I'm Not The Only One...

to have had a car crash during this election:

Blue Labour

From the Guardian, interesting (my bold stuff):

David Cameron's promise of transparent politics has been called into question after it emerged that Conservative candidates are systematically refusing to answer questions about their personal views.

The non-partisan network Democracy Club helps individual activists to come together to find out more about how their own prospective MPs would use political power. During the months ahead of the general election the organisation has built up the most comprehensive database of candidates ever compiled, and in the last few days the activists have been harnessing this to ask would-be parliamentarians where they stand on everything from CCTV cameras to gay parenting.

More than 1,000 of the candidates have now responded in full, and initial survey responses have been made available on-line at TheyWorkForYou.com. But there is striking variation in the degree of participation by politicians of different stripes.

With several days still left to fill in the forms, a clear majority of Green and UK Independence party candidates have already responded in full, as well as an impressive 43% of Liberal Democrats. Labour's response rate lags behind these parties at 27%, but is still well ahead of the Conservatives – who have responded in only 6% of cases.

Pressed by the Guardian to explain why Tory candidates were proving so coy, Seb Bacon, the founder of Democracy Club, cited some of the correspondence that club members had been receiving. Many Conservatives had explained their failure to answer using an identical phrase: "Surveys like this can often simplify policies too far and might not properly represent the nuances of party policies."

The stock response stood in contrast to the personal emails that many club members wrote to the candidates in requesting their views.

Stock responses is nothing new with this Tory party as highlighted here with their response to the Albion Alliance pledge. The article continues:

The apparently coordinated refusal of Cameron's Conservatives to answer the questions will stir memories of the early days of New Labour, during which the party's high command expressly forbid candidates to take part in newspaper surveys. Bacon said he was concerned that the Tories might be missing whole point of Democracy Club: "This is not a question of some media survey, but a matter of individual constituents using our network to test the individual views of the people who want to represent them. The questions we have posed are expressly not about party policy, but about where individuals stand."

The revelation will be particularly embarrassing for the Conservatives, since Cameron has personally argued that new technologies should be used to open politics up. The party made much of its decision to hire Tom Steinberg, the founder of MySociety, which runs the websites TheyWorkForYou and FixMyStreet as well as having links to DemocracyClub itself.

Oh and via email today I received my 'personal' contract with Cameron. What a load of waffle.

Brown Insults The Voters Again

As expected, Brown's greatest weakness is that he struggles to engage with ordinary voters, and given his form a gaffe was always likely to happen during this election and so it's proved:

Brown: Very good to meet you, and you're wearing the right colour today. Ha, ha, ha: How many grandchildren do you have?

Duffy: Two. They've just got back from Australia where they got stuck for 10 days. They couldn't get back with this ash crisis.

Brown: We've been trying to get people back quickly. Are they going to university. Is that the plan?

Duffy: I hope so. They're only 12 and 10.

Brown: Are they're doing well at school? [pats Duffy on the back] A good family, good to see you. It's very nice to see you.

In the car

Brown: That was a disaster. Well I just ... should never have put me in with that woman. Whose idea was that?

Aide: I don't know, I didn't see.

Brown: It was Sue [Nye] I think. It was just ridiculous.

Aide: I'm not sure if they [the media] will go with that.

Brown: They will go with that.

Aide: What did she say?

Brown: Oh everything, she was just a sort of bigoted woman. She said she used be Labour. I mean it's just ridiculous.

What's revealing apart from the bigoted comment just because someone raises the issue of immigration, is that Brown immediately looks for someone to blame. This occurs again in his apology Labour member sometime later (my emphasis):

Many of you know me personally. You know I have strengths as well as weaknesses. We all do. You also know that sometimes we say and do things we regret. I profoundly regret what I said this morning.

I am under no illusions as to how much scorn some in the media will want to heap upon me in the days ahead.

See what he did there? Passed the blame onto those nasty press types. It reminds me of an exchange on Have I Got News For You, just after host Angus Deatyon was caught being naughty. After some relentless and expected abuse, Deayton tried to blame the others, and here's Paul Merton's brilliant riposte:



Yes Gordon in a way it's all our fault.

Labour Lies

Today I received a number of political leaflets as part of the free electoral address. The Labour leaflet, shown on the left, was intriguing:

"Labour's local achievements..."

...it says and lists Didcot Health centre as one of them.

That's funny, because my wife is, unfortunately a regular user of that particular centre and we have it on good authority from two doctors that they themselves campaigned, organised and funded the new health centre themselves.

Oh and here it is from the Oxford Mail 2006 (my emphasis):

DIDCOT'S ageing health centre could be demolished by Christmas to make way for a new £4m building.

Plans for the new centre, and those for a temporary surgery, have been submitted to South Oxfordshire District Council.

GPs have part-funded the project - to the tune of £250,000 - and are confident it will get planning approval next month.

They hope the centre will be completed in early 2008.

The plans are the culmination of a seven-year struggle by GPs to replace their current home, which they say is no longer fit for purpose.

And:

Dr David Ebbs, who is leading the project, said: "If things go according to plan, we want to be off the site and have the building knocked down by the end of the year. The building project should start in the new year and run through until the end of 2007, with us back in in early 2008."

He said the developers had already ordered the temporary building in anticipation of planning approval.

He added: "The timescale is so tight, the developer is taking as much risk as is commercially viable."

He urged patients to be understanding.

"The temporary building is not fantastic because we have had to compromise on space due to a lack of funds," he said.

And from 2007:

DOCTORS have won their seven-year campaign to replace Didcot Health Centre, which will be knocked down next month.

