Anders Hanson

It would be ridiculous to suggest that the Liberal Democrat result in Crewe & Nantwich wasn’t a disappointment. But given the huge determination to give Labour a beating, I suppose it was an achievement to not be squeezed even more than we were. A slight drop in our vote is in hindsight not a bad result, but given the work that went in and the amazing reception that our candidate Elizabeth Shenton was getting, it is still a huge let down.

The biggest lesson of this campaign is not the anger that people felt towards Brown and the way that people are sick to death of Labour. Nor is it that the Conservatives are now suddenly a credible party to vote for yet again, although both of those are clearly significant lessons from Crewe & Nantwich. No, the most significant thing that has come out of this campaign is that the Tories are learning how to campaign effectively. I have never seen a Conservative activist at 4am before, but when I got to the street where I was delivering Good Mornings, the Tories had been there already and were still delivering. The quality of the Conservative literature in the by-election was good, and included magazines, blue letters and Focus-style ‘In Touch’ leaflets. They clearly still don’t get why the Liberal Democrats do these leaflets and what the theory is behind them as some of them weren’t as effective as they could have been. But the fact they are copying them shows that they realise they work and they are catching up. The Liberal Democrats have got used to being the best campaigners in politics and punching above their weight, but this by-election shows that things are changing and we can’t rest on our laurels.

The huge swing to the Conservatives was not unexpected to anyone who saw the canvassing returns (which as the person who input them all in to EARS I did), but the reassuring thing for Liberal Democrats is that there are a lot of people out there who are still undecided about the other parties and are tempted to vote Lib Dem. The Lib Dem hope was that on polling day, the huge number of undecided Labour and Conservative voters would decide to vote Liberal Democrat. Unfortunately they didn’t, and the motivation to give Labour a kicking was too tempting, something that could still scupper us as a party though if we don’t play the next general election right.

Crewe & Nantwich Constituency reminds me a lot of Eastleigh Constituency. It is surrounded by more affluent constituencies, and despite having a large formerly industrial town at its core, the constituency is largely made up middle class housing estate and well-off towns and villages. So when the media talks about this by-election as proving that the Tories can now win in the North and pick up the votes of ordinary working class voters who were once reliable for Labour, I am less convinced.

Firstly, Gwyneth Dunwoody clearly had a very high personal vote, far more than most MPs have or think they have. So her death simply meant that some of that personal vote will unwind and so instantly making the seat more marginal., despite Tamsin Dunwoody being the candidate.

Secondly, my perception is that many of the traditional working class Labour votes just stayed at home, and some even switched to the Lib Dems (as was shown in the local elections when the Lib Dems picked up Crewe South from Labour). Much of the constituency, including Crewe itself, is made up of middle class housing estates of the sort that swung from Conservative to Labour in 1997. The fact that they swung back to the Conservatives this time should be a worry to Labour anyway, but these were the people who moved on mass to the Conservatives. The fact though that some working class Labour voters can move to the Conservatives or just not vote, shows how much the negative image of the Conservatives has been neutralised.

The Crewe & Nantwich by-election along with the local and London mayoral elections are an undoubted triumph for David Cameron. But what I don’t detect is a huge enthusiasm for Cameron being Prime Minister. Cameron is not yet Blair. People want to beat Labour, and they will vote for who can do that best. That is why the Liberal Democrats were squeezed so badly in Crewe & Nantwich and in the London mayoral elections, despite having the best candidates in both. The positive for the Liberal Democrats is that the party can do very well at the next general election where people believe they can win. That is why the Liberal Democrats did very well in places as diverse as Sheffield, South Lakeland, Burnley, Eastleigh, St. Alban’s and Cheltenham in the local elections.

As I’ve mentioned candidates, I have to say something about Elizabeth Shenton. Most Liberal Democrat staff have at some point had to work for a candidate that they either don’t like or don’t think is any good. But in this by-election, everyone loved working for Elizabeth Shenton. She was really good at talking to voters, listening to what they had to say and relating to what they had to say, but she was also continually cheerful, she mucked in and helped with the mundane tasks like cleaning and washing the pots, she would also make a point of chatting to everyone who was there full-time and asking them how things were going. Most of all though you got a real sense that she actually cared about people and was in politics for all the right reasons. I sincerely hope she does eventually get elected to parliament as she is probably the nicest and most genuine candidate I have ever worked for.

Talking about her candidature though brings me on to the small controversy about us re-selecting our candidate for the by-election. It did have some affect on our vote, but only in a very small way, and with some people it was because they believed the previous male candidate had been ditched so we could have an all-woman shortlist. Well, we did have an all-woman shortlist, but that was simply because the best applicants were women. I still think it makes sense to re-select in these circumstances as the pressure and stress placed on a Lib Dem candidate at a by-election is very different from a general election. To put it simply, how many PPCs normally have to face Jeremy Paxman?

