Monthly Archives: Apr 2005

Simon Hughes MP visits

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Simon Hughes sweep into Hornsey & Wood Green. Yes – all the party stars are shining here this time round!

We are canvassing in Hornsey. People are always pretty surprised when they open the door and find Simon on their doorstep. And it has to be said – people are Simon’s forte – he basically just charms them…

Simultaneously – my door knocking was pretty productive. One door I knocked at – definitely voting LibDem – says ‘wait a minute, I’ve got a present for you.’ Haven’t encountered this before – but wait in mystified anticipation. The guy reappears with a book – of which he is the author. Title of said book ‘The Curious Incident of the WMD in Iraq’.

So – you never know what you will find on the doorstep. And Simon assures me that I don’t have to list it in ‘gifts received’ (Standards in Public Life) as it falls way below the level at which this kicks in. Phew – don’t want any books for votes scandal attaching itself to my campaign!

Simon wants to stalk a high street – so we are just off Crouch End Broadway and go there to meet and greet. It was fun. Simon sweeps into each shop, restaurant or whatever – stops people just minding their own business – and engages thoroughly with the denizens of Crouch End.

He is the past master at such engagement – and when you walk through Simon’s constituency of Southwark and Bermondsey it takes hours as everyone knows him and talks to him. Of course, this has its downside, as he has given me a lift in his bright yellow taxi to where we have been canvassing and I need to get back to go to Muswell Hill to sign the ‘Make Poverty History’ pledge. Eventually with the help of his minder we pull him away.

Arrive in Muswell Hill at the stall. Sign the pledge and wait as the other candidates are late or not coming. Journal photographer appears (at the request of the stall holders – not me!) and the ‘signing’ is complete. We all support the ambitions of this campaign.

Iraq, Iraq, Iraq

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First panic of the day – the first batch of our election address needs to be bundled and got to Royal Mail. Neil (agent) phones around the ‘gang’ and we all flood in to finish off the last envelopes. All is well – except it takes Neil three and a half hours round trip to get it there.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (lot of western allusion today) I get my spurs on and go canvassing with Jonathan Marciano from the Ham & High. As ever, we are looking for Labour ‘switchers’ as I guess that will be the story of this seat. But it is hard to find anyone who is not out and out Lib Dem (of the very few people in that time of the morning).

In the end Jonathan decides he will have to make do with a photo of me on the doorstep of a Lib Dem supporter. So we talk on the step and as we are talking it turns out that he did indeed used to be a Labour supporter. It was the LibDem work locally that first brought us into the frame (cracked pavements and rubbish collection etc) – and combined with Iraq … If you can’t keep a street clean – how can you run the country – I always say!

We do bits of interviews as we go. My successful campaigns for the 603 bus route and the police front counter reopening at Muswell Hill police station are touched upon but the main issue coming up on the doorsteps is Iraq. Crime, education (particularly school places) and health also feature.

When people start talking about why they are voting and switching it is about the sort of world people want. It matters how you behave. It matters if you wage an illegal war. It matters if your civil liberties are taken away. It matters if what makes our society decent and caring is trashed.

Whew – glad to get that off my chest.

Rush home to try and get my emails done. It is absolute mayhem trying to deal with everything that is coming in. I am glad that the volume of stuff has exploded in size – I think. Rush back to HQ after a few hours of inbox control and to help get our next leaflet our to deliverers in Hornsey and then off canvassing again with Alexis.

Very good canvassing here and more posters. People are very interested in talking – which means I cover less ground – but it I feel an important part of the democratic process for candidates to have to meet and talk to the public.

Actually go home quite early at around 8pm to read the Liberal Democrat manifesto properly and start to think about the hustings the first one of which is to be Churches of Muswell Hill on Sunday afternoon.

Canvassing with Ed Davey on Thursday

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Early to bed – early to rise! I guess the election adrenalin must have kicked. Having fallen asleep to the first strains of Desperate Housewives (which I had been hoping to watch for a moments respite) I wake up at 3.45am. Lie there ’til 6am then finally decide pointless exercise.

Off canvassing with Ed Davey MP who is our Shadow Deputy Prime Minister. The doorstep feel is remarkably similar seemingly wherever we canvass. LibDems and soft Labour. Rush Ed back to HQ as he has to go off to Islington South and Brent East. Ed’s also been to Dorset and Guildford – the common denominator is that these are all seats where women candidates are challenging. Just showing that Ed takes supporting women candidates to its proper level!

I continue stuffing envelopes (just one of my favourite past times), have lunch with Neil and then rush home to do some Highgate delivery. I find a couple of hours delivery a day helps ease the tension and get rid of some of the adrenalin.

