Tim Farron went and opened Jane Brophy’s campaign HQ in Oldham West and Royton today and, as is the way with these things, was surrounded by lots of colourful diamonds:
Delighted to join @Jane4OldhamWR & kick off our Oldham West & Royton campaign today. Jane is a brilliant campaigner pic.twitter.com/96rdPyZNzs
— Tim Farron (@timfarron) November 7, 2015
I would strongly recommend that if you can get over to Oldham between now and the by-election on 3rd December, you do – for your own benefit as much as any help to the campaign. Yes, Jane Brophy is a fantastic candidate, a brilliant social liberal who really knows how to serve her community, and of course we want to support Tim Farron in the first by-election of his leadership, but there is a veritable cornucopia of good things that we can get for ourselves too. Here are just three.
Feel the Lib Dem Buzz
Once you’ve felt the vibe of a Lib Dem by-election hq, you will never want to miss another one. It’s great fun, you meet people from all over the country whom you wouldn’t necessarily meet at Conference and it’s actually good for the soul. My first by-election was Littleborough and Saddleworth (which is the neighbouring seat to what is now Oldham West) back in 1995. I met people there who are friends to this day. We only went to help for a day and then go on to have a bit of a touring holiday but we ended up staying for the whole week and went back for several weekends and the last week because we were having such a good time.
People have even met their partners at by-elections. I was particularly proud at playing “Cilla” during the Livingston by-election to a couple who celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary last week.
There is a real frisson of excitement around a by-election and it’s good to be around it.
Help your local campaign
If you’re looking for ways to invigorate your campaigning locally, a busy by-election is the place to be. The most up to date campaigning tricks and techniques will be there for you to see. Also you might learn about things as simple as ways to organise your delivery rounds or canvassing. If you’re in the office doing clerical work, learn from how it’s managed. You can pick up tips on all aspects of running an election that you can develop and use back home.
You would hope that it would be shining Lib Dem examples of brilliance that you would learn from but the other parties can teach you stuff too. There was one Scottish by-election where a former Lib Dem parliamentarian was seen shinning up a lamppost at dead of night to nab an SNP poster which, he declared, was brilliant in its simplicity and effectiveness. Well, he may not have put it quite like that, but you get the drift.
If you are the only Lib Dem in your village, used to leafletting with only your dog for company, it can be really invigorating to be part of a big group going and covering loads of ground really quickly.
Be dragged from your comfort zone
Littleborough and Saddleworth 1995. Eve of poll. “Can you drive?” said the man doing front of house. I said I could. He gave me a set of keys. “see that transit van over there…..” I’d never driven anything bigger than a Metro before. I’d never driven anything anywhere as busy as Shaw that day. I was petrified. I tried to run away, but there was a job to be done and nobody else to do it. Before long, I was driving it like it was the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo. And Erlend Watson, who was my passenger, survived to tell the tale too. Our mission was to deal with the consequences of some opposition dirty tricks relating to posters.
If you have a spare day or two in the next 4 weeks, head down there if you can. All the details you need are here.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
29 Comments
What is it about Lib Dems and by elections? I get the feeling that, for many, the campaigning is more important than the winning. You can’t knock their enthusiasm; but, please, isn’t it about time they woke up and smelled the coffee?
Wake up, smell the coffee… And go and deliver your Good Morning leaflets.
By-elections provide a good opportunity for Lib Dems for the reasons above and because they give us an opportunity to fight on a more level playing field.
Has anyone analysed the paper to vote ratio of many of our more recent ‘campaigns’, Neil? The chances are that, in a parliamentary by election, national opinion will far outweigh local issues. That ‘level playing field’ seems mighty steep to me at the moment. But don’t let that put you off (and I’m sure it won’t if you are addicted to that Lib Dem buzz).
@JohnMarriott We smelt the coffee in May but Byelections are a different cup of tea . We dont go into this one with any expectations because we have very little evidence. The Polls seem to say that nothing much has changed since May while Local Byelections show us doing much better, take your pick. We just dont know so we might as well give it all weve got.
If you’re having coffee before delivering leaflets, my advice would be to stick to decaff.
Paul,
I’ve been involved in enough elections over the years to know that there is a difference between elections for local councils and those for parliament. It would be dangerous to base any judgement on results since May for local councils, where local issues and the calibre of the candidate may very well dominate. In May 2015 General Election the Lib Dem candidate in Oldham West got 3.7% of the vote and ended up in 4th place just ahead of the Green Party candidate. With Labour polling nearly 55% of the vote and UKIP and Tory around 20%, it would appear to be Labour’s seat to loose. The Lib Dems’ average national poll rating is around 7% at the moment. Do we really think ‘Good Morning’ leaflets etc. will make any difference to the result of the Oldham West By election? Still, I’m sure that those planning to get involved will have a great time. After all, that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it?
