Norwich North is hotting up
The messages on the Green Party mailing lists indicate they are mobilizing for an expected by-election date of 23 July. I didn’t believe this until our Norwich-based leaflet mole uploaded leaflets from the three main parties yesterday:
The Labour party, which distributed the colour leaflet, should have the advantage because their campaign gets to set the date. But I’m guessing that that’s where their advantage ends, because their campaign’s local presence has this unexpected gaping hole in it, which would have been filled by their serving MP, Ian Gibson, now resigned and quit from the fray in disgust. Maybe some of his close friends who supported his campaigns over the years have abandoned the scene as well.
I don’t personally have any inside information. I can only speculate wildly based on the observations of traveling to the Crewe and Nantwich and Glenrothes by-elections last year.
I am sorely disappointed not to be able to make it to the by-election in Norwich on account of being on holiday, so Richard is going to have to fill in for me and find out what’s hitting the streets. On recent form, you simply can’t trust the press to report the story competently.
As usual, because it is so easy to mismanage, the on-line presence is where you can always see disarray and disorganization. Take the website of the former MP, www.iangibsonmp.co.uk. This looks normal, but for the one press release about his resignation on the 5 June, and no links to electioneering websites outside of it.
According to the Norwich North by-election, 2009 Wikipedia article, the Labour Party don’t even have a candidate selected yet.
The party tacticians are trying to work out if they can win it. Then they’ll know who to choose.
You can tell when a party knows it’s going to win a by-election — they send all their front bench cabinet ministers or shadow ministers over there to get their pictures taken with the candidate in order fill up the campaign leaflets the next day with their celebrity endorsements.
You don’t get anywhere by being associated with losers.
No message could be clearer, except to our current press corps who don’t really appear to have a clue about election dynamics. That, or they don’t want to educate us about it properly, like so many things.
My evidence of this is contained in my blog posts of:
- 4 November 2008 – Glenrothes: What the papers said
- 7 November 2008 – Glenrothes: The verdict
- 8 November 2008 – Glenrothes: What the papers say <—- the important one
Here’s me outside the Labour party office in Crewe last year:
That was the experience which started it all. I can easily see what drew Screaming Lord Sutch to these places. I can’t understand why there aren’t more nutters who descend on these events.
It’s a darn-side more entertaining than chasing solar eclipses around the world.