“The dropping of the locally selected candidate” etc etc

Do I really need to explain this again?

It has long been the practice to reselect for byelections (best part of twenty years I believe).

The “locally selected candidate” (Marc Goodwin) applied for reselection, but was unsuccessful. Many of us [myself included] have been through that experience! Most of us do not then throw our toys out of the pram.

LOCAL MEMBERS chose Elizabeth Shenton, who proved an excellent candidate.

The dropping of the locally selected candidate for a candidate who is more likely to win the constituency is the most glaring manifestation of how unprincipled and leaderless the Lib Dems are/have become.

Or really — as Alix says above — how the media project us. For the commentariat the narrative is still about the Tories and Labour fighting for the center ground. What hasn’t yet “jelled” is the realization that Labour is very nearly a spent force, having sacrificed its core support for power a decade ago and having lost the aspirational middle now.

1. We were starting from a very clear 3rd place (apart from a welcome ‘blip’ in 2005 the LD vote has been 11-15% in the past)

2. A 3 week campaign

3. The local party is very small

4. They were in the middle of a very difficult set of local elections to a new unitary council – the targetting policy was spot on for the UA (and resulted in 2 gains), but probably not great for a parliamentary byelection!

5. C&N Conservatives have benefitted from considerable support (Ashcroft probably; Coleshill certainly) for the past 2-3 years

Against that background being “squeezed” to probably the best share of the vote (2005 aside) since the seat was created was not bad at all !

The problem is not Nick, but how we are projecting him and our party. C&N and London showed something – but equally so did the gains we nade elsewhere. What we have seen is local parties campaigning more smartly than our central party organisation, that’s all.

The fact also remains that they only have policy available on Schools, Prisons and Welfare.

There will be a lot of disillusioned Labour helpers / members looking for a new party to back / join.

Personally I felt sorry for the Lib Dems at C&N and really hope they do well at the GE [and I'm a Tory]

Personally if it were me I’d be talking to Mr Clegg about drawing up “opposing” lines and policies to run on against Labour, tearing their whole vote apart and bringing the Lib Dems into official opposition. Personally I think that they’d do well to rename themselves the Liberal Party again. Both Cameron and Brown refer to them only as the “liberal Party” now, as do a number of media pundits.

Well done on C&N anyway, shame you didn’t do better.

Considering the security of the seat, under current circumstances of a percieved tory revival, anything except a complete wipout will fail to impinge on his personal standing – and with Labour nowhere and likely to fall further we really can’t lose.

Henley is definitely a straight choice, but let’s make it a clear choice.

A victory for us in Henley would be a dream for us as a party and a nightmare for Cameron – and it is a distinct possibility (if an outside one).

I should probably add to the above by saying your proposed line would still be better than anything that smacked of a ‘lurch to the left’ from us

I’m sure whatever message is used will be properly tested. My hunch on this one though is that it will leave most of the voters feeling decided ‘so what’. Boris was a popular MP and most people will wish him well in his new role. Further Henley is not a socially-deprived area where the MP needs to wade knee-deep through casework to get to their desk every morning. So it’s not like inner London where losing the MP really can make a big impact on a large number of people’s lives. Nor do I think a ‘he left you for London’ line will matter much given many Henley residents are commuters.

An anti-government protest in Henley? That’s perverse, especially with Boris now in situ in London’s ‘government’.

I quite like the ‘left in a lurch’ line for this one.

While it may not be a comfort that the Conservatives can match our ground war, and punch stronger on the phones and media campaign, much of that is down to better financing and motivation, not campaign team weaknesses.

On that point, Joe’s comment about working harder is a bit ‘Boxer’ from Animal Farm. There’s a limit to how much you can achieve with volunteers, and the more you crack the whip the more you wear people out. That’s not a sustainable model, particularly not when morale could be higher.

Onwards to Henley… where personally I feel we’ve two targets: 1) and most achieveable – squeezing Labour to the point where they lose their deposit and 2) hoping for a Tory gaffe that makes winning the seat a possibility.

On our own narrative I sincerely hope Nick’s recent tax-cutting aspiration will play a major part in the campaign. Henley will represent a very good opportunity to test a narrative for holding the South come the General Election.

We fought off the two-party squeeze better than we did in the London elections only a few weeks ago.

So the Tories aren’t as strong up north, while Labour weakness is clearly nationwide.

You’ve aged remarkably well, Stephen!

Mildly disappointing is how I’d call it too.

I like David Morton’s analysis and sympathise (per my own post today) with Martin Land’s frustration.

But I think the extra factor to be thrown into the mix of how we repair our campaignng strategy is the enormous drag factor of the national media not liking us. It’s not as simple as throwing out Rennardism and starting again. I’m not sayng we can’t do *anything* about the national media problem (and I think Clegg has the right approach in simply bypassing the national machine wherever possible) but we mustn’t be surprisd if, say,we completely revamp our campaigning armoury and still find ourselves with the same vote share. Whatever we do on the ground always has the potential to be wiped away at a stroke by the entrenched two-party consensus. We ought to improve ourcampaigning for its own sake, not because we’re expecting it to make The Difference. It won’t, by itself.

In particular we’d be unwise to adopt the same tactics as the oter two parties, who operate broadly speaking with the approval of the national press.

David Morton makes good points, it’s totally possible that we could lose as many seats to the Tories as we gain from Labour. The real contest is to determine who will be the opposition to the next Conservative government so while it make electoral sense to train more of our guns on Labour I think that would be wrong. We need to prove that we can hold the Conservatives to account and to paraphrase Eric Pickles last night that the best way to get Lib Dem policies is to vote Lib Dem. This is definatly a time for clear blue water between us and the Tories. We need to explain and draw out the differences between our two parties and their program into sharp contrast.

It is my belife that the party squeezed at the next election will be Labour and in the seats we are second we will benefit from anti-Labour tactical voting. In those seats where we start from a low base the focus needs to be on building from the bottom up and spreading awareness of ourselves. We have two years to the next election so we should treat this as a long run in….in the seats where we are strong pushing over the tipping point…in the seats where we are not starting effectively from scratch.