I am literally just back from a pretty exhuasting couple of hours on the doorsteps around Christchurch Road. Amazingly the cloud seems to have kept people indoors and there were plenty of people to chat to about their issues. One thing that came through loud and clear was the failure of the government to tackle anti-social behaviour; it’s strange that as a SNAP Chairman in Bowthorpe and Costessey I see the work that goes on behind the scenes and the amount of investment the police are getting. Yet residents don’t feel as if they are being supported and think that yobs are running the streets. Note to Labour: maybe endless investment isn’t working here – is there something we are missing? Employment, education, family breakdown? Also there was a strong feeling against Labour’s re-organisation in the NHS and the creation of polyclinics. I spoke to 3 retired nurses all of whom were shock by the plans. One (blush!) even came to watch Niki George and myself pass a motion against the plans in council last month.
Generally people felt that Brown’s time was up. Again and again they asked when the election was; and the truth is that both he and I dont know! The feeling od the doorsteps was positive – we got 2 new members and residents saying that they hadn’t voted Tory in years but were going to next time. Perhaps thats why Brown isn’t so keen on the election?
Clegg’s rather badly thought out energy policy yesterday has already been trumped by the rather more practical and down to earth plans by Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne on introducing energy discount cards. The Tory plans will help around 4,000,000 people with energy bills and largely those on the bottom of the income scale. The Citizens Advise Bureau thinks its brilliant and it’ll be run through the Post Office, helping to keep branches open. And after all, why should people who don’t pay by DD or have a bank account have to then pay more for their energy?
Spot the difference; Clegg spouts some “finger in the wind” policy on energy in which they admit to having not done all the research and the numbers don’t add up. Cameron’s Conservatives launch a plan which is practical, pragmatic, helps people and tackles one of the major issues facing families.
So what now? Well, I wouldn’t mind betting this idea now forms part of the government’s autumn economic fightback…
Here he goes again … Nick Clegg was apparently the name with the presentational skills to save the LibDems. And today he uses an in The Independent to convince people he feels their pain in the credit crunch. And how does he do this? Well, by claiming his mortgage repayments have soared (on his second £1.3m home in ultra-fashionable Putney) and by saying he’s had to stop shopping at Ocado (the on-line version of Waitrose) and go to Sainsburys instead. Gosh it must be tough for him on just his MPs salery (oh, and his wife’s full time job as a lawyer). Come off it!
This isn’t feleing the pain of the credit crunch, this is a very wealthy man who’s been slightly inconvenienced by it all. So, why say anything at all?
I’m pretty sure no political leader is that impacted – they’re not losing their homes, or turning off the heating or not buying food for their family. But so desperate is Clegg for any publicity that he’s willing to say anything. This may have been a good idea in the eyes of the LibDem spin doctors but I imagine a lot of people who have really felt the crunch will be very angry that their plight is the equivalent to having to shop at Sainsburys rather than Waitrose.
Having been on my holidays, one of the joys of returning home is sifting through all of the political news that you missed whilst in depeest darkest Devon. I understand that the LibDems are now mooting (but not confirming) abandoning Local Income Tax and instead backing a reformed land tax instead. So, let’s check on how all these LibDem sacred cows are doing …
The party of “1p extra tax for education” is now the party of low taxation. The party of “tough liberalism” now believes you shouldn’t lock anti-social youths up. The party of students is now considering dumping its opposition to fees. The party of scrapping the council tax now thinks it may be OK after all, if you tweak it a bit.
Only really the Iraq cow is still there, although fewer and fewer people notice that cow despite the occassional “moo”. And what do I make of all this? Step forward my new hero … Nick Clegg.
Now you’ll be aware (and nobody believed me at the time) that I thought Chris Huhne was a much more dangerous LibDem leader for Cameron to deal with and that Clegg was a lightweight who would snap in the political wind. Although popular opinion may think that to be true (there is no love for Clegg on the doorsteps of Norwich), I think Clegg is (to quote Cameron) building a house with solid foundations.
Gone are the populist LibDem ideas, where the party would run a whole election with only 3 policies (Iraq, council tax and tuition fees). Gone is the idea that the LibDems are too nice, or too gutless, to have a real policy debate. Clegg is taking on his party and good on him.
Whereas the LibDems used to debate goldfish in bags or porn for 16 year olds, they now seem to be addressing some of the “hard choices” (copyright, T Blair) facing Britain.
Nick Clegg has taken a long hard look at their policies and their election result – LibDem PPC in Guildford, Ms Doughty, has long said that the LIT cost her seat in 2005 because it hammered young professionals and working families too hard. She was right, and credit to Clegg for seeing beyond the populism of “axe the tax” to think about an alternative. Louise and I were hundreds of pounds a year worse off under the LibDem LIT at a stage in our lives when we can least afford it, with 2 young kids. How many more people in our position realised this and didn’t vote LibDem as a result?
Even though many of these cows are not yet dead, just wounded, it is clear that Clegg may yet have the political courage to take on his party – even the SDP dwellers. I don’t yet know if he is Blair circa 1994 or Cameron circa 2006, but Clegg has shown in the last week he may yet surprise us all.
Both this morning and late this evening I’ve been out and about helping our teams deliver a massive new survey across the City. The results are coming back fast; and the one strange aspect is the total lack of LibDem support. I’ve been arguing for a while that their support in Norwich is just seeping away and our survey proves just that.
Interestingly today Nick Clegg signalled that his party will now focus on the 50 most vulnerable Labour seats; finally taking notice of those both within and outside of his party who have said that to hurl themselves against the Tory brick wall was nonsense. Fighting Tory seats like mad when Cameron is riding high just made no sense; and now Clegg has admitted this.
