Out Campaigning Across The Country

If you're a keen reader of my blog I bet you have been very disappointed and possibly close to suicide with the lack of activity over the last week. But don't worry, I haven't died, I have just been very busy campaigning up and down the country.

Last weekend I was in Newark helping out with the parliamentary by-election there. Working with the local Newark CF and nationally with Colonel Cooper I am trying to get a good presence in the area for CFers. I hope with the election day countdown approaching people from London, Manchester and Birmingham will come and help.

Myself and Oliver Rainbow the Newark CF Chair.

The Newark candidate is Robert Jenrick who is currently very busy travelling across the whole of the very large constituency of Newark. Our campaigning paths crossed last Monday in the beautiful village of Normanton where he met several locals and delivered lots of his local newspapers.

That same day I also met the leader of the Conservative group on Bassetlaw council, Keith Izzard. Bassetlaw council elects in thirds and Keith's seat is one chosen this year to be up for election. Keith seems a great councillor who has done a lot in the community. He was born in the ward and has stayed there for the large part of his life, if not all. He also knows the best pubs to go to for a lunchtime break.

On the Monday I also went campaigning in Tuxford with Therese Coffey MP, one of the first MPs to come to Newark. We started out doing some canvassing and later in the day switched to deliveries. We got the whole of the town covered which was very good going for our small team. I was also present when Therese got bit by a dog, which resulted in national headlines on the BBC.

I genuinely hope that our efforts will pay off and that Robert Jenrick will be elected to serve the people of Newark. Robert is hard working whilst the UKIP candidate, Roger Helmer, is not.

I suspect this picture will be put on many leaflets about UKIP in Newark.

Later on in the week I went back to Wisbech to help in the Roman Bank by-election against the local UKIP threat. You'll be pleased to know we won and achieved a swing from UKIP in comparison to the county elections last year when they won the seat. From what I saw people beginning to become fed up with UKIP locally because they are doing stupid stuff. This includes voting against a local train station*, wanting to charge for parking in the market square, bullying adopted children, using racial slurs at a fire station and being guilty of benefit fraud to mention a few things. It's a very long list of cock ups. Also it's virtually impossible to contact the UKIP county councillors by email, letter or carrier pigeon. No wonder the electorate are turning away from them.

Sam is a friend of mine and I know she will do a lot of work for all the villages in the area. This is why I did lots of extra campaigning for her until the sun went down on the days leading up to the by-election. It's great to see all our hard work paid off.

Photo courtesy of the Wisbech Standard.

These were the results:

Clark, Samantha (Con) 763

Lay, Alan (UKIP) 537

Diggle, Barry (Lab) 193

Murat, Erbie (Ind) 70

Court, Stephen (Lib Dem) 24

Turn out: 29.7 pc

Photo courtesy of the Wisbech Standard.

*A universally popular idea in Wisbech.

Canvassing in Newton

Today I went out with a group of local Conservatives to canvass for my friend Sam Clark who is standing as a candidate in the Roman Bank by-election. She hopes that the people of Leverington, Newton, Tydd St Giles, Foul Anchor, Tydd Gote, Gorefield and Four Gotes (yes that is a lot of villages) put their faith in her to become the District councillor for the area. It was a lovely day and we had an equally good response from the people we spoke to.

Sam with Cllr Steve Tierney in Newton.

The team split up into half with myself, Sam and my Cllr Steve Tierney canvassing in Newton whilst the others leafleted Tydd St Giles. Newton is a lovely village with some equally great people. They also all know Sam. Seriously, I knocked on so many doors today and virtually all of them knew who she was. Sam is a resident of Newton and also a parish councillor. Sam also organises lots of the villages events and helps people in the community with her job as a carer. It's no wonder why she is very well known then. Sam is also very well known in the surrounding villages for her community efforts. She is a real champion of the people and does a lot for them. Just think about all the other things she could do if she was elected as a Fenland District Councillor.

As you can probably can guess, we got a very good response  on the doors. People are very keen to vote for Sam and the Conservatives, which is always good to see. The leafleters also had a very good day doing a large portion of the ward. All in all we probably canvassed 1/5 of the ward and leafleted 1/4 too. A very successfully day. But we will not stop until all the votes are in and Sam has hopefully been elected to serve.

Residents of Roman Bank please vote for Sam Clark on the 8th May. She is a local champion who will help sort your issues.

Tide Has Turned?

