As I blogged about a few days ago, the Labour Party in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is attacking the Conservative candidate for opposing “making foreign nationals carry an ID card”. As I said then,

The use of the word “foreign” there seems to come with some rather unpleasant overtones in this context, the implication being that ‘ooh, foreigners - they’re terribly nasty aren’t they - so surely you can’t be against keeping tabs on them now, can you?’

But - as Alex has reminded me - there’s more to this than that. Because, you see, making foreign nationals carry an ID card hasn’t until now been Labour policy. Indeed, as the Home Office’s own website says at the time of writing:

Will it be compulsory to carry a card?
No.

That’s pretty clear really, isn’t it?

So what does this all mean?

One explanation of course is that Labour have got so desparate their leaflets are departing from the script and attacking other candidates for views that actually the Labour Party itself holds. Perish the thought.

The alternative? Well, that Labour have used the by-election to introduce a hasty change in their ID cards policy and gone for an (even more) macho anti-foreigner stance.

I do wonder, in that case, how many people in the Labour Party have been told that their policy has been changed in this way. Do you think, for example, that all the visiting Labour MPs have been told about this change? And I wonder if they are all happy with this extra anti-foreigner turn of screw slipped out during a by-election campaign?

It’s gone largely unremarked so far, but Mark Walklate, who is standing as an independent candidate in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, is a former Conservative activist.

He stood for the Conservatives in both the 2006 and 2007 local elections. Moreover, his nomination papers look to have been signed by two prominent local Conservative activists. All in all, that doesn’t seem like a happy ship.

P.S. It’s always unfortunate if you get your own phone number wrong in your leaflets. It’s doubly so when the wrong phone number turns out to be for the member of another party. But it’s quite nice of the Conservatives to be pointing their supporters at a Liberal Democrat member.

An excellent day yesterday with Nick Clegg and a lot of press interest. We’ve got a big operation going and had a very good number of helpers in today already.

This is a really important weekend - the team proved yesterday that we are well set up to deal with large numbers. We just need lots of people every day!

The news from the doorsteps is encouraging. It’s been a pleasure to be out and about. The big Elizabeth Shenton posters are going down a storm - as is Elizabeth herself with both the team and the public.

I’ve seldom come across a candidate who engages more naturally with the public. The other parties clearly don’t have that advantage.

Personally, having knocked on quite a few doors, I haven’t found a determined Labour voter yet, and most Tories seem far from convinced by both their candidate and their leader.

This is a by-election where there plenty of issues for people to get fired up about and plenty to talk about on the doorsteps. We have an exciting few days left ahead of us!

Hilary Stephenson is the party’s Director of Campaigns & Elections

An interesting snippet from some of the Labour material in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election: they are attacking the Conservative candidate for the (current, known to have changed a few times) Conservative policy of opposing ID cards.

However, from what I’ve seen of it, they’ve mostly given up on most of the arguments previously used and instead retreated into the following very narrow approach:

Do you oppose making foreign nationals carry an ID card?

The use of the word “foreign” there seems to come with some rather unpleasant overtones in this context, the implication being that ‘ooh, foreigners - they’re terribly nasty aren’t they - so surely you can’t be against keeping tabs on them now, can you?’

The more positive aspect of this slightly desperate approach is that it could indicate overall how badly the case for ID cards is going for Labour. The campaign group No2ID has been busy running online adverts in the constituency, which may be adding to the pressure on Labour.

UPDATE: It looks like some Labour members are pretty unhappy with this line too.

The usually very reliable Times political correspondent Sam Coates’ Red Box blog carried a rather bizarre posting yesterday, alleging the Lib Dems had more or less given up on Crewe. Party chief exec and by-election genius Lord Rennard soon put him right:

Just come to our HQ in Crewe and see us there for proof of our very serious intent! The Labour vote is very weak (as evidenced by our gains in Crewe South in the local elections) - so Lib Dems will aim to repeat earlier by-election successes.

