staggers me how any elected official with the shred of a conscience could willingly make this decision.

A society is judged by the way that it treats the most vulnerable in that society – the situation that we find ourselves in is a disgrace and we must fight it at all costs!”