@John Marriott
“Do we really think ‘Good Morning’ leaflets etc. will make any difference to the result of the Oldham West By election?”
Yes, they will. Anybody asking the question (at least in a serious way) clearly knows very little about fighting elections.
Mr Shaw,
As someone who has NEVER lost an election in a Tory dominated area since I first stood in 1987 I think I know something about winning against the odds. ‘Good Morning’ leaflets might make a difference if the result is close; but do you honestly believe that, on the evidence so far, our party will figure this time in a close finish?
If I had had £1 for every FOCUS and/or election leaflet I had delivered either for myself or a colleague over the past forty years I would be a very rich man by now. Yes, that question was serious! Of course I would love to eat my words; but, sadly, in the eyes of many people at the moment, our party is an irrelevance at national level.
We are neither the go to party of protest any more, nor are we the new kids on the block. If we are going to regain any of the momentum we enjoyed up to 2010 we cannot rely on the old and trusted methods of campaigning according to the ALDC bible.
John Marriott
Thank you for your insight.
I had planned to go to Oldham, but I don’t think I will now since you have pointed out that we didn’t do very well in May. I shall smell some coffee instead.
I shall set aside my previous thoughts that I believe in Liberalism (not conservatism, not socialism, certainly not UKIP-pery) and felt that the best way to advance liberalism was by building up support. Instead I shall …..
Well, I’m not sure beyond that coffee, but I’m sure you have something in mind.
[And I realise now that I was clearly wasting my time in a recent by-election where we went from 11% to 28% and from 4th to 2nd!]
One thing is certain, if we go into Elections knowing we are going to do really badly then we will. In fact we dont know & have almost nothing to lose in any case – we are certainly not going to be the focus of media attention unless something really weird happens.
@John Marriott
Based on your response you clearly don’t know much about fighting elections, or at least fighting elections which don’t carry a reasonable certainty of winning.
Perhaps if you had occasionally lost an election, as I have twice done in Tory dominated areas since I won my first seat off the Tories in 1981, you might have greater insight. In both those cases I knew (or at least was fairly certain) I was going to lose my seat. You give the impression that your response would have been to give up. That wasn’t mine.
Because I fought a good campaign (including Good Morning leaflets, as it happen!), despite the expectation I was going to lose, it made it more likely that I would get back on the Council four years later – which is exactly what happened.
Put simply, campaigning properly in Oldham over the next three and a half weeks lays the groundwork for the future.
Incidentally, if you think you have better ideas than ALDC about effective campaigning, then why no spell them out?
Are there any polls to tell us whether John Marriott is right or not?
Paul Barker: “if we go into Elections knowing we are going to do really badly then we will”
No. That’s called “magical thinking.” Wilful ignorance does not improve results. Reasonable expectations allow one to improve results by changing tactics and also prevent unreasonable disappointments.
Dear Mr/Mrs/Ms Crewegwyn,
Why is it that we often fall back on sarcasm when people have the impudence to question our core beliefs?
I have to confess, however, to having made a mistake. What I should have said that I have never lost a LOCAL election, whether for Town, District or County Council. What I forgot to add (mea culpa) was that I came a poor third in the Sleaford and North Hykeham Parliamentary Constituency in the 1997 General Election. Which is why you shouldn’t assume that success in local elections will instantly translate, if at all, into success in national elections. My own experience in 1997 was a salutary lesson for me that the dynamics in a general election or a parliamentary by election are very different. Results in parliamentary by elections, from my experience, often have more to do with the national mood than with the effort put in on the ground. The same applies even more so at a General Election.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see the Lib Dems reach double figures in Oldham West; but the only way we are going to regain some of the seats we lost last May is for ALL Lib Dem MPs to step up to the plate and work together. They could start by at least being more visible at PMQs when Tim Farron gets his three weekly bite at the cherry.
The simple fact is that good mornings increases the number of your voters who turn out. Delivering more leaflets increases the number of people who receive your message. Knocking on more doors means you have a better knowledge of who and where your voters are. More posterboards mean more people feeling like you have a chance to win and that it’s okay to vote for you as their neighbours are doing so as well.
None of these in themselves means you’ll win an election if your messages or candidate or the like are crap but all else being equal you’ll certainly do better with them than you’d do without them.