This posting has turned in to a huge tome on the by-election. So I will finish off with two bits of trivia and one slightly enigmatic comment.

• Gemma Garrett and her Beauties for Britain party are planning to stand in Henley, and contrary to the media coverage, they aren’t complete bimbos and they seem quite bright actually.
• Two of the people working on the Lib Dem campaign have history with Tamsin Dunwoody. I was the regional agent in West Wales in 2003 when she was elected as an AM there. Hywel Davies who ran our by-election print room in Crewe was the Lib Dem candidate against her when she lost in 2007.
• Ask people who were there on polling day about the man with the owl.

All in all, and despite me being unhappy with having to go there straight after the local elections and despite the result, this was one of the most enjoyable elections I have been part of.

Photo: Taken by me. This was the view from my office window throughout the by-election. Fairly mundane admittedly but I got quite attached to the comings and goings at the Chesapeake factory behind our office.

We always knew that winning control of Sheffield was a real possibility, despite the (now ex-) Tory councillor saying in her leaflets that the Lib Dems couldn’t possibly take control. But the result of Thursday’s election was absolutely stunning. It wasn’t just the upper end of what we expected, but the upper end and then some. The best examples of how big a win it was are:

• In 2007 we held East Ecclesfield with a majority of 74. This year we won by 692.
• In 2007 we gained Hillsborough from Labour by 491 votes. This year we took our second seat in the ward with a majority of 1,119. As a result the Lib Dems elect another blogger - Joe Taylor - and someone who I think will go a long way in the council group.
• Last year Gail Smith reduced Labour’s majority in Mosborough to 349. This year in a double-vacancy not only did Gail Smith and Chris Tutt become the Lib Dem councillors for the ward, but Gail got 791 votes more than the highest placed Labour candidate. It was particularly good to see us win this ward at last as we have long thought it was somewhere that should be good territory for the Lib Dems. It is also the ward I stood in ten years ago as a paper candidate.
• Finally, the most amazing result was in Walkley. Last year Penny Baker gained the seat from Labour with a majority of just 36. Despite a huge campaign from Labour that included some nasty and scaremongering literature, Lib Dem Diane Leek won with a majority of 780. Although we have had councillors in Walkley for around 15 years we have never managed to get a large majority, this year was the exception. Diane is also hugely popular in the party in Sheffield, and so everyone was really pleased. The final irony in this result was that the defeated Labour candidate Veronica Hardstaff, who is a former councillor for the ward, is the sister of Chris Tutt who we elected as a Lib Dem in Mosborough.

For me though the best result was in Dore & Totley where Colin Ross beat Anne Smith, the last Conservative in the city. We all went through a rollercoaster ride of emotions at the count as each ballot box made us change our view as to whether we would win or not. But winning this year has not only rid Sheffield of the Conservatives, but it has also ended the view that we are never able to win the final seat in Dore & Totley. This was our fourth attempt at defeating the final Conservative in the ward. In fact in the past we have even managed to win the ward by more than 2,000 votes one year, but then lost by 300 the year after. It just never seemed possible to win that last seat. When I started working for Sheffield Hallam Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg said to me “whatever you do, you have to make sure we hold on to the last Lib Dem seat in Dore & Totley”. Well, here we are three years later and not only have we held on to the last Lib Dem seat, but gained the other two as well. I am also really pleased for our new councillor in the ward Colin Ross. He was councillor for Dore & Totley until 2004 when he lost his seat after a very personal campaign against him by the Tories. This year he had to endure another negative onslaught from the Conservatives, but he won anyway without having to stoop to their level. We had so much ammunition we could have used against Anne Smith, but we decided not to use it.

The other surprise in this election was how well we did in Darnall and Arbourthorne wards. Although we had a very keen and hardworking candidate in Darnall who we thought could do well, it was still impressive to see him move us from third to second and cut Labour’s majority from 1,111 to 555. In Arbourthorne it was an even bigger shock as we never even delivered a leaflet and yet cut the Labour majority from 1,269 to 512.

So now the elections are over, the hardwork starts. The Liberal Democrats have an extensive and interesting manifesto that will both make the city a lot greener, but also make a transformation in the way it is run. There are some exciting times ahead.

Every so often I post something that I found interesting on The Local - a website that gives you news about Sweden in English. I’ve spotted something today that was interesting but also highly appropriate given my latest postings on local politics here in Sheffield.

A study by the Captus think tank in Sweden has concluded that the policies of the Green Party would actually do less for the environment than those of the mainstream parties. The main argument being that Greens tend to oppose economic development and modern technological solutions, despite the fact that both of these can help us to find solutions to environmental issues. Probably the best thing to do is read the article yourself as it sums the issue up quite neatly and is very much where I come from on the Green Party in the UK, even though this article is about the Swedish Green Party.