And today the Lib Dems’ director of campaigns, Hilay Stephenson, issued this clarion call for assistance to party members:

It it is just 13 days to polling day in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

We’ve got off to a flying start with a tremendously strong by-election team and an exceptional candidate in Elizabeth Shenton, who has already made a strong impression on voters and the local press.

Here’s what the Crewe Chronicle had to say yesterday:

Elizabeth Shenton must be optimistic after her party pushed Labour into third place in the local elections. The Liberal Democrats took 25% of the vote nationally while Labour took 24%.

But we have a VERY short time indeed. We expect postal vote ballot papers to arrive with voters on Saturday and Monday, and this means we have a lot of work to do delivering and knocking on doors this weekend. Nick Clegg will be with us today to support Elizabeth’s campaign and we need your help to make a big splash right through this weekend.

Our canvass shows that the millionaire Tory candidate is failing to impress and Gordon Brown’s Labour candidate is not convincing the voters. There is all to play for. We just need enough people to come NOW to help us keep up the momentum.

Full details of how to get to our HQ are at www.elizabethshenton.com/help-elizabeth-win and you can read more about what an excellent person we have in Elizabeth at www.elizabethshenton.com/elizabeth-shenton-biography

The Henley contest will not be far behind and we are already in full swing there as well, with our HQ up and running and another very impressive by-election operation under way.

We know that the Tories will be bringing people in from all over the south this weekend. We know from experience that making an early impact is vital. We have lots of delivery and canvassing there waiting to be done. Please come and get our Henley campaign off to the flying start it needs. Full details of our HQ (in Thame) are at www.henleylibdems.org.uk/contact/

After all, what better way to spend a spring weekend than exploring the by-ways of Oxfordshire or Cheshire?

Both campaigns are giving us an excellent opportunity to push our positive agenda - and to really catch the attention of the public.

I look forward to seeing you!

Best wishes,

Hilary Stephenson
Director of Campaigns, Liberal Democrats

P.S. The weather forecast in both places this weekend is for a sunny weekend - perfect campaigning weather!

* sincere apologies for the headline.

Back last year when we had two Parliamentary by-elections going on at the same time, in Ealing Southall and Sedgefield, there was a concerted online campaign by Conservatives making comments around the web to claim that the Liberal Democrats were struggling in Ealing, had given up on winning and were instead concentrating on Sedgefield. My favourite was the supposed eye-witness account from someone in Ealing who claimed they saw people in the Liberal Democrat HQ there preparing lots of letters for Sedgefield.

It all seemed to dry up rather after the Grant Shapps 1234 incident but it looks as if the fairytale is raising its head again. For once more we have two Parliamentary by-election on at the same time (well, nearly - Boris Johnson has said he’ll quit as MP though he hasn’t announced his resignation yet), once again the Conservatives are worried about the Liberal Democrats, and once again the fairy tale comes out to play.

In this case, it’s Edward Timpson and his campaign blog, which spins the fairy tale that:

Chris Rennard, who runs all the Lib Dem campaigns, has also been spotted briefing journalists. The talk around all the journalists up here is that he doesn’t think the Lib Dems can get anywhere in Crewe and Nantwich and so he wants to divert all their resources to Henley instead.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Oh, and I think you’ll find that none of the journalists in Crewe who spoke to Chris Rennard today mentioned this at all. So much for it being what they’re talking about!

A rather unfortunate posting over on Iain Dale’s blog this evening about the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. Iain writes:

It seems to me that the Conservatives should be very careful not fight an aggressive campaign here. They don’t need to launch attacks on the Labour Candidate. They need to be the voice of sweet reason and play up their candidate’s local record - but then go for Gordon Brown’s throat on the 10p tax debacle and other issues. And this is exactly what Edward Timpson seems to be doing. He’s just released this rather interesting letter to the press…

Curiously, he then only quotes the first half of Edward Timpson’s news release, leaving out the second half. Can you guess what the second half of the release contains? Ah, that’d be a series of personal attacks on the Labour Candidate.

