We are in the early weeks of the coalition Government. Hopefully it will be successful and last the projected five year term.
My recent experience working on the Conservative campaign in Dudley, suggests that even if we are nearly five years away from the election we should start our local campaigns now. In Dudley South we won with a convincing majority that more than reflected the national swing. In Dudley North we narrowly lost against a Labour MP who defied the national trend.
Since the election, I have tried to analyse the reasons why we didn’t quite achieve our goal in Dudley North. It is true that the sitting MP (Ian Austin) fought a vigorous campaign and had several visits from Cabinet ministers to support him, however we more than countered that by the energy of our campaign, led by our splendid candidate (Graeme Brown). We also had numerous visits from well known national figures, including Michael Howard and William Hague. During the period of the official election campaign we out did the local Labour team in almost every respect, particularly the huge numbers of leaflets we got out.
So why didn’t we achieve the result that we needed and more importantly that the Conservative party needed to push it that little bit closer to the overall majority we were all hoping for?
Whilst I must stress that these conclusions are my own personal beliefs and don’t represent the views of my association as a whole, I believe there are two reasons that stand out to explain our failure. The first one is to do with the nature of our enemy locally. The Labour party in Dudley North didn’t just fight an election campaign over the few weeks between Gordon Brown visiting the Queen and his eventual departure from Downing Street, they had been fighting the campaign ever since the last election. Their local team had been infiltrating each and every good cause, charity group, protest group, club and general interest group in the area for years before anyone was even thinking of an election. The sitting MP was using his network of contacts to steadily get himself known to organisers of each group and more importantly to get himself photographed with them. This then led on to a superb relationship which he had established with the local media, particularly the local Newspapers. Rarely a week passes without the MP being pictured at some event or other with a Dudley based cause. By the time of the election, he and his supporters were so deeply embedded with these interest groups that other parties that approached them were rebuffed in case it offended the local Labour team.
The second factor was equally as important. The Conservative message failed to resonate with a very important sector of the electorate in Dudley. These people are naturally right of centre in their values but don’t see the Conservative party as representing them. The marketing and PR people love to categorise people, so I shall create my own category “Jack The Lad” Jack would have been classed as working class in the old days but now as with so many other things the old certainties have blurred and he isn’t entirely sure what bracket he fits into. He works for a living and believes that everyone should earn their keep. He enjoys a bit of fun but doesn’t like people who overstep the mark; indeed he is very much in favour of harder penalties on people who break the law. He values the traditions of his country and his area and has a major problem with immigration, especially from people with different religious and cultural backgrounds. The other defining characteristic of Jack is that he has totally lost faith in the political class. He is so angry with the political scene that he may even slam the door in a canvassers face or even better give them a couple of minutes of choice language accusing them of being “all the same”, “a bunch of crooks” and “a waste of space” along with some phrases I shan`t repeat !
“Jack the Lad” has incredibly strong political opinions and yet he is amongst the most likely people not to vote or to make a meaningless protest vote. In close wards like Dudley North, where a Six Hundred vote majority is all that is keeping the Conservative party out, we need to give Jack a warm welcome and the hearing he feels he has been denied in recent years. Of course, it is very difficult for a mainstream political party to entirely represent Jack; his views would be unpalatable to a large proportion of the electorate. What we do need to do is to make sure that the phrasing of our message is a little more direct, particularly on issues like immigration, where we have a good strong policy but the message really didn’t get through to a significant proportion of the electorate.
To win an overall majority in the future, the Conservatives need to appeal to “Jack the lad” and his female equivalent, maybe “Jackie the Lady”. Our national message needs to be more direct, no couching hard policies is in vague language, we need to stop worrying about being considered “nasty” and be more interested in appearing in touch with the genuine anger and frustration that so many “ordinary” people feel. As well as this adjustment to our national message, we need to follow the example of the Dudley North Labour party and begin campaigning now. We don’t need to spend a fortune on masses of leaflets for this, what we need is to have activists working within the community. We need the Conservative party to be associated with the local charities and campaign groups, rather than allowing self righteous Labour activists to claim this ground as their own.
The campaign for the next General Election started on the Seventh of May. If we haven’t started working hard in our communities yet, then there is some catching up to do. Should the effort seem a little early, just think of the experience of Dudley North and the awful feeling of narrowly losing out and having to face the prospect of Five more years of having your area represented by a Labour MP !
I love sport, particularly football. However I am finding the noise made by the trumpets constantly blown by the South African fans is driving me insane. It has actually weakened my will so much that I can no longer fight the wife`s desire to switch over to Coronation Street, Eastenders,Neighbours or whatever other trash TV she fancies
The solution must be to tell the SOuth Africans collectively where to shove their trumpets..please note William Hague !
The Campaign Against Political Correctness is holding its first Midlands meeting on Wednesday of this week, at Sedgley Conservative Club.
I am looking forward to the event and hoping very much that the people who have committed to come through Facebook turn up as well as a couple of others through the advertisement I placed in The Express and Star.
The aim is to organise ourselves with people becoming post holders. From there we can begin picking on stories we find through the media .
If we get between 5 and 10 committed members we should be able to make a real impact in the area.
