LDHQ have published a new A4 leaflet making the case for IN. This leaflet focuses on the specific and very important issue of cost of living. Being IN we have the opportunity to enjoy cheaper prices.
You can order this leaflet at £40 per 1000 including delivery, which is about as good value full-colour printing can go. Orders can be up to 40,000 copies.
You need to order by this Friday 25/3/16. But further leaflets and offers to order them will come soon.
Well done to the #INtogether staff who have made this possible.
You can order here.
* Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party's representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup.
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26 Comments
Is LDHQ trying to throw away the elections on 5th May? Why on earth are we asking people to vote to stay in when they can’t the next time they vote?
There’s a six week period between the May elections and the referendum, so there is no need to confuse our Scots, Welsh, local and police election messaging with this. And that’s before we even get to the actual scaremongering, pro political establishment messaging.
My advice to any local party with £40 slushing around their bank account – print some black and white calling leaflets or surveys and go door knocking with your local candidate.
I fully agree with Dan.
Sadly for everyone, there is a difference between the skills of a campaigner and the skills of a politician.
Sadly? Because Parliament is filled with politicos (who are good at talking but not very good at getting things done) and campaigners (who are good at building movements, creating communities of interest and making change happen).
The above including Dan’s comment – the comment of a campaigner -is a great example.
Another example was Osborne and co’s recent comments – that they (the politicos in the Conservative Party) didn’t believe their Party could win the 2015 General Election.
Of course their campaigner, the expert in building new bundles of power) never doubted it for a moment.
The tragedy is that campaigners do the winning, get the change, deliver the results, win ‘power’. Then the politicos dig in and administer the exercise (and the delpition) of that power i.e. the years of the administration. Administration is the exercise of power and therefore if it is not accompanied by community building or movement creation, which is the sustaining of power, is eventually exhausted.
In 2010-2015 we did little or no campaigning and a lot of administrating. Until all our political capital had gone.
It was the’politicians’and not the campaigners in our Party that clung on to Clegg or enabled him to continue exercising the power the party had achieved. It is these politicos who are dominating the party and achieving very little, because they no longer have power to administer.
The party will remain moribund until and unless the campaigning spirit and expertise regains its influence. Because, in opposition, politicos are worse than useless.
Dan is absolutely right. Unless you have no elections in May, this can only be a confusion rather than a priority. For this reason and for speed – plus I am at best a very reluctant Remainer – I am not asking the In/Out question when canvassing.
Success breeds success .Win the locals first show the public we are back in business and then they will take us more seriously in the Referendum .
Muddy the waters and confuse the public by sending out 2 lots of literature at the same time will not help because they will then vote the same way for both elections .Which was my experience as a local government candidate who was up for re-election at the same time as the general election and just squeezed back in by one vote.
I agree with Dan.
It is no surprise that many of the statements and press releases currently being put out, which have little or nothing to do with the May elections, have been put out by people in the party who have had little or nothing to do with winning elections in the past.
Many elections and seats in May will be won and lost in less than one month’s time, as that is when postal votes are issued.
Only where there are no elections in May should referendum campaigning be the priority.
The referendum and local elections are both important and we can campaign for both.
A lot of England doesn’t have council elections this May. In my county only 2 out of 10 or 11 Districts have them.
In areas that do it is for the local party to decided how to balance the two campaigns. Some are holding off on the referendum, some are going for it now. There is some evidence that association with IN through local canpaigning is boosting LD popularity but that is a matter for local judgement as areas are different.
Those who think Antony is a politico and not a campaigner obviously don’t know him.
Any reason why we haven’t used the word remain (or should I say REMAIN?) anywhere?
Elaine, if he were a campaigner he would know about the importance of ‘concentration’ – he is wrong. But he is typical of this party. Dan is right. That is why Dan has a record of winning campaigns.
We will have no influence on the result of the referendum. Where there are elections this May we must concentrate on promoting our local candidates.
After May we need to use whatever leverage the referendum gives us to keep on promoting those local candidates and, if they have won, on the next member of their local team contesting an election.
Of course if you want to build a profile in this party he is doing the right thing.
Someone needs to see why the Party was able to respond to the nadir of 1989 (5% in the Euros) and why we have made no impression at all on the general public since 2015.
The party needs to focus its limited resources on the Local Elections and leave the EU campaign to others. The danger of becoming the 5th party in the major urban areas is very real Manchester Sheffield Liverpool Birmingham etc are where time and energy need concentrating. I know some on here don’t like this reality but its true. The morning after the Local results nerves will be a lot more steady if the party gets a broad 4th place and not 5th behind the Greens. Forget Europe and start fighting for Lib Dem survival.
I have been both Campaigner and Politician (like John Barrett) and I agree with him that Dan is right.
I also have to say that £40 per 1,000 colour A4’s (especially from what will be a large bulk order, single issue print run with a considerable economies of scale discount) seems pretty expensive to me. That would equate to £1,600 for 40,000 and I was paying less than that for 40,000 A3 full colour leaflets 2014-2015.
I have to say I find the reaction to this a little baffling. The role the Lib Dems will play in the EU referendum will be to identify those likely to vote to stay in, and encourage them to actually vote in the referendum (this more or less verbatim from our local campaigns guru). I think this mail shot will be helpful in that regard.
