A great video from Islington Liberal Democrats:
Vince made clear on Peston today that we are definitely going for this group of people.
There will be a series of tailored social media adverts in 21 European languages. The adverts are fronted by MEPs from those countries and they encourage EU citizens to register and vote Lib Dem in May.
Vince said:
The local elections represent a huge opportunity for EU migrants, who contribute so much to our economy and society, to make their voices heard. We are reaching out to them to vote Lib Dem and help us support their rights and ultimately secure an exit from Brexit. Their support could make a vital difference in close council seats.
Tom Brake added:
The Lib Dems are the only major national party that has campaigned for an exit from Brexit and the one that has led on rights for both EU migrants in the UK and Brits living in the EU in the wake of Brexit.
We want EU migrants to help us fight the hard Brexit pursued by the Conservatives – and backed by Labour – at the forthcoming council elections. There is still the opportunity of an exit from Brexit.
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5 Comments
In the recent successful East Devon DC and Exmouth Town Council defences, we used a letter to “G” voters (non-British EU residents voting in local elections only) as part of our campaign, unfortunately not delivered to every one, because of the appalling weather. Having spent most of the day at or between polling stations, I know that some of them turned out in the snow, telling me they were supporting us. It was a brief, but I think effective letter, and bearing in mind our strong Independent challenge going on here (EDDC election only won from the Indy by 11 votes), target letters of this kind can be the difference between winning and losing.
The Express has reported Vince’s comments with the following heading: REMAINER ARMY: Vince Cable reveals he is building youth movement to stop Brexit. And a load of abusive comments follow the article. https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/926933/Brexit-EU-Vince-Cable-Lib-Dems-youth-movement-stop-Brexit-remainers
Other than as a vague and unreliable indication of what he/she might think about other issues, why should i care whether my local councillor is for or against Brexit?
It certainly has the potential in London to be significant in terms of numbers. Elsewhere maybe less so – but as Tim points out if you win by 11 then pretty much everyone is significant!
Peter – the point would be (in crude electioneering terms) these are people who don’t often vote and if they did would probably break more for the LIb Dems than other parties so makes sense from that point of view. The problem with targeting a group of people who don’t usually vote is you can’t rely on them overmuch (or at least you don’t know whether you can till too late!)
There were nearly 200 in our middle of town ward. That’s about 4% of our electorate. We also tried to canvass as many as possible, as we did postal voters. We combined the message that we as candidates and the party wanted to protect their interests as EU citizens with the old standard of “send a message to Theresa May (and we mentioned Jeremy Corbyn), so it wasn’t just (in Peter Watson’s terms) “whether my local councillor is for or against Brexit”.