Oops.

(If you want to read the bits that Iain’s posting doesn’t mention, you can read them here.)

UPDATE: As Iain makes clear in a comment below, the version of the release he saw didn’t include the second half.

Edward Timpson, the Conservative candidate for the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, is busy calling himself local. So I thought I’d take a look at his official biography on the Conservative Party website. And here’s what I found:

(Click on the thumbnail to see full size version.)

Update: just to provide a little background as I commented below: the reason for picking up on this is that the Conservatives are running the message that their candidate is local whilst also saying ours isn’t. That seems to me a fair target for criticism, particular as both parts of their message are being made at the same time in the same leaflet, which after all amounts to applying different standards on different pages of the very same leaflet. It all makes the paucity of the actual constituency references in the Conservative candidate’s official biography rather striking.

If I were Iain Dale, I’d be feeling either rather foolish or rather cross with Grant Shapps. Why? Well it’s because of the allegations about Liberal Democrats and election poster displays which Grant Shapps persuaded Iain Dale to run on his blog.

Iain wrote at the time:

There must be some rather compelling evidence for Grant Shapps to make this direct accusation.

However, no evidence has ever been provided - although numerous people personally involved in Lib Dem poster campaigns have denied the story (and, to be fair to Iain, several of these denails were published in comments on his blog).

But scratching under the surface the story gets murkier: one former Liberal Democrat poster person (Hywel Morgan) emailed Grant Shapps, pointing out possible future employers would know of his involvement in poster campaigns and that there could be serious repercussions for his employment prospects if allegations about illegally postering were left hanging in the air.

How did Mr Shapps respond? He emailed on 4 July admitting that, well, he didn’t have any decent evidence:

I do not have a list of the by-election contests which were alleged to be involved in this practice

Nor did he go on to provide any evidence at all for the claims. 

So, there are two possibilities here. Either (a) Iain published the story without asking Grant Shapps what the evidence was (which would be foolish, and surely not what a respected political commentator would do*) or (b) he asked and was assured that Grant Shapps did have good evidence, which would have been, err…, untrue.

Oh, and by the way - Grant Shapps did promise that an unnamed media organisation was researching a piece and was planning to run a “major package” in the next fourteen days. That deadline expired on July 19th, and no - no such package ever surfaced.

* If you are suffering apoplexy at this point, pause to consider that you may have missed a smattering of irony.

So says The Telegraph:

Much of the blame has been apportioned to campaign director Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister, who was promptly stripped of his role running by-elections. It was Mr Shapps, and the then Tory chairman Francis Maude, who persuaded Mr Cameron to put his name on the Ealing ballot paper, something the Tory leader at first resisted.

Two good results for the Lib Dems on Thursday with swings against Labour and two embarrassing third places for David Cameron’s Conservatives. That’s our line - but what does the press think? Here’s a handy guide…

Daily Express, Saturday 21st
“Leading Britain is a grown-up job for a serious politician. Voters have had quite enough of windmills, bicycles, sledges and huskies. They do not care for the dilettante Notting Hill Set which surrounds Mr Cameron. Part-time spokesmen who prefer to make money moonlighting rather than mastering their briefs should be swept away.”

Simon Heffer, The Daily Telegraph, Saturday 21st
“Frankly, if you can’t even come second in by-elections halfway through the third term of another party’s time in power, things aren’t just wrong. They are catastrophically wrong. The worst mistake Dave can make now, though, is to imagine they can’t get worse. They can. They can get a lot worse.”

Tania Branigan, The Guardian, Saturday 21st
“The third-place finish is a personal blow to David Cameron, who toured the west London constituency five times with political newcomer Tony Lit. The Liberal Democrats also squeezed the Conservatives into third place in Sedgefield.”

