Originally written 27th
May 2014
In the late Spring of
2014, my letter box had never been so well used. Every day for about a month I
received a glossy leaflet asking for my vote. UKIP even sent me a giant poster,
should I feel compelled to stick it in my front window to let the whole village
know my intentions. I thought they had stopped sending out giant posters at
random. Not UKIP, they seemed pretty desperate.
Forty three pages of
photographs of very smiley people and words that really don’t say very much.
Even as an avid political commentator, it was difficult to tell from the
leaflets who stands which way on what or why I should bother to read their
shiny brochures, let alone vote for them.
I had lived in this
particular village for two years. In those two years until May 2014, I received
no other literature from any party. However, in that time I received an update
from our local Independent councillor once a month, every month, for twenty
four months straight. He would tell me what was happening with the local
development plan, how I could get in touch with him, and all sorts of other boring,
marginally useful information.
At the start of May, regular
as clockwork, his two sided A4 sheet dropped through the letter box. An update,
as normal, this time peppered with rebuttals to claims made by Labour, or the
Conservatives, or the Liberal Democrats in their glossy brochures. But
nevertheless, an update.
The layout and
presentation (much like this website) was atrocious and he could really have done with studying one of
those Microsoft Word for Dummies
books for a couple of months. But the sentiment was there, and it told me
everything I needed to know, even if some lines were formatted to the centre and
other appeared to be formatted to a very wavy, completely imaginary line. True,
it would be a stretch to say that his simple, black on white approach was a
refreshing change from the assault of red, blue, yellow and purple, but at
least his style was distinctive.
I suppose he does
have to do it all himself. He doesn’t have Party design recommendations or
branding guidelines. Or for that matter a team of consultants testing
strategies on focus groups or the like. Good old politics I would call that. He
tells me what I need to know month after month when the others are nowhere to
be seen.
What this little
independent man had done, was give the Big Boys a lesson in the long game. He
built relationships and communicated clearly, regularly and effectively. He
showed himself to be on our side, and if not on our side for every issue, at
least he tells us what his side is, and why. At least he’d been willing to work
for us going forward. As an incumbent, wittingly or unwittingly, this strategy
has contributed to a platform that allowed him to better his result from 2010.
The truth is, the
majority of the village had decided who they would vote for long before the
other circuses rode in to town, and this showed; the Independent candidate
increased his winning margin by 12 percentage points while the Conservatives
and Liberals lost 10% and 12% respectively. By the time the LibLabCon campaigns
began in mid-April, they were so late to the party they need not have bothered
turning up at all.
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