Party President Sal Brinton appeals to supporters in and around Devon to go and help Nick Harvey’s campaign, It certainly looks lovely, warm and sunny there.
Here are the ways you can help out or if you can’t make it in person, you can donate to Nick’s campaign here.
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39 Comments
Let us not forget South Devon Sal!!!!!!! Have we been written off and expected to travel north?
Devon is a big county and the Tories are throwing everything they have against the Liberal Democrats in the South as part of their wipe out the Liberals strategy.
Contact Richard via richardyoungerross.org.uk who is only 523 votes from victory in Newton Abbot, or myself, neck & neck with the Tories in Torbay, a seat the Tories have to win to form a majority Government at Westminster https://ldtorbay.nationbuilder.com/fightingfund
It’s hard enough fighting the enemy without friendly fire from one one’s own side.
This is sentimental nonsense.
Mobile resources MUST go to the most marginal seats.
Of course the Centre has the canvas returns from its target seats and should be directing mobile resources and offers of telephone campaigning to the most marginal seats.
And its own polling which unfortunately is less than trustworthy as it contains a lot of testing of positive messages for our candidates and negative messages against opponents BEFORE the final Voter Intention question. But we also have Ashcroft polling and frankly this suggests that there are a number of seats (even in the West Country) which are more marginal than North Devon.
To single out a constituency like this is therefore anarchy.
I suggest that people who really want to make the difference in seats, look to the Ashcroft polls or trust the centre.
This is why I am doing as much as I can for Adrian Sanders in Torbay.
We cannot afford sentimentality as this election is an existential battle for our Party.
Sal Brinton,
As president of the Liberal Democrats is your responsibility to the whole party or just to a chosen few?
Did you forget that Devon has more than one Liberal Democrat MP fighting to hold their seat for the party?
Sorry I cannot do a video with the sound of gulls in the background but in an attempt to help you restore some balance to your rather one-sided view of Devon here are some words you might like to use as a script for your next video —
Help Adrian Sanders get re-elected in Torbay
https://ldtorbay.nationbuilder.com/fightingfund
If you’d rather donate using a cheque, it should be made payable to: Torbay Liberal Democrats and posted to 69 Belgrave Road, Torquay, TQ2 5HZ.
Or there is still time if you are able to travel down to Torbay !
Er. I think we need to take the lead from the centre on targeting, gents. Please don’t confuse the membership. We have to be pretty ruthless in this election.
In the latest Ashcroft polls, we’re ahead in Torbay by one point. We are behind in Newton Abbot by 19 points.
We are behind by 9 points in North Devon.
These are polls involving 1000 people from each constituency.
So it is fairly blinking obvious we should focus our available “roving” resources on North Devon and that is where I will be going on Friday.
It’s not rocket science. If we spread our resources too thinly we won’t win anywhere.
Paul – you cannot turn a 9 point deficit around in 2 weeks. Sorry, but that is life.
Go south in Devon – a point of two is at the statistical margin for a 1000 person sample – or if you are in Cornwall go West !
Just incredible – as Bill Le Breton points out we are 9% behind in North Devon, neck and neck in Torquay. He could have added voters registration is closed and postal votes will be sent out and cast within days.
We have held Devon North since 1992 but it is going down the pan, along with Charles Kennedys seat and Simon Hughes seat (both held since 1983) – it is a sign of the Clegg disaster that these seats are under threat.
We actually won more MEPs under FPTP than we did under PR under Clegg.
I have been posting for months that people should send stamps to our held seats if they can’t make it in person or canvass from home on the phone or afford a donation. I repeat the same today with urgency as postal votes will be arriving on doormats this weekend (in my seat) and with so many postal voters in Torbay around 50% of those who are likely to vote in this election will vote this weekend – telling people to go help elsewhere could not have been more poorly timed with the amount of literature we have to deliver and knock-ups to make this week – we need help, money and stamps NOW in EVERY held seat.