And, in this case, where we’re the official opposition on the council, identifying more supporters and potential activists/members, building up our local campaigning infrastructure, retaining our deposit and improving our performance significantly on May are all very worthwhile goals to aspire to.
If we improve our vote share from, say, less than 4% to 12% then we can say we tripled our voteshare and the media will at least remark that we’re making a recovery. If we don’t put any effort in we’ll get squeezed to oblivion and the media will say it’s more evidence that the Lib Dems are doomed.
I wonder James Marriott, if the media reporting the Lib Dems are doomed and fared miserably in a by-election will help or hinder your local campaign at the next local elections?
It’s also my opinion that anyone can win a local election through the strength of their personal vote and the work they do as a councillor. But it takes much more than being just anyone in order to be able to win a local election because they’re a Lib Dem and because local people want to vote Lib Dem rather than despite it.
Sorry, obvious mistake in my above comment – I meant to say John Marriot.
Dear Mr Shaw,
I’m sorry to hear that you have lost the occasional election. When I started in 1987 as an SDP/Liberal Alliance candidate, the town where I lived was complacently rock solid Tory. From nothing, I, three fellow party members plus several helpers, built up a core of support which carried us through the next two decades and saw us successfully defend and win further seats at all three tiers of local government.
That meant delivering FOCUS leaflets throughout the year and not just before elections, assiduously courting the media and being there when things happened. That I was an absent father at times when my sons were growing up goes without saying. It’s a miracle my marriage survived. As for my career in teaching, shall we say that it stalled?
Unfortunately, being a teacher, parent and elected representative meant that my activist role took rather a back seat in recent years, with the result that our local party is now facing an existential crisis. Perhaps I should have tried to lose a few times to try to concentrate on keeping those activist plates spinning. Being a non Conservative around here is a bit like keeping the weeds at bay in your garden. As soon as you relax your effort they just grow back, which is precisely what is happening now.
You see, to succeed as a Lib Dem you often have to run just to stand still. Perhaps you lost because, occasionally, you walked rather than ran, which is unfortunately what I, at the age of 72, am now forced to do!
Also John, as someone who, when visiting friends, was called upon to help collect nomination signatures for Lib Dem council candidates in Lincoln on the day of the nomination deadline, I think I can safely say that no matter how good you are at retaining your own seat in local elections the level of campaigning in your neck of the woods in general could use some improvement – the kind which can probably come from learning new skills at by-elections and encouraging enthusiasm rather than being disparaging about the enthusiasm of others.
Just a thought 🙂
@David Allen
“Are there any polls to tell us whether John Marriott is right or not?”
No such polls could exist. What John Marriott is saying is that there is little or no point in contesting an election hard if you are fairly certain you are not going to win.
That is a matter of judgement, so not capable of being “right” or “not”.
North Hykeham where John Marriot is a cllr looks like an interesting place
https://libdemfuture.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/lib-dem-future-tragedy-of-lib-dem-councillors-turned-winning-independent-in-clegg-era-leads-to-conservative-poll-win-in-lincolnshire/
Dear George,
I am not disparaging the enthusiasm of others. It’s how this enthusiasm is channelled that concerns me. Your remarks about Lincoln are very apposite. I assume from your photo that you have the enthusiasm of youth. I was young once, believe it or not. However, now in my dotage, I have seen enough bandwagons go by (and have jumped on many of them) for one lifetime. Given my age, like Moses wandering around with his people in the Sinai, it’s unlikely that I will reach the Promised Land. You might be more fortunate.
Regarding Simon McGrath’s comments about North Hykeham, suffice it to say that at least three of the ‘Independent’ Councillors would never have left the party if they had been given the support and endorsement of the constituency party when they asked for it. As far as learning new skills is concerned, it really isn’t rocket science. It’s being consistent, being honest about what you can actually achieve and keeping in touch which is something my local party finds difficult to get its head round.
Mr Marriott,
You are not questioning my core beliefs and my apologies if my sarcasm offended – in the light of the posting you made while I was writing it I would have tempered my remarks.
But it would be helpful if you explained just what we should be doing differently in respect of Oldham.
If you are saying that we need to approach such byelections differently then I would agree. I have been saying so since 2008 when I was closely involved in a parliamentary by-election. I have views on how that approach should change (which I’m disinclined to voice on a public forum).
But I still think we should work Oldham hard.
Simon Shaw challenges me to come up with some non ALDC campaigning tips. It’s hard to argue with the masters of ‘pavement politics’, isn’t it? After all, when it comes to campaigning they did literally write the book! That’s not my argument. In the light of the events of the past five years or so, what is needed is a new edition.
