Headline says it all really.
Let’s see how long it takes for a Labour loyalist to say, “Oh, but Gordon never ever intended to hold an election. He’s been courageous and decisive all along you know, and was never intending to hold an election. It has all been a clever wheeze you understand. But a statesman-like, getting on with governing the country approach at the same time, you understand.”
UPDATE: The partys’ Chief Executive, Chris Rennard, has just sent round this message to party activists and staff:
It now looks as though Brown is just about to make a statement saying NO imminent election.
The party has geared up tremendously well in recent months to fight this campaign.
We will keep up campaigning at a very high level until whenever the General Election is called.
We need to thank all the people at every level who have been working hard in anticipation of this campaign and ensure that we do not lose momentum.
The work of increasing our media profile, campaigning hard on the key issues, delivering the leaflets, making the phone calls, recruiting the members and raising the funds must continue.
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9 Comments
Actually, my first thought was ‘how’s Chris Paul going to find a way to blame John Leech for this?’ 🙂
Seriously, though, my first suggestion for a Party campaign after all this would be one for fixed-term Parliaments, which I think have found quite a few new supporters over the past few weeks.
Labour’s and Gordon Brown’s reputation damaged – and we beat the Aussies. What a lovely weekend this is.
Now I have to file all those Freeposts, Flying Starts, et al on my increasingly burdened hard disk. Back to the local FOCI I should have stuck with all along, I suppose. Message from Chief Executive received. I sometimes wonder what planet he lives on. With poor poll ratings and – well I won’t say it – my delivery networks are getting ropier every year, membership a struggle, all of which is not exactly inspiring especially when you now know that if you don’t live in one of the target seats no one cares anyway…
We have a window of opportunity, of perhaps 18 months to get our act together. I wonder if we will take it?
[email protected] 🙂 Yes, no doubt it was “Fib unDem” lies that wrecked it…
Mixed views from my personal perspective. I expect Douglas Alexander is getting something of a bollocking right now.
Ah well, at least all those prospective Euro MP’s will be happy.
We can all go to euro hustings now that we don’t have to deliver flying start leaflets.
Martin @ 3 – I don’t think Chris Rennard was exactly making it up.
I sincerely believe that unless those last few polls had come out showing a narrowing of the Labour lead, we’d be having a general election next month – and without our Chief Executive being on the ball many of our local parties would have been woefully underprepared.
I for one will be fully alert when the next general election warning lands in my inbox!
For many of our local parties I think this election scare will have been a wake-up call and will have shown them exactly what work they need to be doing before it happens for real – I think it could be a blessing in disguise in many places.
Joe @ 7. Your right Joe, but in many places some local parties are in a state where they need real help; it’s time the powers that be took a close look at our weaknesses in many areas – a full ‘audit’, perhaps?
It applies to other parties too; had this election gone ahead, this would have been the first ever, where many electors in many areas might not have even received a Freepost from one or more of the major parties. The Labour Party is virtually non-existant in constituencies and areas where they ran councils in the 1990’s or even recently had MP’s!
Targeting has served us well, up to a point, but it’s becoming dangerous. Come what may, you still need 326 seats for a majority!
We need to be a strong NATIONAL Party.
Martin @ 8. I’d agree that targeting is working well, and, we did make huge progress at the last general election.
At the start of that election, we were second in something under 50 seats, if I recall correctly, but we completed that election having won seats for ourselves, won an equal number of seats for the Tories (they had 16 gains where they lost share of the vote to us, but Labour lost even more to us, thus handing the Tories the win), and we finished the election in second place in over 100 seats.
For the next general election, that means that we have to be able to support more target seats, and those seats need to be continuing their momentum right through.