Back home for emails and paperwork. Adrenalin disposal not helped by LibDem press office phoning to see if I would talk to BBC London about LibDem womens’ policies. I agree to BBC interview – but that means have to be up at 6am to brief myself in the morning. Oh well – I’ll be awake anyway…

Rush back to HQ for more stuffing. Rush back home to write out a letter that I want to deliver to people with postal votes who will be voting next weekend. Pass out to Andrew Neil’s dulcet tones.

Hustings at Coleridge School

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One week gone – half a stone lost! Thank goodness for election.

Lunchtime visit to Coleridge School. All the candidates are invited separately – a wise head clearly. Music plays as the children aged about 7-11 walk in and sit cross legged in rows. I guess there were about 200 all staring up at me. Terrifying!

I just tell them a little about the Lib Dems and then two children have been chosen to ask the questions selected by the school council. Very good questions – better than most adult hustings I thought – as it wasn’t full of party hacks or planted questions. I remember an education hustings at Fortismere School last time out where there were about 20 people in the audience, almost all of whom were party people.

One of the questions was what about pollution. So I asked them if the had heard of the congestion charge. Yes – they all said. Was it a good thing I asked. No – they all said. Why not – I said. Because you have to pay – they all said. Was pollution bad? Yes – they all said. I then attempted to demonstrate the link between the two.

School dinners were high on their list of questions. Thanks Jamie. Did they like salads I asked? Not a totally positive response – but at least Jamie has brought the discussion and got them thinking and talking. They also asked what I was going to do about fast food outlets in Crouch End. No correlation again!

I really enjoyed it. Not my usual target audience – but voters of the future. Lots of them came up after to say they would vote for me. Perhaps we should revisit the voting age?

In the afternoon – meet BBC London camera team. Well I guess they are stretched as the team was the camera man and interviewer all in one. He followed me knocking on doors for a couple of hours. Several of the LibDems we found wouldn’t give permission for the film to be used (drat) – not dressed, wet hair, no make-up. The BBC man knocked on each door after I had called to ask permission – nothing goes out without it.

Matthew Taylor MP canvassed with me and calls me to say hello at a door with a Tory mother (going to vote Lib Dem because Tories can’t win here), a daughter who doesn’t know, her friend who is LibDem and whilst talking on the doorstep, the son (I guess around 15) arrives and shouts Labour (at his mother).

One woman today said she was going to vote for Respect and was clearly put out when I informed her I didn’t believe there was a Respect Candidate standing. But she was the only person in all the canvassing I have done who has mentioned Respect here.

Back to HQ dropping camera man and Matthew off at tube. Noticed just before getting into car that microphone had fallen off. And as we have no idea when it detached itself – may have to do whole thing over again!

At HQ stuffing envelopes is the order of the day. The glamour of democracy in action!

The Boer war

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Austrian journalists accompany me on the campaign trail. A very nice man and woman who are, if I remember rightly, the equivalent of Radio 4 (the woman) and the Editor of the Guardian (the man) in Austrian terms.

Keen to raise my vote in Austria – we set out in a Labour street in a Lib Dem ward (Alexandra, three gains from Labour in 2002). It was quite extraordinary. Virtually every Labour supporter told me they were voting Lib Dem this time. Iraq was the reason. Whilst Labour may hope we have moved on – we haven’t. I wish Gilligan had been with me on this street. I couldn’t have wished for more palpable evidence of the Labour swing to the Lib Dems.

One woman (Labour all her life, but now voting Liberal Democrat) wouldn’t take one of our posters because she didn’t want to put off Labour canvassers and was hoping to get them on her doorstep to give them a piece of her mind.

Another woman called me across the road to her – same story and her husband who had voted Labour since the Khaki election (think must have meant 1945 rather than the Boer war!) was voting LibDem.

In the evening went round to Tariq Ali’s house to finalise his further efforts to help me in order to actually defeat in his words ‘a warmonger MP’. Tariq is solely and genuinely committed to getting an anti-war majority in the Commons – that is his purpose and therefore we have common cause.

LIB DEM LYNNE ADOPTED AT PACKED MEETING

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Hornsey and Wood Green Liberal Democrats unanimously adopted Lynne Featherstone as their Parliamentary candidate at a packed meeting in Hornsey last night. Speakers at the meeting, chaired by Lord Bill Rodgers, included Lib Dem MP and Local Government Spokesman Ed Davey and defence expert, Lord Tim Garden.

In proposing Lynne as the candidate, Ed Davey predicted “one of the most exciting results in the whole country” for the Lib Dems. Lord Tim Garden said that Lynne personified Lib Dem principles on fair tax, protecting our civil liberties and opposition to the war in Iraq.