If the party is “targeting” seats why are the putting so much into the Gordon campaign. Salmon is 1/12 at the bookies and the SNP are polling around the 50% mark, there is absolutely no chance the LibDems will hold the seat. Send your money to Torbay where they can still win.
Paul Walter 21st Apr ’15 – 7:25am
“…we’re ahead in Torbay by one point….. .. We are behind by 9 points in North Devon.
It’s not rocket science. If we spread our resources too thinly we won’t win anywhere.”
Paul,
Your facts are correct, the situation in Torbay Is clearly more hopeful than other places in Devon.
I agree with you that we must be ruthless and not spread resources too thinly.
I assume that your trip to North Devon on Friday is to collect helpers and take them down to Torbay to go and help in the constituency where we have a realistic chance?
As you say – targeting is not rocket science.
One of the simplest things to grasp in rocket science — point your rocket in the right direction.
We need to follow targeting decisions made by the leadership. That is how it has always been for me. ‘Don’t question, just do it.’ That is my attitude. Others are free to do what they want, but we didn’t build the party up by being undisciplined on targeting.
Not having the pleasure of being in the west country …. IF you are within distance of Lynne Featherstones North London seat,, can donate or phone canvass, your efforts will not be wasted 🙂 Canvassing/delivery is happening EVERY DAY, morning, afternoon and evening. The team is great, you will get a warm welcome 🙂
Paul I understand what you are saying. Look at where the breakdown of targeting got us in 2010. In my part of the world we were told we could win East Hants (!) and Meon Valley and in the process lost Winchester and Romsey. But isn’t it understandable that people are doing DIY targeting when we are contacted by so many different people. I have been e-mailed by East Hants and Guildford and told to go to Winchester. In response I have helped a little bit in Eastleigh and will be going to Southwark on polling day.
Adrian Sanders – Good luck, God speed and the stamps are in the post!!!!
I’m sorry Paul, you may still want to dutifully follow exactly what the leadership tells you, but after seven consecutive years of decline and failure, you have to realise that doing what the leadership tells you is the wrong thing for the party. Over the last few years LDV has encouraged so many people to be loyal to Nick beyond the bounds of reason, and by its almost unquestioning loyalty to him ultimately even over the party’s values, you have also inadvertently led to many previously active Lib Dems to pack up in despair. As a result, there are even less roving resources available to reallocate to defendable seats. It is now down to a simple every man and woman for him or her self to save what they can for the future. I like Nick, I wish him well, but it is too late now and Adrian is getting my practical support.
I’m still going to North Devon on Frday and to help in North Cornwall on Thursday. And I have helped in seven other seats since January. The campaign is being led by Paddy and I would jump over a cliff if he told me to. And Ruth just because mistakes were made in 2010 doesn’t mean they will be repeated in 2015. And I think we should support Sal’s lead also.
By the way, I will let you into a secret. I was going to North Devon anyway on Friday for a careers lunch at my old school! So I thought I would combine the visit with some local canvassing or delivery.
Well done Ruth Bright and David Evans for providing some support to Adrian Sanders.
And well done to Rod Hopkins from Droitwich, for donating.
His is the latest name to appear on the screen which you will find if you follow the link –
https://ldtorbay.nationbuilder.com/fightingfund
To Peter Kemp, good luck with your campaign to keep Lynne Featherstone and a quick mention that Torbay is only a bit over 3 hours by train from central London, so why not do one day for Lynne and then pop down to the seaside to help Adrian? 🙂
Paul
Take care if Paddy asks you to deliver on this route —
http://www.devon.gov.uk/walk78
Some of finest cliffs in the country. It would be a pleasure to walk off them for our Pads…
I was in North Devon this weekend with a group of Nick’s friends who go there at every election – it is tight but certainly not lost.
While there, I canvassed a house with an overgrown path to its door. No-one answered but as I left a voice called “hello”.
I went into my speech about calling from Nick Harvey and the Liberal Democrat council candidates and the voice again just said “hello”, so repeated my speech rather louder.
Only at the third “hello” did I realise I was canvassing a parrot.