The article also reminds me of some of the excellent analysis from Joe Otten on why he left the Green Party and joined the Liberal Democrats. A quote from Joe that pretty much sums it up (although I can’t find it now and so I am paraphrasing) is that whereas the Greens look at climate change with panic and despair and jump at the first solution they come across (usually sackcloth and ashes) the Liberal Democrats see it as an opportunity to harness modern technology and innovative solutions to find ways of combating climate change and reducing our impact on the environment, whilst also creating new jobs, opportunities and maintaining a high standard of living.

Many Liberal Democrats see the Green Party as next best after the Liberal Democrats. This is clearly part of the reason the Greens are currently trying to make a pitch for Lib Dem voters to back Sian Berry, their candidate in the London Mayoral election, rather than Brian Paddick. But although Lib Dems should rightly approve of a party putting the environment at the top of the agenda, the whole Green Party approach to the environment and society in general is far from liberal. Given that the Greens have forged an alliance with Ken Livingstone it is clear that they are very much a part of the old-fashioned lunatic left that the Lib Dems oppose. If you see yourself as a liberal (big L or little L) then you should never consider backing the Greens.

It’s Easter weekend, but unlike the rest of the population who either have time off with their families or go to church, I am spending it at work.  Easter normally falls right in the middle of the local election campaign so I am used to it, but despite being so early I am still hard at work artworking leaflets for the Liberal Democrat local election campaign.

This weekend has been unusually quiet and peaceful.  Normally the Liberal Democrat office is complete pandemonium and is busy with people coming and going either on party business or to see the MPs office.  But this weekend the MPs office is closed and the majority of party activists have been slogging away on the streets all day long.  So I am currently enjoying a a rare moment of peace and quiet to sort out the office, to plan what is coming up next and to do the bits of artwork that need more thought.  I also thought it was a good opportunity to make a little bit of time to post here as I doubt I will have much time for it during the rest of the election.  Unfortunately the quiet will undoubtedly be shattered in the next couple of hours when people return from today’s action day (where lots of people go out and deliver leaflets or knock on doors) to stuff envelopes and to have a campaign meeting.

Talking of action days.  One very noticeable thing this year has been the number of people, many of them members we haven’t seen before, who are turning up to our regular action days.  Today the hoards have descended on Hillsborough where we hope to pick up a seat from Labour again, but no matter where we have had action days whether it’s Ecclesfield in the North or Mosborough in the South, the turnout has been brilliant - the best ever.  I hope this bodes well in a year when we hope to take control of the city council from Labour.

Despite being mid March, the campaign already feels in full swing.  Although Liberal Democrat activists have been working hard for weeks and months (quite literally ‘working all year round’), there comes a point when suddenly it feels like election time.  It is some weeks before the official start of the local elections and it is quite a long way before polling day.  But it is the point at which everyone is working flat out all of the time delivering leaflets, knocking on doors and phoning voters; whilst I spent my time feeding this insatiable appetite for electioneering by writing, artworking and printing leaflets, printing off canvass cards, generally keeping the campaign on track and doing lots of other behind the scenes administrative tasks that are dull but essential.  As someone who has spent years campaigning on the streets and who enjoys doing it, I feel slightly lazy being in an office all day but I suppose someone needs to do it and the very late nights (or should that be early mornings) certainly aren’t an easy thing to do day in and day out.  My housemates must be forgetting who I am as haven’t seen them in over a fortnight now.

For me this campaign is also the final slog of a very long electoral year.  Not long after last year’s local elections came the Sedgefield by-election where I spent a lot of time designing and printing leaflets and letters, then came the extensive preparations for the General Election that never was, then there was the Lib Dem leadership election and then after Christmas it was the build up to the local election campaign that we are now in the middle of.  It’s been a marathon year and I will be glad when it is over on 2nd May.  I just hope no politicians choose to die, resign or anything else that will affect the time off that I definitely need afterwards.

When you’re involved in politics in Sheffield you quickly get used to Greens behaving oddly. But you have to wonder why they bother being politics at all when they vote against the very measures they keep talking about, as they did in last week’s budget meeting in Sheffield City Council.

The Liberal Democrats in Sheffield proposed:

• An extra £1.4 million for kerbside recycling of glass or tin.
• £115,000 to provide green waste sacks (currently £1 each) for free.
• £500,000 to help regenerate local shopping areas to make communities more sustainable and to help local businesses.
• £287,000 to provide a ‘green pot’ for local community groups to bid for funding to carry out community environmental projects.
• Scrapping the use of bottled water in the council in favour of tap water.
• … and much more

But instead the Greens voted against this and just backed Labour who were offering far less for the environment, and who in the last year have voted to shut down a successful community school and who opposed Lib Dem attempts to introduce tough targets for the council on carbon emissions.

As one person put it to me, “it seems as though the Green Party is more committed to the Labour Party than to the environment.”