However, one LibDem I spoke to today said that this strategy didn’t go far enough. He pointed out that in some seats where the Tories are third but with a large vote – such as Norwich South – that Cameron’s Party could still come through to either come second or even win. Certainly the Sunday Telegraph had Norwich South in the blue column as a result of their polling. My LibDem source says that they ought to target seats where the Tory vote is low and where Labour wouldn’t expect a challenge – a sort of Manchester Withington kind of seat, it was suggested.
Either way, Clegg is still polling lower than Campbell and is still struggling to control his fractious party. A change of electoral focus is a good start to turning that around.
An interesting slip in today by a former LibDem Agent in Norwich where he laments the rise of the Greens in the City.
He says: And the Greens are becoming better organised at first-past-the-post politics. They managed 22% and a close third behind Labour and the Tories in Brighton Pavillion at the last election. And at local government level in Norwich, where the Lib Dems ran City Hall as recently as 2006, they are now the official opposition to Labour. All of the Green gains have been deliberately targeted at Lib Dem expense, and all in what should have been a strong Liberal Democrat Parliamentary prospect at the next election.
Notice the tenses there — it should have been a strong parliamentary prospect but now, persumably, isn’t. Recently the EDP said that the Green gains and the strength of the Tory recovery locally made the seat a “4 horse race”. One City Councillor even predicts that the LibDems may come 4th.
Interesting times, wondering if the LibDems can hold it together.
I am not going to go into automatic gloating mode; I don’t think this decision is the end and a lot could change – oddly enough the same warning I gave Labour after the previous unitary announcement, so I’m going to take my own advice.
But on the face of it, thinks look very bad for Morphew and his Green / LibDem allies on this, as the Boundary Commission says its preferred option is a full county unitary (including Lowestoft) that effectivly abolishes Norwich City Council.
City Hall have invested a lot of time and money into this; often in the face of strong opposition from us Tories, the wider public, parish councils and fellow authorities. If it all falls by the wayside – or worse, produces a result that is the opposite to the original unitary theory of an urban focus – then heads will roll at the council and rightly so. Already tonight what is clear is that Councillors from all parties are at each other’s throats – again. But whilst the Tory split on the issue has been clear for some time, the vicious manner in which Labour and the LibDems have turned on each other has surprised even me.
The media have also taken a hit; the EDP has been running a pretty consistent anti-unitary line (it sells well in the county) but the Evening News will have to choose its editorial line pretty carefully tomorrow to avoid looking rather outdated and simplistic. It has been running an almost minute-by-minute response today and the EEN should be congratulated for their depth of coverage.
Also the question being asked is if City Hall can stop the leakage of support; Cllr Ramsay pointed out tonight that the Chamber of Commerce have backed away from supporting a greater Norwich and now believes that “bigger is better” and we ought to have a “Norfolk wide lobby”. Many groups will back the winning side; City Hall have I think just days to stop this leakage.
We had a Councillor briefing tonight and the feelings amongst my colleagues in other parties was still utter surprise; I think that the searching for a reason “why” will start tomorrow. One source said to me that they don’t know how Norwich managed to throw it away from this position; I think that when we re-read the BC report in the light of tomorrow morning, we may once again be left with more questions than answers.
This on the ultra-loyal LibDem Voice site clearly indicates why the Liberal Democrats have learnt nothing from their by-election batterings; the results were poor for them because they spinned their chances, ramped them up and then looked utterly foolish when it all went wrong. Now they’re at it again in Glasgow; admittedly not claiming they are going to win, but not far off it. But the idiotic thing is the claim about the Tories not bothering – Cameron has visited, as has IDS. We’ve selected a first class candidate too and I understand from friends that things are in full swing. The voters of Glasgow will see through it, and when the results come in the LibDems will once again have egg on their face.
Yesterday’s EDP reported that Nick Clegg got himself tied in knots when trying to justify the LibDem claim of a “two horse race” in Norwich South. The EDP put it to Mr Clegg that it was, in fact, a “four horse race” and his arguement against this seemed pretty lame. Apparently people know that there is no point voting Green or Tory, says Mr Clegg.
Well try telling that to the residents of Bowthorpe, Thorpe Hamlet, Mancroft, Eaton, Nelson, Wensum, Town Close, University – all of which elected either a Tory or a Green or had one or other in a close second place.
If the LibDems go down this line, they’ll make themselves look “very stupid indeed”. Not my words – that of a wise old bird from the party I spoke to yesterday.
But don’t expect the LibDems to be honest with anybody anytime soon.
I have long been an opponent of the slogan “Winning Here”, used by the LibDems, on the basis that if you don’t win here or people don’t believe you can win here then you look utterly ridiculous. Indeed, if you misjudge that prediction then people are less likely to believe it the next time.
For example, there was much amusement in Norwich when the LibDems continued to use that slogan here in 07 and 08, given the dreadful results for the party which saw a volley of seats lost. Knocking on doors around the City, people couldn’t believe the arrogance of the party when everyone knew the LibDems were losing ward after ward.
They are now also taking a kicking from their own side, for ramping their chances in Crewe and Henley and then failing miserably in each. After all, if the LibDems don’t win by-elections then what are they for?
After the events the LibDems are saying they didn’t expect to win either seat; yet oddly enough before the poll these self same LibDems were saying that the result was too close to call!
I understand why they do it; because the LibDems must counter the wasted vote arguement and convince people they are worth voting for because they can win. However they do tend to use it no matter where in the country or what the previous results.
I hope the LibDems have an internal debate about their campaigning style, though from my experience of them they’ll stick their fingers in their ears and hum until it all goes away. I think they ought to ask why they are the most negative and the most personal of all the parties. But, again, I’m sure they won’t.
We await the slogan and the campaign in Glasgow East with some anticipation.
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