Apparently, though, it was all a Labour achievement.

Vote Small, Think Big

Hattip: Governmentitus

Tory leaflet

I received my first Tory leaflet today at home. Whoops!

Betting odds

ToteSport has me (as 'other') 40/1 to win the seat at the general election, better odds can be found at Betfair where it's 50/1.

Twitter

For the general election I have opened a twitter account, you can follow my campaign progress here. I have added a widget to my blog as well.

Leafleting

and canvasing today around Appleton Wootton area

The Wheels Come Off

Guido has a fascinating post here of the panicking within Tory headquarters about the election. It's worth reproducing here in full (my emphasis):

"I said a prayer last night to St Jude the patron saint of hopeless cases but I doubt that even he will know what to do about the Tory Party campaign.

Something is happening with the electorate. Today’s YouGov poll showing the Lib Dems in the lead is astonishing. Perhaps the public anger with MPs over their expenses and the banking crisis will result in the body politic being smashed to bits. What was true on Friday may not be true any longer.

The stakes are now very high. If David Cameron does not become PM on 6/7th May the electoral system will be changed. The first past the post system will be abolished and there will not be a Tory government for a very long time if ever again. Perhaps John Major will go down in history as the last Tory PM.

This is the most inept Tory campaign in living memory. I know there have been some dud campaigns in the past. William Hague’s was pretty awful but in a way it didn’t really matter. Nobody believed he was going to win the election. This time all the Tory Party had to do was to ask the electorate a very simple question: “Do you want five more years of Gordon Brown?” The answer would be no. The election campaign strategy was therefore all about giving the electorate the reasons for voting against the PM. The M&C Saatchi adverts were a good start.

As I have mused before the Tory opinion poll lead was always based on the public’s loathing of the PM rather than any real affection for David Cameron. The election campaign should therefore have been negative in tone and focused entirely on the PM’s failings. Whatever the focus groups may say negative campaigning works.

There doesn’t appear to be any strategy. The ‘big society’ idea has come and now disappeared. The most popular Tory politician Ken Clarke has become the invisible man. He may be campaigning in marginal seats but he should be on our TV screens every morning, noon and night. And then there is the policy that dares not speak its name. Immigration. Every canvasser I have spoken to from every party has told me that the issue that keeps coming up on the doorstep is immigration. This is a Tory issue and yet I am told that there will only be one day when it is raised. What is going on?

The decision to agree to the televised debates may well have cost the Tory Party the election. It has elevated Nick Clegg from nowhere to equal footing with the PM and David Cameron. Whichever adviser or guru advised David Cameron to take part made a terrible mistake.

So is the election campaign lost for the Tory Party? I don’t think it is. Nick Clegg’s policy agenda is very attackable. As Alan Johnson put it in Saturday’s Times: “The Lib Dems are soft on crime, inept on asylum and bloody dangerous on national security.” How Labour candidates must wish he was the PM …

The Tory Party needs to mobilise its key assets such as Ken Clarke and talk about Tory issues such as low tax, immigration and Europe. It needs to connect with Tory voters and indeed anybody who doesn’t want Gordon Brown for another five years. Thatcher’s great strength was her ability to connect with ordinary voters, particularly those who wanted to better themselves. Politics is all about helping people to realise their dreams. We seem to have forgotten this.

Winning the election didn’t seem that difficult a task until the televised debate which should never have happened. Even now there is a simple message. Only a vote for the Tory Party will prevent Gordon Brown being PM for the next five years. Nick Clegg is never going to become PM but he could help Gordon Brown stay PM. This is all very reminiscent (in reverse) of the US presidential election when Ross Perot enabled Bill Clinton to beat George Bush.

I attended a lunch on Saturday at which many Tories were present. The conversation inevitably focussed on the election. There was a mixture of gallows humour and real concern. Nobody could understand why with the most unpopular PM ever and an economy on its back the Tory Party is polling at the same level as Michael Howard when he lost in 2005. The only solution was to have another glass of wine.

Perhaps this is all some terrible nightmare and I will awake to discover that I have missed the real campaign and that David Cameron is PM with a majority of 52.

Is the game up for the Tory Party? What does the Tory Party need to do to regain the political initiative? Will the Nick Clegg bubble burst?"

Ah immigration. I can absolutely confirm that so far for me, immigration is a major concern - it comes up on the doorsteps regularly. Of course there's a perfectly simple reason why the Tories are avoiding it like the plague and that is because they would have to be honest about the elephant in the room - the European Union. Kerry McCarthy, the Labour blogger also mentions the immigration issue, and again avoids the EU dimension.

And that's the problem, the main issues are being ignored or at least fudged and the British people know this. "I'm not voting, they're all the same", I've simply lost count of the number of times I've heard this phrase.

Peter Bingle's absolutely right, the Tory strategy has mainly been about 5 more years of Gordon Brown. But it smacks of sheer arrogance, aside from the fact that it's a damming indictment on Tory policy if that's all they have to offer - vote for us otherwise the others get in.

Just because Labour is utterly useless doesn't mean we should automatically vote for the Tories. Tory bloggers are quick to jump on UKIP as almost being at fault for a possible Gordon Brown win. But it's not UKIP's fault or anyone else. If the Tories don't win this election then it's their fault for failing to offer policies that the voters want. It reminds me of a Tory activist a few days ago who arrogantly raged; "you're stealing our votes". They're not your votes, they are the British people's votes, all we try to do is try to earn them.

Arrogance and complacency is the Tory downfall.