Three reasons why you should go to Oldham West for your own good

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:

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

Read more by or more about , or .
This entry was posted in Op-eds.
Advert

29 Comments

  • Liberal Neil 8th Nov '15 - 10:46am

    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.

  • paul barker 8th Nov '15 - 12:09pm

    @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.

  • Nick Collins 8th Nov '15 - 1:45pm

    If you’re having coffee before delivering leaflets, my advice would be to stick to decaff.

  • 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!]

  • paul barker 8th Nov '15 - 6:13pm

    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.

  • David Allen 8th Nov '15 - 6:32pm

    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.

  • George Potter 8th Nov '15 - 7:07pm

    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.

  • George Potter 8th Nov '15 - 7:08pm

    Sorry, obvious mistake in my above comment – I meant to say John Marriot.

  • George Potter 8th Nov '15 - 7:12pm

    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 🙂

  • Simon McGrath 8th Nov '15 - 7:55pm
  • 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.

  • 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!

  • Richard Underhill 9th Nov '15 - 3:11pm

    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.

  • David Allen 9th Nov '15 - 4:35pm

    “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?

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Paul R
    “That means guaranteeing fair wages, empowering communities to shape the policies that affect their lives, and fostering a culture of accountability” The...
  • Mary Fulton
    So increases in income tax and cuts to large part of the public sector? Sounds like a recipe to ensure Reform UK builds its support even further…...
  • Ellyott
    The strange aspect is that the UK functioned relatively better, in terms of getting houses built, labour intensive industries, much bigger numbers in the armed ...
  • Linda Chung
    Vince - a great article, wide ranging and thought provoking. Even more interesting are the comments - but I find the China-bashing a bit superficial. Linda Ch...
  • Suzanne Fletcher
    @BigTallTim I don't know whether "the party" agrees or disagrees as nobody has said anything. Given everyone is saying anything publicly I can only assume they...