Lynne Featherstone says:

“I am delighted to be the Lib Dem candidate for Hornsey and Wood Green. We know that we are in a neck and neck battle with Labour for the seat, and the Labour campaign is already faltering. It will be tough four weeks ahead, but many voters here are disillusioned with Labour and want an MP that will speak up for better public services, fairness in taxation, real civil liberties and trust over the big issues, such as Iraq.”

I am adopted

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I am to be adopted – as LibDem candidate for Hornsey & Wood Green in the back room (huge) of the Three Compasses pub – where our HQ is upstairs.

Lord Bill Rodgers (member of the SDP Gang of Four and ex-LibDem Leader in the Lords), Lord Tim Garden (military expert) and Ed Davey, MP are all there to attract a good crowd, tell people how wonderful I am and how hard they need to work for the campaign.

Fantastic turn out – made Neil (my agent) come and take a photo from the front looking back at the audience – ‘cos political parties are always saying it was ‘packed room’ but it really was. So I thought we should have the photographic evidence to back it up!

It was a fantastic night. It is only seven years since we got our first councillor and we’re now poised to have a Lib Dem MP.

It just reminded me of a piece I wrote for a LibDem publication years ago on ‘Why I am a Liberal Democrat’ or something like that. I chose to write about the ‘Power of One’ – that however impossible things seem – that doesn’t have to be the case and that change can be brought about with enough commitment and effort. And as ‘ones’ come together in common cause – mountains do move.

Andrew Gilligan in the Evening Standard

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Andrew Gilligan’s piece on Hornsey & Wood Green comes out today in the Evening Standard – which is going to be a pretty important piece of coverage for us – one way or the other.

First phone call in from the press office – only seen the headline – looks good. Well – without droning on too much – it was a good piece for us and for me. Huge photograph of me with the panoramic backdrop of London viewed from the steep slopes of Muswell Hill.

Glad to be able to report that it’s a nice photo! Then I read the piece and it is a really accurate summation of the situation here. The Labour vote is very soft and it’s going to be an exciting finish.

One of the bits that interested me the most was the description of what Labour think is happening in this seat. Last time out in 2001 LibDems (and me) took around 10,000 votes of Ms Roche’s majority. That was before 9/11, before the war and so on. Their rational, according to Labour, is that the residents of this area are basically the advanced guard of Labour thinking in the capital. i.e. Labour here became disillusioned before Labour elsewhere – and therefore the huge swing to the LibDems last time was it.

I have to say I don’t think so! Not in a million years. However, using that logic – is Labour saying that there will be at least a 12% swing to the LibDems in all seats where we are in second place? That would be excellent!

HIGHGATE – LIB DEM OUTRAGE OVER ELIZABETH HOUSE DEMOLITION PLANS

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Highgate Lib Dem councillor Neil Williams has expressed his outrage over a developer’s request to almost entirely demolish Elizabeth House in Highgate.

Cllr Williams wants Haringey Council to resist the application and has criticised the developer’s tactics over the scheme.

A Developer has applied for conservation area consent for the demolition of the building, saying that the existing planning permission for luxury flats requires that the building be almost entirely demolished. This is despite the fact that an earlier application to demolish the building was refused by Haringey Council.

Lib Dem councillor Neil Williams says that the building is valued in its current use as a hostel, which he says has more limited impact on local residents in Cromwell Avenue and Winchester Place. At present, relatively few cars are entering and leaving the property on the difficult to access site, which is in a sensitive spot in the Highgate bowl.

Cllr Williams comments:

“I am amazed that a developer now wants to demolish this building, as they had not asked for this when the present planning permission was granted. Given that demolition was earlier refused, it is very disappointing that they now feel they are entitled to push for the demolition of the existing building.

“I am sure there will be a considerable battle over this, and I will be pressing the Council to resist, as the removal of Elizabeth House was never the intention of the planning permission.”

LIB DEMS LAUCH PETITION FOR HIGHGATE/CROUCH END BUS ROUTE

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Lib Dem general election candidate Lynne Featherstone has launched a petition in the party’s popular campaign for a new bus route linking Crouch End and Highgate. Ms Featherstone says she has received very positive feedback from local residents on the issue, and the route is sorely needed to improve east-west links in Haringey’s bus services.

At present there is no direct service linking Crouch End Broadway with Highgate village. Ms Featherstone is urging local residents to return her petition, which will form a vital part of lobbying London Buses as it reviews bus services in the area.

Lynne Featherstone comments:

“It is already clear that the idea of a direct link between Crouch End and Highgate would prove very popular, We need to keep up the pressure on London Buses to properly consider the issue. I hope that as many people as possible will sign our petition, as it is local pressure that will make the difference.”