Read more »

Over on other sites, both Stephen (Guardian) and myself (New Statesman) have pieces about the by-election results. I don’t think either of us are 100% keen on the headlines used

Commenting on Lib Dem Voice, Lib Dem chief executive and by-election supremo Lord Chris Rennard has posted the following assessment of how the party fared in the Ealing Southall and Sedgefield by-elections:

In Ealing Southall, our campaigns teams’ assesment of the state of play over the final weekend was not very far off the result. Of course, we hoped and thought that we could get even closer by polling day.

We published that assessment (inc on Lib Dem Voice). Our figures were Lab 37, LD 31, Con 22. The final result was Lab 41, LD 28 and Con 22.

In the end we won the Ealing end of the seat, but lost in Southall where Labour eventually managed to deliver some of their traditional votes in very large numbers.

“David Cameron’s Conservatives” did no better than “Michael Howard’s Conservatives” and less well than “William Hague’s Conservatives”. They managed to trash their reputation in this by-election.

Some people will be aware of Conservative claims in the last few days that the by-election was running at Lab 33, Con 33, LD 26. This was not generally reported in the press (apart from the Guardian) but some commentators may have been misled by them. BBC Newsnight and others had already wrongly asserted that we were in third place.

Journalists will at least be able in future to know that they can safely ignore Conservative “analysis” or “leaked figures”.

Overall we got two good results in very difficult circumstances and in very short campaigns.

In Sedgefield we pushed the Tories into third - again highlighting the lack of “Cameron’s Conservatives” appeal in the north of England.

In both cases, our campaign teams were brilliant and will be ready for whatever challenges come our way in future. See you there.

Chris

What to make of last night’s by-elections?

Well, for the Labour Party there is evident relief that they have held on to both Ealing Southall and Sedgefield, albeit with considerably reduced majorities, and swings to the Liberal Democrats of 6% and 11% respectively.

There is probably a nagging sense of disappointment among Lib Dems that our achievements were not more spectacular - but that is at least as much due to the very high expectations we set ourselves. No, neither Ealing Southall nor Sedgefield rank will alongside either Brent East or Dunfermline. But the circumstances were quite different, not least because Labour has learned a tactical lesson - that they fare badly in by-election campaigns where they give their opponents a chance to mobilize.

As it was, both by-elections campaigns were severely truncated, lasting little more than three weeks. Such haste may not be good for democracy, but it has served the Labour Party’s cause well.

The Lib Dems, it seems to me, can be quietly proud of the extremely professional campaigns we ran, the evident enthusiasm of the hundreds of activists who helped, and of results which display steady progress in this age of three-party politics. As the BBC Online report states, “Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell, who saw his party take second place in both seats, was the main beneficiary.”

And then there’s the Tories…

I suppose I could trawl through their gleeful predictions that they would top the poll, or at least give Labour a run for their money. I could observe that David Cameron’s personal selection of a candidate whose weak Tory credentials severely undermined their campaign has damaged his leadership. I could muse that the defections from Labour they trumpeted during the campaign may well turn out to be more trouble than they’re worth. I could note that the Tories did themselves no favours by allowing their campaign manager to get caught indulging in schoolboy internet pranks. And I could conclude that last night’s by-elections show quite how insipid is the Tory party’s mini-recovery under Mr Cameron.

I could do all that. But actually it’s much more fun to let Tory activists themselves point out these things over at ConservativeHome.

Schadenfreude: dontcha just love it?

Results just in:

Labour Party: 15,188 (41%) -8% compared to 2005
Nigel Bakhai, Liberal Democrats: 10,118 (28%) +4%
David Cameron’s Conservatives: 8,230 (23%)

Huge congratulations to Nigel Bakhai, the Ealing Southall Lib Dems, and all those who helped the campaign, on achieving a 6% swing from Labour, and keeping David Cameron’s Tories firmly back in third place.

And I’ve absolutely no idea what the night will bring. Feel free to make your guesses below…