Yesterday was the Elm and Christchurch by-election and so that I do not keep you in suspense for too long the people of the ward elected Michele Tanfield, the Conservative Candidate, to look after their interests on Fenland District Council.

Here are the results in full:

Candidate	Votes	%
Trevor Brookman (Lib Dem)	27	3.9
Alan Burbridge (UKIP)	234	34.1
Dean Reeves (Labour)	51	7.4
Michele Tanfield (Conservative)	301	43.9
Phil Webb (Ind)	73	10.6
Total	686
Turnout	17.90%

Why is this significant you may ask? Well Elm and Christchurch was the best part of the Waldersley Ward which they won from the Conservatives by a fair margin in the 2013 County Elections. Indeed back in May in the villages of Elm and Friday Bridge UKIP got 50%+ of the vote. UKIP in this area could have and did easily argue they were the party in charge of the Wisbech area and that they just had to wait for a by-election or the 2015 district elections to take virtually all the seats. They did have between 40-60% of all the votes in all the electoral wards in May so this was not a ridiculous argument.

At the Count.

How times have changed now in Elm and Christchurch as UKIP have lost just under 1/2 of their vote and the Conservatives getting a 10% swing from UKIP since the County Elections. UKIP are really worried by this result because they should have won. This was quite evident from their faces last night at the count and their chatter about what to do about a very bad result. Their 'revolution' in politics seems to be faltering.

There are of course problems with comparing the 2013 County Council elections with this recent by-election. For starters Walderesley, the county ward for Elm and Christchurch, contains villages on the other side of Wisbech like Wisbech St Mary and Parson's Drove. However the electorate in that area overwhelmingly voted for the local, and well liked, Lib Dem candidate Gavin Booth so much so he beat the Conservative candidate, Will Sutton. Also the turnout during the May elections was higher at 28%; it is possible that the people who didn't turnout at this by-election were overwhelmingly UKIP supporters who just couldn't be bothered to vote. I view this somewhat unlikely however because usually the electorate splits out across the area in the same way. Furthermore, if the above scenario is true it would mean UKIP arn't doing a very good job in the County Council because clearly their voters won't vote for them again because they have done a shoddy job.

It would thus seem that UKIP have lost a great deal of support then. This is probably due to the fact in the 6 months since May they have done nothing except avoid council meetings or attack children in care, obviously this is poor representation of the community. The fact that they don't seem to care about the locals in their wards could also be another factor. UKIP have done barely any campaigning and have thus not seen or listened to the people of Elm and Christchurch. This is the complete opposite of the Conservative approach to local government as they always put in a lot of effort to see and listen to people's views. Indeed Michelle did this even when she was chased by the Elm village goose yesterday whilst trying to speak to some residents. It was a very funny sight.

The goose that chased after Michelle.

UKIP in this by-election were clearly a coalition of opposition voters instead of just disaffected Conservatives, as at least 64% of their vote is not from previous Conservative voters*. UKIP thus get 20% of the vote in each election from Lib Dems, Labour and other anti-establishment voters in the Wisbech area. Coincidently the mid twenties is where the Lib Dems, the previous local opposition party, used to score in the by-elections they stood in.

During the break between the end of polls and the count I went for a KFC, I hope Oliver Cooper is very proud.

It would seem the pendulum of election results which was previously against the Conservatives in the Wisbech area is beginning to swing back. Indeed many previous UKIP activists have now joined the Conservatives and helped Michelle win her victory, which UKIP looked very pleased about during the count. UKIP are thus now the main opposition in Fenland but they need a national revolutionary air to actually win seats, something that I doubt they will experience ever again except in the next Euro elections. However this no excuse for Conservatives to rest on their laurels, the fight will always be hard with a party which gets 35% of the vote when they just put their name on the ballot paper. Let's take the fight to UKIP.

The Conservatives with Michelle in the middle after the count.

*In reality the 64% figure is likely to be higher because many of the people who vote UKIP only started voting in the 2013 County Council elections according to electoral role statistics.

Conservative Garden Party

A few weeks ago was the Hill and Staithe branch garden party which was super. The Pimms was flowing and all the games were great. To show off what went on a video has been produced of that fateful day (it contains a very bad picture of me).

Many thanks goes to those who organised it and David and Judy Hodgson for the use of their wonderful garden. Oh yes, and if you're wondering about the weekly poll lowdown it will be up later.