Just three and a half weeks after moving to Edinburgh to take up my new post as Deputy Director of Campaigns for Scotland, I find myself involved in another major election campaign!
We have selected born and bred Glaswegian Ian Robertson as our candidate to fight the by-election, and although the media are saying it is a two horse race we should remember that the SNP were in fact only 1,603 votes ahead of us in 2005.
This is an election that will be fought on the local issues that matter to the people in the East End of Glasgow – unemployment, crime and housing problems.
Here in Scotland, Labour are in meltdown slightly even more than in London, what with Gordon and Wendy Alexander, but the teflon is coming off Mr Salmond and the SNP and people are fed up of their empty and broken promises.
We have put together an awesome team from across Scotland and will welcome you to Glasgow East with open arms.
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11 Comments
…so is it a straight choice between us and the SNP, or is it a three-horse race?
Seriously though, I’m glad to hear things are up and running and that we have pinned down the ‘local’ issues we will be concentrating on, but I would like to see some emphasis on the general issue of the state of politics and standards in public life, which is always cropping up as a topic for discussion. Kudos!
well done for coming up with the most anodyne, bland, cliched, pointless say nothing press release I think I have ever read.
Seriously pathetic.
tough day, matt?
Notwithstanding what I said in the previous thread with respect to Lib Dem chances in this byelection, I wish the Party and its candidate well.
Few Lib Dem politicians have made much impact in areas of this kind, Simon Hughes being the most notable exception. So here is an opportunity to make fresh ground, and perhaps try out a new campaigning technique or two.
East Glasgow has been neglected throughout its history. It is a repository for people failed by the education system and ignored by politicians. It is blighted by the unwinnable war on drugs, and the misguided attempts in the post-war years to solve the city’s housing problem.
Labour no longer has Maggie Thatcher to blame for everything. Smart Alec, too, has to tell us what he is doing for Scotland’s inner cities. Is he too busy assaulting our liberties and licking Donald Trump’s boots to care?
Like we successfully did with the Blair/Bush photo we should use the Brown/Thatcher photo ruthlessly in this constituency.
We gained a mass of votes from the Blair/Bush photo and can do so again with Brown’s photo. It sells the message of how both have bad judgement. It will also feed disillusioned voters towards us.
“tough day, matt?”
lol
So our travelling circus is off to Glasgow now is it?
Well, if you win the deep fried Mars Bars are on me!
The Labour candidate has failed to turn up to his selection meeting leaving their selection process in turmoil.
Sounds like the scenario in which we won a seat in Oldham in about 1990. Labour’s wrangling over candidates went on till after the close of nominations leaving us and the Tories fighting a seat that Labour had won with about 70% of the vote before.
Made finding paper candidates a bit tricky!
Oddly, this Telegraph report on the by election doesn’t even mention the Lib Dems:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/07/05/do0510.xml
It is nice to see a better candidate selected than the last couple of By-elections however I would really like one thing from this. The party to be honest with us. None of this rubbish which raises our hopes and expectation on the basis of one final push only to dash it at the end when the result comes in. In the 2005 election we claimed to be on the verge of taking several Tory seats in the South and South West, we actually lost seats to them, we claimed at Crewe we would finish ahead of Labour and we claimed at Henley we could win. All of which is now becoming a bore and people are not going to believe what we are being told.
So good luck with the campaign and be honest with us 😉