Party Leader Nick Clegg has set us a challenge – a One Million Door Challenge!
One million sounds a lot, but it is actually just around 1,500 doors per constituency. In the eleven months leading up to this May’s local elections we, in Wolverhampton South West, knocked on about 17,500 doors. Perhaps 1,500 doors isn’t that much after all.
Knocking on doors matters, but not just for the sake of it. Knocking on doors should be at the heart of Liberal Democrat campaigning, it is within our tradition of Community Politics, a tradition that is key to our success. There are at least three good reasons I can think of and probably many more:
1. Lots of people still don’t know what the Liberal Democrats stand for, our FOCUS leaflets don’t work on everyone. Knocking on doors give us an opportunity to tell people what we stand for and what we will do to improve their lives locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.
2. If we want to represent people, surely, we should try and find out their views. We can do this by having grumble sheets and surveys on our leaflets but I guarantee you will find out more if you knock a door and ask someone.
3. In order to actually represent people we have to get Liberal Democrats elected, it is a lot easier to get elected if we know how people are going to vote and knocking on their doors and asking them is one of the best ways of finding out!
Wolverhampton South West will be taking up the challenge and next week will be out knocking on doors, we pledge to get a ward done by the end of the year. Bedford Liberal Democrats tell me they will knock an entire ward on the weekend after Conference. What will you do?
* Colin Ross is (as you may have guessed) an active Liberal Democrat in Wolverhampton.
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4 Comments
But if Mr Clegg wants me to go knocking on strangers’ doors … can he please give us something consistent and appealing to talk about ????
Sounds very much like Ming’s 1 million doors challenge. If we count the 10 or so 🙂 that got done then …… we are almost there.
“But if Mr Clegg wants me to go knocking on strangers’ doors … can he please give us something consistent and appealing to talk about ????”
Oh come on, it’s not that hard. The article does say that the idea is to ask people their views. So ask them their views first. And then …
If they lean to the left, say this: “Spending on the public services is our first priority; we will cut taxes only if there is money left over to do so.”
And if they lean to the right, say this: “We are going to cut public spending by £20bn and give the vast bulk away in tax cuts.”
I must confess, I’m a little puzzled. I shall be most upset if we don’t knock on 100,000 doors in Cambridgeshire alone between now and June 4th.