It can be a harsh blow for any parliamentary candidate. You’ve filled in the forms, been through the selection process, made your speeches, answered the questions and, in a fiercely fought contest that may even have involved more than one applicant, emerged victorious to represent your party in the General Election.
And then you discover that the seat, in which your party has failed to top 13% of the vote in either of the last two elections, is unaccountably not having tens of thousands of pounds poured into it by the central party; nor are activists from across the region being encouraged to flock there and help you to an astonishing victory. Even worse, local activists are being encouraged to campaign in a nearby held seat.
Who could have predicted that?
Such was the fate of Jermaine Atiya-Alla, Labour’s 21-year-old candidate for Teignbridge.
A local party dispute has led me to resign.
The regional party has instructed local party workers not to support me but to go to Exeter and support Ben Bradshaw’s campaign.
It was saying we could not win the seat here. The party here did not have to go along with that but it held a meeting without me and decided to go off to Exeter.
It’s a shame as I was enjoying myself and was ready to go out on the doorsteps campaigning but when the party withdrew its support I thought ‘sod it’.
Welcome to the real world, Jermaine, where parties (especially those anticipating a tough fight) have to target their resources ruthlessly in winnable seats and, and candidates elsewhere just have to accept that holding a seat like Exeter is a little more important to Labour’s fortunes than polling 15% rather than 11% in Teignbridge.
Hat tip to @LonelyWonderer.
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11 Comments
A practical example of why electoral reform is needed if ever I saw one
Exactly. He should support the campaign for STV.
*cough*
Where is this “Teignbridge” constituency of which you speak? Abolished a few GEs ago, Richard Younger-Ross will be defending the Newton Abbot seat, and I suspect several of his leaflets will include quotes from the above in the squeeze message section, Labour’s never had a chance in that part of the world, probably never will.
Errr, not abolished a few GEs ago – abolished for the next General. Richard Y-R was elected for Teignbridge in 2001, re-elected for Teignbridge in 2005, and is running for Newton Abbot in 2010 (the northern ~400 square miles having been hived off into the new Central Devon constituency, in which the delightfully named Digby Trout has apparently also recently sadly resigned as Labour candidate)
Ah, I stand corrected, for some reason I thought the change had come into play already, even though I know my local boundary changes don’t until this time. Point stands though, can’t be PPC for a constituency that won’t exist.
Boundary review
Teignbridge constituency is abolished following the Boundary Commission for England’s review of parliamentary representation in Devon.
The Teignbridge wards of Ambrook, Bishopsteignton, Bradley, Buckland and Milber, Bushell, College, Dawlish Central and North East, Dawlish South West, Ipplepen, Kenton with Starcross, Kerswell-with-Combe, Kingsteignton East, Kingsteignton West, Shaldon and Stokeinteignhead, Teignmouth Central, Teignmouth East and Teignmouth West now form the Newton Abbot constituency.
The wards of Ashburton and Buckfastleigh, Bovey, Chudleigh, Haytor, Kenn Valley, Moorland, Teignbridge North, Teign Valley; and nine wards of the Borough of West Devon (Chagford, Drewsteignton, Exbourne, Hatherleigh, Lew Valley, North Tawton, Okehampton East, Okehampton West and South Tawton) form part of the Central Devon seat.
It’s not often that I feel sorry for a Labour candidate, but Jermaine is clearly young and passionate and a little bit naive (in the literal sense of the word). I feel sorry for somebody who had really thought that they were going to be fighting for what they believe and then found the harsh realities of campaigning crashing in on them.
“Sod it!” might not the be most mature reaction to the situation, and he might find it comes back to haunt him if he ever decides he wants to stand again. But I don’t think we should be too quick to mock his innocence or revel in his disillusionment.
(And now to remove the sandals and start shaving that beard off…)
I have some sympathy for him, but he’s also acted like an idiot with a severe case of candidatitis, the condition in which people think they’re going to win through the purity of their charisma despite a terrible position at the last election, little local membership and no work.
Though candidates are often blamed for coming down with this entirely treatable malady, in my experience in the Lib Dems it is much more common and far more virulent as an epidemic in local parties, whose nasty attack of candidatitis means they can ignore their terrible position at the last election, little local membership and having done no work for ever, because absolutely everything will be the fault and responsibility of the candidate, who should supply unlimited time, money and votes.
By coincidence, I was once a young, enthusiastic candidate in a similarly bad seat for Lib Dems, a Labour-Tory marginal. I found not one single member of the local party willing to go and help in a target seat (or do pretty much anything but sit at home and whinge). When I spent half my General Election time campaigning somewhere it might do some good (and in the end did), the local party to which I devoted the other half of my time complained to the highest level that I’d been off campaigning.
I shan’t name the consituency as I hope they’ve been cured in the years since, but their raving candidateshoulddoitallitis seemed to me most likely to spread not among young, naïve candidates but among old, set in their ways and deeply lazy members looking for someone to blame as an excuse. So it’s not surprising that candidates sometimes get frustrated.
A little patronising, Iain, I feel. He’s 21, for crying out loud.
What Geoffrey Payne and Duncan Stott said.
Lester,
Perhaps it might be more patronising if we treated him differently because he’s young. The Labour Party felt that he was old enough to be a candidate (and good for them, frankly) but he’s proved that he might not have been mature enough to understand the role he had taken on, i.e. cannon fodder.
On the other hand, we don’t know what he was initially promised in terms of support…
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