Anthony is right in that the EU referendum will be nationwide whereas the local and devolved elections are not. So this will be particularly useful for local parties without elections to fight. And for those that do have elections to fight, an all-in delivery shot will not divert campaigners’ time, whereas a simple shipment of a thousand leaflets requiring delivery would be a huge headache (did your 40k A3s’ overall price include delivery too, Paul?)
One of these days, someone will post a good idea on LDV which will not attract a barrage of negativity…
Does the £40 per 1,000 as quoted above include delivery John?
Did a quick check with a colleague who has bought colour leaflets more recently than me (they have Council elections underway) and he thought £28-30 per 1,000 off the top of his head. As for delivery -on 40,000 it’s pretty negligible as part of total cost.
It does I see. So £40 per 1,000 A4 including delivery.
Just checked back to some of last years Gen Election invoices and I paid £31 per 1,000 for A3 full colour including delivery. That was on a Constituency sized run without benefit of a large multi constituency bulk order.
John you write, “The role the Lib Dems will play in the EU referendum will be to identify those likely to vote to stay in, and encourage them to actually vote in the referendum (this more or less verbatim from our local campaigns guru).”.
This process you describe is time consuming, politically sterile and a waste of scarce resources.
We ‘fight back’ from the very weak position we are in by connecting with people in their communities and we do this by campaigning on local issues and involving people in those campaigns by communication around those campaigns. Everything else is a diversion and a displacement activity, avoiding the truth and seriousness of the position we are in – on the door mat of extinction as a political force.
Anyone not giving that advice is wrong and part of the problem.
And this leaflet which of course has its roots in ‘direct mail’ efforts to sell double glazing is worse than useless. It will go in the bin along with all the other direct mail/ unwanted trash that comes through the door.
Of course it is typical of the stuff that Lib Dems have been putting out for a number of years now.
The next step in our history is all too probably to be a party with no MSPs, no AMs, no London AM to go along with our 1 MEP and 8 MPs.
Paul, if you could provide that supplier’s details to the INtogether team at HQ I am sure they will be pleased to have it.
This printing is with Park who as you probably know are one of the party’s regular suppliers.
Why on earth the hurry? I’m not referring to the idea of campaigning on Europe now – after all, many areas don’t have elections other than for a PCC and where our vote is low or there are many EU nationals who can vote in locals and not in the referendum, identifying ourselves with a cause supported by at least half the people should help. No – why is the offer open only until Friday? Local parties with limited funds and respect for due process have to pick up the publicity (and this is the first I’ve heard of it though I’m a local party Chair), sound out the Treasurer, who may be on holiday or ill, check the opinion of other officers at a minimum and make the order. Why not give us a couple of weeks more?
Simon, that is a reasonable point. There are going to be further literature offers in the next few weeks.
Bill at 9.12am “We ‘fight back’ from the very weak position we are in by connecting with people in their communities and we do this by campaigning on local issues and involving people in those campaigns by communication around those campaigns. Everything else is a diversion and a displacement activity.”
Well, I suppose I’ll leave it to the rest of you then. I got involved in politics because I was interested in national issues not running local campaigns.
Speaking as someone lucky enough to have had Elaine Woodard as my election agent I would say she excels at both national and local campaigning!
@ Anthony Hook. Yes I have used Park quite often both when I was 50% employed by Campaigns Dept 2014-2015 and many times when I wasn’t. The particular printer my A3 price referred to was Bishops -also well known to Campaigns Department.
Of course print prices could have soared recently? But paper prices seem very competitive currently (certainly the 85,000 sheets we bought very recently were good value) and I had got the impression that since the General Election boom in demand ended, it had become more of a buyers market when approaching commercial printers?
The very short gap between announcing an ‘offer’ and when orders have to be placed by is a very bad habit that the Party fell into between 2013-2015. It does, as Simon Banks notes, presuppose that Local Parties (almost entirely volunteers with very little paid staff left anywhere) can more or less instantaneously spot and respond to such an offer. If I didn’t read LD Voice daily how would my Local Party for example have heard of this offer (we have certainly had no direct notification) and how many Local Parties in any case empower someone to unilaterally order literature at the drop of a hat?
Sadly Elaine, those who were only interested in in national issues not running local campaigns, had so little of an idea of what it was all about when they got in government that they blew it for those who had a local focus as well.
Elaine – all politics is local.
Good campaigning is integrated campaigning. We did NO integrated campaigning during our time in Coalition – the ideal time for integrated campaigning, when you can actually deliver what people in their communities are telling you they want.
There is no integrated campaigning going on now.
We have no traction at a national level. On a national level our trust has been totally destroyed.
We have no alternative at this period but to try, where we still have people and resources, to connect with local communities.
I reckon you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Bill, I never said I wasn’t interested in local campaigns just that I got involved because I was interested in national politics. I want to make sure we do both and I’m concerned we’ll go back to the situation where some (perhaps I should say many) local campaigners don’t want to mention the Liberal Democrats too loudly and especially not raise national issues, even with a local slant, because it will put people off voting for us locally.
Elaine, you are right to be concerned if you have ever seen LDs being timid in the way you describe.
As someone has said elsewhere we now have three articles on schools. The great thing about campaigning on matters like education is that it can be delivered in an integrated fashion with a spearhead from our Parliamentary Spokespeople and local campaigners campaigning in their communities about their local schools.
Incidentally, the leaflet above looks like it only mentions Liberal Democrats once.
Sorry if I come across as grumpy, the frustration of seeing years of political capital squandered over the last 7 years has had its toll on me. Your replies have been a salutary warning to me. Thank you.