This party has given me so much. I joined as a 16 year old and it has given me lifelong friends and an extended family.
Today I am asking a favour from you. I hope you know me well enough to know that I only do that when it matters. I am asking for your help to support my good friend Jane Brophy and our Oldham West & Royton campaign.
I was there a couple of weeks ago to launch the campaign and to be honest you will struggle to keep me away! Our MPs and virtually all of our peers will be going too to support Jane. So I am asking you to help her too.
The energy of the campaign was brilliant. It was great!
We are campaigning on our record – the only party that actually opposed tax credits, fought the welfare changes and is standing up for small business and entrepreneurship. We have a strong message. We just need to sell it.
So can you spare a day to go up to Oldham? If you can’t go can you spare a few hours to phone people in Oldham?
The address of the campaign HQ is 51 Union Street, Oldham, OL1 1HH and if you want to make some calls then drop an email to the team and they will be happy to help:[email protected]
When I was elected leader I said that elections matter. They do. We need to confound the critics and show the fightback is happening and to do that I need your help.
* Tim Farron is Liberal Democrat Spokesperson on Agriculture and MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Call for Southwell's importance to Byron to be recognised
John Stoa Original Art exhibition #dundeewestend
The Muesli Assassins
Katharine Pindar
David Allen
David Raw
Anthony Acton
Richard
8 Comments
I’m up on Sunday. It’ll be nice to get back to campaigning.
I’ve been twice and weather permitting will go again tomorrow. The office is really easy to get to. Just get on a tram, either from Rochdale station or Manchester Victoria Station and get off at Oldham Central. The HQ is just 50 metres away from the tram stop.
I’m intending to travel up from Essex the day before the by-election early in the morning, stay in Bury that night and then help again until 1pm on Election Day before returning home. If anyone needs a lift or overnight accommodation in nearby Bury do get in touch!
I’m going to be there the day of the actual vote, from lunchtime til about 6pm. Worth the trip from London, and my best mate works in Oldham, so perfect.
But, whoever’s in charge of this there, please, please, please, think very carefully about the Bar Charts in future! i.e., probably don’t use them. http://labourlist.org/2015/11/lib-dems-his-by-election-campaign-trail-with-classic-dodgy-bar-chart/ One of my pet Lib Dem peeves, and one the wider public shares, and our opponents obviously are not blind too. And honestly, just a played out cliche about us now, one we should expunge. Accurate stats are more effective, and can be used effectively (i.e, to demonstrate the need for more varied council representation). It’s one of those issues where I don’t even care if studies have shown it works, I’m just not having any of it, on moral, political and aesthetic principle. Rant over!
I largely agree with David. In too many places now local politics is too diverse to submit to simplistic two-party politics, and although most parliamentary contests are still 2-party contests, history is no judge of which will be the two ‘frontrunner’ parties. Did anyone think 5 years ago that UKIP would be a serious ocntender for Oldham West?
The thing is people know this, or at least are begining to realise this, and they pay more attention to the credibility of claims to be ‘the only alternative’ to X.
If we can’t make credible, measurable claims in this regard, we look stupid.
Now, I am just opinionating, and I don’t want to be a distraction from serious campaigning, but if in Oldham West, instead of a bar chart, there had been a pie chart of membership of the council, and a short piece below outlining that LibDems represent local credible opposition to Labour as the second-largest group on that council and are always committed to local politics and the local community (in contrast to UKIP), now you’re talking something that’s still graphically simple, is convincing and credible, grounded in fact, challenges the narrative that we are desparate has-beens and doesn’t involve the hyperbole of ‘can’t win here’.
To me, the bar chart David just linked to (OK, it was on a Labour website) reinforces the impression of the ‘deparate has-been’ in its stridency.
PS – I don’t think we’re has-beens. I just think we have to find a new language to convince everyone else.
@David Faggiani
“But, whoever’s in charge of this there, please, please, please, think very carefully about the Bar Charts in future! i.e., probably don’t use them. http://labourlist.org/2015/11/lib-dems-his-by-election-campaign-trail-with-classic-dodgy-bar-chart/ One of my pet Lib Dem peeves, and one the wider public shares, and our opponents obviously are not blind too.”
So if our opponents don’t like our literature, we should drop it??
To me that is a totally fair bar chart, and one which makes a really pertinent point.
I think the bar chart reminds people that a vote for the LibDems is not a wasted vote. Strikes me as a good bit of campaigning in a seat that is very difficult for them. If the party is showing any sign of recovering it needs to be at least 3rd in at seat where it was polling 20% in the 2005/2010 general elections. Surely with such a weak Labour leader you will pinch some of their vote.