Next week there is a byelection in the Northgate ward of Crawley, following the resignation of a councillor. It could be interesting. The area used to be 100% Labour, but for the past 15(?) years it has had Lib Dem borough councillors and Labour county councillors, and earlier this year elected its first Tory to the county so it could go any way – but probably not Lib Dem.For those interested in such things, it will be one of the first contests after the three party conferences and a chance to see if the public have fallen for Dave’s ‘no policy’ policy.  Labour’s candidate is a well-known and well-respected local campaigner, Geraint Thomas. I have a lot of time for Geraint and would have loved to have had him as a colleague on the council when I was there, and I am not alone in that view. There is a good reason why different local parties keep selecting him. If he shows even half as much energy being a councillor as he does being a candidate then the town will be a better place for it.
I went down to Northgate straight from work today to join Geraint and a sizeable crowd of fellow members to knock on doors and deliver election addresses and had a very positive time. Found a lot of Labour supporters we didn’t know about before and might have even picked up a new member – always a morale-boosting bonus when canvassing.
You get used to some people seeing a crowd wearing rosettes and stickers and crossing the road to avoid you or pretending to be out, but tonight we had somebody actually go out of his way to approach us in the street and ask for a leaflet. Apparently his gran was thinking of voting Tory and he wanted some material to stage an intervention.
Altogether a fun evening. I do feel a bit bad about one thing though. I know the Lib Dem candidate, Darren Wise. In fact I would go so far as to call him a friend – I sat with him at the recording of Question Time earlier in the year and it was his wheelchair that got us to the front of the queue and into the front row, so I feel a little guilty campaigning against him – although, to be fair, I was campaigning for Geraint rather than against him. I would be more than happy to see Darren come a close second, but not too close eh? I think we have had more than enough nail-biting results in Crawley in recent years.
The odd thing about this by-election is that the Tories are pushing their candidate as the ‘only local candidate’. While they don’t go so far as to actually say he lives in Northgate, like the others, he lives elsewhere, in his case, Three Bridges. So on that basis he’s no more ‘local’ than anyone else.
How can ‘local’ be defined, and does it really matter if, like most of the Tories on Crawley Borough Council, a councillor doesn’t live in the ward they represent?
I didn’t know that. Having seen their leaflets I assumed he lived in Northgate because of all that stress on ‘the only local candidate’. Very misleading. I suspect Geraint has been ‘local’ for longer than the Tory has been alive.
There is, of course, no requirement for a candidate to live in the ward they represent, and plenty of very good councillors haven’t.
All things being equal I would prefer a councillor who lives in the area, but I would rather have a good councillor who lived elsewhere than a crappy local one.
I do admire the positivity of campaigning ‘for’ someone rather than just ‘against’. One of the reasons that so many people are turned off politics these days perhaps?
I don’t think you can avoid a certain amount of negative campaigning in any circumstances. Not least for the circular argument that everyone does it because everyone else is doing it.
Even with the best intentions you can’t set out your policies without comparing them to the opponents’ policies.
I’ll admit that I have happily knocked on doors for candidates I didn’t rate too highly, but its good to be out there for somebody who you really do want to get behind.