The Pavlovian response to the Oldham West by election, as shown by many respondents, is that all we need to do is carry on as usual, get the ‘buzz’, flock together, do those residents’ surveys, produce a ton of FOCUS leaflets, knock on doors and, bingo, it’s business as usual. I doubt it.
I’ve personally played an extremely small part in the resurgence of multi party politics in this country over the past forty years. Hundreds of people have worked their socks off, both in the wings and in the spotlight, to get Lib Dem Councillors and MPs elected. It’s not the campaigning that is at fault, it’s what happens when these men and women get elected when things tend to fall apart.
With one or two notable exceptions, our control of or influence as coalition partners in local councils has plummeted over recent years. Whilst coalition with Cameron’s Tories was a gamble worth taking, some of the choices we made whilst in government painted us into a corner from which we struggled to emerge. The difference between us and Tory and Labour, for example, is that, for them, the campaigning is only the first stage in a process actually to make things happen, whether at local or national level. It’s this next stage that, once reached, we find hard to hold on to.
So, like Sisyphus, as some of us start pushing that stone again, are we going to spare some time working out what we are going to do BEFORE we hopefully manage to get to the top of that hill again?
@John Marriott
“Simon Shaw challenges me to come up with some non ALDC campaigning tips. It’s hard to argue with the masters of ‘pavement politics’, isn’t it? After all, when it comes to campaigning they did literally write the book! That’s not my argument. In the light of the events of the past five years or so, what is needed is a new edition.
The Pavlovian response to the Oldham West by election, as shown by many respondents, is that all we need to do is carry on as usual, get the ‘buzz’, flock together, do those residents’ surveys, produce a ton of FOCUS leaflets, knock on doors and, bingo, it’s business as usual. I doubt it.”
Yes, we get that you doubt it, it’s just that you are not advancing any alternative.
You said “If we are going to regain any of the momentum we enjoyed up to 2010 we cannot rely on the old and trusted methods of campaigning according to the ALDC bible.”
That’s why I asked you that if you think you have better ideas than ALDC about effective campaigning, then why don’t you spell them out?
John says pretty much the same things that have now become accepted orthodoxy in my local party. “The old ways don’t work, we need some new ones”. Ironically the same people who are saying that are those who said I should have been doing things different when I was running winning campaigns in 2011-15 and they, well, weren’t!
6 months on and there is a yawning chasm ast to just what these magical new ideas are. – indeed a yawning chasm of any sort of activity. Hopefully the inadequacies of our opponents will not make that a terminal problem!
Dear Simon,
Let’s see if the ‘campaign’ in Oldham West manages to push our vote share into double figures. If it does then I shall have to eat humble pie. If not, then we really have got to think again.
John Marriott 8th Nov ’15 – 10:09am
“When David Bellotti won the Eastbourne by-election Mrs Thatcher fell, the Heselteenies made a comeback and started to review the Poll Tax. One more heave and they’ll abolish it entirely.”
We won the Ribble Valley by-election and a Conservative government with a majority in the Commons abolished the Poll Tax, as forecast.
The momentum was helpful to the by-election victory in Kincardine and Deeside. David Steel pointed out that we had won in the South of England, in the North of England and in Scotland.
The momentum raised morale going into the general election.
Liberal Democrat politics should be fun.
Laughter also came from Tories Norman tebbitt and Boris Johnson. The Tory candiate had supported his party’s policy, including the poll tax, and became depressed for a while.
Richard Underhill says that Lib Dem politics should be fun. Having just read the latest revelations from Alistair Carmichael, I reckon they are flippin’ hilarious. So that could be TWO by elections then? Plenty of work for Simon Shaw and his ALDC mates.
That coffee smells mighty strong to me!
“If you think you have better ideas than ALDC about effective campaigning, then why don’t you spell them out?”
I’ll have a go. FOCUS politics worked well for us when we were generally viewed on the national scene as a nice bunch of no-hopers, and could show on a local stage that we could do effective work. Things have now changed.
We have trashed our national reputation. Sorry, this is no longer a partisan anti-booker point that I am making, it is simply the truth, unpalatable as that may be.
We do however have a new leader with new ideas and the capability to make a new start.
So speaking generally, we need to spend less time on the potholes and pavements, more time on restoring our national reputation and showing that we have changed.
If you are normally Labour but you don’t like Corbyn, where will your vote go? Might it go to the party which opposed outright the tax credit cuts, and makes that its headline message? Given that we need to increase our vote by just over 1% to save our deposit (unlike May), mightn’t that be doable?