Mark Pack

Administrative details don’t give away general election plans

By | Sat 20th February 2010 - 3:10 pm

Slightly out of character (!), Iain Dale initially missed a chance to put the boot into Labour in his recent post about Labour’s leaflet printing arrangements. Iain went (at first) for the “this could mean we’re about to have a snap election” line, and only really getting to the real story in a subsequent update.

That’s because what the email about Labour’s leaflet arrangements really tells us is that lots of Labour candidates had finalised key parts of their general election artwork, but now Labour is getting a new slogan and they are having to redo their artwork. In other words, change of mind means previous work wasted.

Good for a passing chuckle (if you’re of another party) or expression of sympathy(if you’ve been there yourself), or both, but nothing more. Administrative details like this don’t tell us about general election plans.

Party leaders don’t let their big decisions, such as when to call an election, be constrained by issues such as whether or not some poor sod of an activist is going to have to redo several hours of work or some electoral administrator somewhere is going to spend several panicy hours desperately trying to confirm the location of a polling station.

Good leaders recognise these issues and minimise their impact, but even those in the end don’t let such issues fetter their decision making.

So all the gossip about these administrative details can be fun, but it tells us sod all about general election dates. After all, even having several millions of items of election mail sitting in the Royal Mail warehouses and specially hired cars circling Westminster ready to pick up Cabinet members and take them on the campaign trail didn’t stop Brown cancelling his election plans when it suited.

Read more by or more about or .
This entry was posted in General Election.
Advert

One Comment

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Jeff
    How relevant is this to Trump’s MAGA movement, to Farage and Reform? Of little to none I would have thought. The political ideologies that came to d...
  • Nonconformistradical
    I second Henry's comments about Barrow - this south-eastener has at least, albeit not recently, set foot in the Barrow constituency (visiting friends who lived ...
  • John Peters
    I would not have classed Barrow-in-Furness as post industrial. For decades it has had the same major employer - the dockyards. It manafactures the UK's nuclear ...
  • David Raw
    @ Daniel Walker, "we should have the cheapest possible democracy". I didn't say that, Daniel, though what I imply is that the party needs to prove to and mak...
  • Henry
    I do get very annoyed by the comments on these by-election posts. The over-exaggeration of our comeback because we won last week and then complain when we finis...