8 Comments

• crewegwyn 24th Dec '15 - 4:49pm

  Which would be funnier still if it featured an alpaca.

• John Marriott 24th Dec '15 - 4:55pm

  Careful, you might give him the hump! If he thinks he’s riding an alpaca, that might be why he lost his election!

• Richard Underhill 25th Dec '15 - 6:18pm

  John Marriott 24th Dec ’15 – 4:55pm ” .. why he lost his election”. The Tories had an attack “under the radar”. Beware, it could happen again,

• John Faulkner 26th Dec '15 - 11:35am

  Just waiting for him to be MP in Eastbourne again.

• John Marriott 26th Dec '15 - 6:00pm

  Richard Underhill
  Can’t you separate an attempt at humour from hard fact? If you want a serious response, then perhaps it wasn’t an attack ‘under the radar’ at all but rather an attack like all the rest that the Tories aimed at our incumbent MPs. They had a strategy which worked brilliantly for them. It was based on fear and lies, which appear to be what it takes to get a result in most constituencies.

• Richard Underhill 26th Dec '15 - 8:14pm

  John Marriott 26th Dec ’15 – 6:00pm Having a bit of fun is fine. Why he lost the election is a serious issue. Several books about the general election of May 2015 have been published. For instance a non-partisan professor of politics from Nottingham who was interviewed in the book slot of the parliament channel used this phrase about the Tory attack on the Liberal Democrat MPs.
  An increased use of email makes it possible to target voters more precisely, so that what they are being told may not be visible to other voters or to thr supporters of other parties. As a canvasser doing a delivery round in Eastbourne I was warned by one insistent voter that this was happening and that he was likely to switch from voting for us as he did in 2010 to voting tory in 2015.
  Stephen Lloyd has told me that he thought he was safe. Liberal Democrat HQ thought that we would hold Eastbourne (and Lewes) so money was diverted elsewhere. My canvassing made me think that he would win by a landslide and I told him so. Everybody in Eastbourne knows someone who has been helped by Stephen Lloyd, Mr Eastbourne.
  The parliamentary result was very close. In all-up election for the borough council there were three Liberal Democrat gains, providing a working majority.
  Vote Labour and get a Tory. Vote Green and get a Tory. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000684
  The tories’ net gain was 24 seats, our net loss was 49, so Eastbourne was only part of the story, but it hurts most.
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35152295.
  Stephen Lloyd was a good MP and I hope he will be back.

• John Marriott 27th Dec '15 - 10:47am

  Richard,
  What you say highlights some issues we need to address.
  1. You can win in local government because many people will still vote for the individual rather than the party.
  2. People like Stephen Lloyd, no matter how assiduous they are, can be swept away because many voters in General Elections are influenced by other factors than just electing an MP.
  3. Many of the public are only in it for what they can get out of it. They’ll tell you anything and nothing on the doorstep.
  4. Sophisticated targeting of electors usually requires plenty of money, which the Tories have in spades.
  5. If we can’t hold on in places with a history of voting Lib Dem, like Eastbourne, what chance have we got where I live, where Lib Dems are rapidly becoming an endangered species? (It’s Lincolnshire, by the way.)

  I’m sorry for Stephen Lloyd. Whenever he appeared on TV he always struck me as a decent bloke. Like you, I hope that he does get back, if that’s really what he wants. If I had been in his place, I think I might have told some of my erstwhile ‘supporters’ to ‘go forth and ….’

• Richard Underhill 27th Dec '15 - 11:57am

  John Marriott 27th Dec ’15 – 10:47am
  “1. You can win in local government because many people will still vote for the individual rather than the party.
  2. People like Stephen Lloyd, no matter how assiduous they are, can be swept away because many voters in General Elections are influenced by other factors than just electing an MP.”
  That may be generally true, but not in Eastbourne. Stephen Lloyd has coat-tails.
  3: I am not so pessimistic about the public. Many of them are simply getting on with their own lives. Some of them make a final decision close to polling day.
  4. Please have a look at “The Political Brain”. You can have a billion dollars, be 22% ahead in the polls and lose.
  5. A previous Tory MP for Eastbourne told the House of Commons that it had “been held in the Conservative interest for 100 years” (not accurate actually) which may be part of the reason why Labour does not do well in Eastbourne.