Indeed Paul. That stretch from Lynmouth and Lynton through Woody Bay, Combe Martin to Ilfracombe is spectacular, scenery to gladden a jaundiced eye…
I have also “sent stamps” to Adrian, btw
Mark – not dead yet then….
David: “Over the last few years LDV has encouraged so many people to be loyal to Nick beyond the bounds of reason…”
Would that be the same LDV whose co-editor (at the time) asked for Nick to stand down in June 2014?
“…you have also inadvertently led to many previously active Lib Dems to pack up in despair”
Name some of these people then, David Evans. I only ask because in the blizzard of thousands upon thousands of venomous comments here, I have never once seen anyone who has said that articles on LDV have made them “pack up”. Have they been unusually quiet about this for some strange reason?
Paul W … Mark’s conversation with a Parrot /”Not dead yet then …” You deserve to win that lunch with Mr Cleese for that piece of wit alone.
@Adrian Sanders
I’ve just sent you some money for stamps I hope it helps. You’re one of a few I will be sending individual donations to.
The slightly bizarre thing is despite donating I am still teetering between a Lib Dem vote and spoiling my ballot. That is a reflection on the leadership and not MP’s such as yourself and the fact that my vote is unlikely to make a difference in my constituency .
Steve Way, do you mind saying which constituency you live in?
Thank you Bill – you flatter me!
South West Devon – Currently Conservative, Gary Streeter who won with 56% of the vote in 2010 an almost 16K majority.
As background, I am a left of centre true floating voter who decides based upon a party or candidates’ record and their manifesto. For years this has been Lib Dem. I applauded the decision to go into coalition but have felt let down too often since.
I have donated to Adrian and Charles Kennedy as they seem to retain the principles and values that I voted for last time around, not least in the fact they kept to their personal pledge on tuition fees. I will probably also donate to Julian Huppert as he has impressed me over the course of this Parliament.
Ok, I was hoping there might be a useful swap you could make but unless there is a rare Green out there in one of our seats who is prepared to vote LD in return for you voting Green (as they are supposedly prepared to do for Labour supporters in safe seats), you’re out of look.
Steve Way
I am impressed by your common sense approach. You may be the embodiment of the future of politics thanks to social media with people making their own choices and putting their money where they believe it can do most good rather than subscribe to a membership.
After so many decades I am too much of a party person to break free but I hope there are a lot of Steve Ways out there who are also contributing to keeping proper Liberal Democrats like Adrian Sanders, Chares Kennedy and Julian Huppert in Parliament.
BTW – I met your MP during the 2010 General Election in Axminster. He button-holed me and said he assumed I was voting for him. When I politely told him that I would not vote Conservative if he held a gun to my head even if he was the last candidate on earth he seemed shocked. He had obviously just emerged from a boozy lunch at The Conservative Club and had expected to do a triumphal walk around town with his loyal party workers. I don’t think they had witnessed a reply like mine before.
It was a great day for me because I had been to an excellent secondhand bookshop where they sold me some Penguin Maigret in the original green detective covers and then had lunch with my family at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s restaurant.
I rather hope I took the shine off Mr Streeter’s day.
It is very easy to blame Clegg for all of the Lib Dems’ problems but the problems the party are encountering go far beyond him. The reason behind the national collapse of the Lib Dems is due to the building building of a highly unstable electoral coalition with different groups with vastly diverging interests, so as soon as they go into government (regardless of who with) chunks of that coalition will not like what they see and abandon the party.
The exact same thing would have happened if the Lib Dems had formed a coalition with Labour except it would be in different seats where their vote would have collapsed. In the event of said coalition (which many on the left of the party wanted) Sal Brinton wouldn’t even be in North Devon as it would be a total write of with the Tories taking it off the Lib Dems in a landslide. The same could be said of a lot the Lib Dem’s West Country seats of which all bar Bristol West sit to a greater or lesser degree on the right of politics. Just look at the Ashcroft polls of preferred government outcome in these seats and you will see exactly what I mean. While a Lab-Lib coalition may have saved Featherstone and Kennedy the Lib Dems would be facing a bloodbath in many of their Southern seats.
