It's A Sad Day, But Don't Count The Conservatives Out

Today has been a sad day for the Conservative movement with the defection of Douglas Carswell to UKIP. People on the libertarian right-wing of are shocked, filled with disbelief, and are quite sad at Carswell's departure. Whatever banner he is standing under now his ideology is right. #ThingsElliottSays has shown admiration for Douglas Carswell on a number of occasions and is saddened by his departure.

The Conservatives are sad to see Carswell defect.

But clearly Douglas has forgotten about how these principles can be implemented and has joined UKIP, even though they are now a far cry from the libertarianism he represents.This country needs the Conservatives to win the next general election because if not we'll have to suffer the most left-wing government since the 1970s. What Douglas has sadly done is abandoned this position and made what he wants a lot harder to achieve.

And so to cut a long story short there is going to be a by-election in Clacton. This will be a very hard fight, much harder than Newark. But thank god we had Newark because the Conservatives now have a winning campaign strategy. Furthermore, even though we won that by-election there were many errors made which cost us thousands of votes. These however have now been learnt. Because #ThingsElliottSays was the Nottinghamshire CF Chairman at the time of Newark he knows about these mistakes and that they have now been fixed.

#ThingsElliottSays and Nottingham peeps in Newark.

CCHQ has learnt a lot of lessons in the way it runs by-elections and campaigns against UKIP. Despite what the national media made out and what it looked llike to the ordinary activist. It was not all plain sailing Newark for the party. There were several errors made in the way campaigning was organised but CCHQ has now done something about this. We now know how to make the waters smoother when it comes to the campaigning machine.

The Conservatives campaign is going to be much more well oiled in Clacton.

The Party will also try and get many more people to come. I suspect there will be more visits made by those on the PAB, more visits by committed Conservative MPs (there are a lot in East Anglia), and more importantly a Party Conference beforehand to rally even more Conservatives to the cause.

Expect to see these chaps out and about a lot more.

RoadTrip is also going to be much bigger as well. I expect there to be a sizeable increase in the 600 RoadTrippers who went to Newark. CCHQ now puts a lot of energy into CCHQ for starters. What is more the RoadTrip now has a united #TeamPaterson in the CF national exec. It is almost priceless to have a CF 100% committed to RoadTrip2015. Long gone are the days of petulant girls or people living in Dubai throwing spanners in the works.

Carswell is odds on to win this by-election but there are plenty of insider reasons why the Conservatives can actually win. #ThingsElliottSays can't wait to go for another seaside RoadTrip and have a cigar from Robert Halfon MP.

Freedom

I am free. The yoke of exams has been thrown off and now I have a month of doing whatever I want to do with my friends. Huzzah!

My last exam was on medieval history, so a good quote from the Magna Carta is in order.

"No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, or in any other way destroyed, except by the lawful judgement of his peers"  

Derby Hall is becoming like Milbank.

So what will I be doing in the 3 weeks I have at university, excluding attending copious amounts of parties? Well next week my room will become like CCHQ, I half expect Grant Shapps to turn up. For it is the Wollaton West by-election so my time will be spent helping the Conservative Candidate James Spencer. Please vote for James.

Grant Shapps is getting behind James Spencer. Are you?

#CFcantelect

If you have a ballot for the CF elections, lucky you. I have not and seemingly most others have not got one too. Although I find it odd that I can get emails about the CF conference but not a voting email. Soon to be gone Chairman Ben Howlett has told us why this may occur.

So let's start of  by saying what you can do if you haven't got a ballot paper. You can go onto this website and submit details to try speed along the process of your 'batch' being sent out https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEJNSDVJWWxkS0xyYUdpVURZSlZ0ekE6MQ. Also try contacting your local association they may not be using Merlin and so you may be able to prompt them to send in your information. If that doesn't work, I would email Alan Mabbutt at alan.mabbutt@conservatives.com .

But let's think of the future now. Seriously this situation has to change. Quite frankly I'm surprised this way of voting has lasted this long. I think online is probably the best solution to the problem using emails but can't at least CCHQ ask all the associations to send in the details of all association members of voting age to them? If they are unable to, can't they send out ballot papers earlier and have a longer period of elections? There probably is a backlog of people complaining? Merlin, the very old wizard of CCHQ, has a lot of problems to fix.

Everyone who hasn't got a voting email please kick up a fuss.

Update

Hi Elliott,

Simple reason you did not get a ballot, there was no email on your MERLIN record.  You should get Debbie to correct that.

I will arrange for a ballot email to be sent by next Tuesday.

Alan Mabbutt

Nominating Officer

Conservative Party

Hooray a solution!