From a senior campaign source: “We’re talking here about offering our services to the Labour Party as we’re the ones with the experience of fighting general elections when you’re in third.”
The more serious point is that many people, even inside the Liberal Democrats, have consistently under-estimated just how large scale the party’s targeting efforts are for this general election. It would be wrong of me to publicise information I know from working for the party until last year, but it’s safe to say that (a) it’s massively bigger than previous targeting efforts – so much so that during this Parliament the traditional residential training weekends have had to be split into several back-to-back weekends because the venue could not cope, and (b) the reach of the targeting effort is much broader than you would expect from looking at the betting markets (for which I hope my bank manager will be thanking the bookies next month!).
The implication of this though is that even with the party’s current surge in the polls, delivering all the targeted seats would produce a fantastic result – and so I hope people will continue to respond to the requests to go and help in them. A surge in votes does not necessarily produce a surge in seats – but support the massive targeting efforts and there can be a surge in seats even if the current surge in votes subsides.
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2 Comments
Hi Mark,
Not sure if this is the best way to contact you but I’ve come across an interesting tidbit. Hendrick Hertzberg (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/hendrik_hertzberg/search?contributorName=hendrik%20hertzberg) is doing a live interview on the newyorker site and I asked him his opinion on trident.
“[Comment From ezekiel ziggy]
Hi I’m a uk viewer here, at the moment there is a big debate about whether to replace the “trident” defense submarines, do you have an opinion on this issue, if we were to scrap it, what would the consequences be?
4:18
Hendrik Hertzberg: Welcome, mate. Personally, I don’t see much point in the UK having a “nuclear deterrent” at all. Perhaps there’s some reason I don’t know about.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ask/2010/04/questions-for-hertzberg2.html
interview is still going live. not sure how useful this is but considering trident has been on the agenda it might be useful to have some credible people to quote in aid of our policies.
It’s nice to hear that we’ve got a wide range of targets, but someone had better tell Bournemouth West: when Newsnight’s Michael Crick went there (supposedly our 25th target) he found little action.
In fairness, it’s a Tory-held seat and until recently I suspect the assumption was that only Labour-held seats would be vulnerable. But since the Conservatives have clearly lost some voters to us in the latest polls we should reconsider that view.
Meanwhile, we should all be donating to the Lib Dem Voice election appeal 😉
https://www.libdemvoice.org/election-appeal