In order for the Lib Dems to avoid said collapse when being part of a government they need to decide where on the political spectrum they belong and build an electoral coalition with a similar identity. Do they want to be a party of the Libertarian Right, the Centre or the Liberal Left? That is the decision that will have to be made in order to build a stable electoral coalition in the future.
JJ 21st Apr ’15 – 7:59pm
History seems to disprove what you assert in your comment. In 1979 after the LibLab Pact the party was not wipedoutin the West Country. We temporarily lost North Devon not from supporting a Labour Government but because Jeremy Thorpe has just emerged from a notorious murder trial.
West Country constituencies are not natural territory for “right wing” or Conservative. Candidates, which seems to be what you are saying. There is a radical, anti-establishment, Methodist, anti-London tradition that used to be embodied by David Penhaligon. I assume you are not a member of the party and have little knowledge of the West country or you would be aware of this. Would my assumption be correct?
JohnTilley I know the West Country fairly well as a matter of fact but of course not every part of it. It is true that there are radical traditions in the West Country but said traditions are on the decline as the culture of the West Country converges with the culture of the ‘East’. It is similar to the decline of the celtic fringe which is part of the reason the Tories took Mongomershire in 2010 and took the assembly seat a year later. While the West Country may not be the strongest part of the country for the Tories the vast majority of the Lib Dems seats in the region (except Bristol West) will favour a Tory lead government over a Labour one some, like North Devon, heavily so. Most of the West Country is relatively Tory friendly while most is inhospitable territory for Labour. It seems highly unlikely that the electorate in these seats would accept having their Lib Dem MPs being part of a Labour administration when they would prefer one lead by the Tories. A coalition with Labour may well destroy the party for a long time in a region they once thought of as their heartland…
@John Tilley please define what a “proper”Liberal Democrat is, and why you think others are “improper”.
Paul Walter 21st Apr ’15 – 1:58pm ……. I have never once seen anyone who has said that articles on LDV have made them “pack up”. Have they been unusually quiet about this for some strange reason?………..
I have said, on many occasions, that the tone of LDV articles are a major reason I will not be voting LD…
And you were a “previous active Lib Dem” were you, expats? Where? I’m not actually asking for you to potentially identify yourself by giving your precise location – a LibDem region name would suffice.
And why would the tone of articles here change your mind? We’re an independent website with a team of a dozen people from across the party, and we carry articles from most people who send them into us. We’ve carried many, many articles critical of the party and its leadership.
And of course we carry many comments taking article writers to task.
If you are unhappy about the tone of articles then why not submit some yourself?
It just seems rather illiberal for someone to determine their vote by the “tone” of articles by, presumably, one or two people in a party of tens of thousands of members, especially when you have had a very liberal say yourself in the comments on many occasions.
If you don’t like the tone of articles here why not read other websites or start your own?
Paul everyone is entitled to their opinion, even me. Personally in this dire situation I submit the party should concentrate its limited resources on the number 1 seat in the area taking into account demography. We have to recognize that large areas of Devon have become an activist disaster zone, West Devon is worse than North Devon. Torbay should be that number 1. The Tories have been working North Devon heavily for 3 years.
In these areas May 8th and onwards cannot come too soon, when we can try and piece together some sort of future for the party.
“Paul everyone is entitled to their opinion even me.”
That’s what I have thought every time I have approved scores of your comments at all bours. Where did I imply otherwise? Likewise this is a blog and you’d expect writers to express their opinion.
@Paul
I think you and the other LDV editors can be proud of the diverse range of articles and comments, you publish. Anyone who thinks you are a tool of the leadership hasn’t been reading the same site I have ove the last few years.
@Caracatus: We should not contemplate defeat in the seats you mention. Not a given at all. What about a new message too, certainly not ‘We are not like the Tories and Labour’ but something much more positive. The Lib Dems’ Five Green Laws are really strong policies on the environment – worthy of the Greens. We have great policies but we need to sell them better.