I was sure I would wake up this morning and find it was all a dream. Sky News appeared last night to have reported that the Lib Dems were in the lead in a YouGov poll in the Sun. I recall Nick Clegg’s campaigning being featured first before the other party leaders – we were after all the party in the lead.
In fact my back is hurting because I left campaign HQ at 1130 after a twelve hour day putting the first freepost to bed. The agent’s day here is usually far longer but she is younger and fitter than me.
The Sunday papers smelled of fear. The Mail revealed what a dodgy fellow this Clegg chap is. He speaks languages. Not just one foreign language but several. He has worked in Brussels. He has a foreign wife, foreign ancestry and apparently – wait for it – a German spin doctor. His father may well be richer than Cameron’s father (a sort of reverse ‘My dad will get your dad’ playground challenge).
The News of the World, which faithfully reported the weekend poll surges, also had a colour graphic of another poll which did show Cameron comfortably in Downing Street – Mumsnet.
The Observer – let’s face it a Labour paper when the chips are down – featured Sarah Brown in her garden on the front page of one of its mags.
The Tories are in a bind. The weekend policy attacks were of course justifiable – politics is about policies and our manifesto must be capable of scrutiny. Trident may get some traction but not necessarily with the younger voters who are largely responsible for the Clegg surge. Europe will no doubt be used against us too but it’s a policy area which strangely fails to deliver anti-European votes to anti-European parties.
But the problem is that being Beastly to Clegg may well make matters worse. Do a thought experiment: imagine that you are in charge of Cameron’s campaign. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. Attack? Ignore? Nothing seems promising. Anything may ramp up support for Clegg.
Their best hope takes us back to 1983. The Alliance phenomenon had been somewhat blunted but there were still strong expectations of a breakthrough. Many new to politics, especially in the SDP, imagined that the votes would fall into their laps.
The truth is that a poll surge does not abolish the need for campaigning: knocking on doors, getting up posters and finding new deliverers to make sure that our message gets home in the face of the likely onslaught from the Old Parties.
And it means knocking on doors in the right places. Time spent in a non-target seat is likely to be time wasted. And a target seat not won.
Remember: Labour and the Tories both rely on us jettisoning our targeting strategy in the current euphoria.
Keep a cool head and travel to where your aching feet will secure a historic result on 6 May.
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2 Comments
“Time spent in a non-target seat is likely to be time wasted. And a target seat not won.”
Bollocks. We are getting floods and floods of volunteers and campaign contributiosn. Of course target seats deserve to be campaigned in hard, but to concentrate SOLELY on them risks missing a fantastic opportunity. Let the new volunteers in non-target seats work their own street, their own pub, their own workplace, rather than trying to bus them to a target seat and work them into abandoning us.
Have we learned nothing from Obama?
That also assumes you can travel around a lot. That sort of thing only works for people with money.
(Fortunately, I already have a Lib Dem MP so I wouldn’t have to travel; unfortunately, I signed up to help, got a phone call a couple of weeks back asking when I’d be available, they said they’d call back with more details by the end of the week, and that’s the last I heard from them)