Category Archives: Blog

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.

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!

Tariq Ali puts Labour on the spot

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9am sharp the campaign team arrives at my house. Everyone in very good form and we get through the business of going through the status of our campaign in record time. Most head off for our HQ to begin the days canvassing (not before 11am as waking people on a Sunday morning does not endear them to your cause!), delivering and sticking and stuffing.

Neil, Susie and I head off to do a photo shoot at Alexandra Park Station and then I come back home to write some notes for Bill Rodgers who the following night is to chair my adoption meeting. Drop them off and head to HQ myself.

Uneventful couple of hours canvassing and then off to the Kurdish Centre off Green Lanes where I have been invited to speak for 10 minutes on anything I like. This is the celebration of 17 years of the centre.

As I was asked what time slot I would like and had said 3.30pm I turned up and the hall was full of people. The proceedings were mainly in Kurdish (with a bit of Turkish). There was a Green MEP there and she was called to speak first. A translator translated as she went.

When I was called I just spoke about the choice they would have at the election, the war, and the importance of communities like the Kurdish community not just voting, but becoming politicians and active members of the community.

Then Barbara Roche (my Labour opponent) arrived. Didn’t know she was coming. She took the stage in an absolute thundercloud – so assume that she didn’t know I was going to be there either. Blasted the LibDems right, left and centre.

She also introduced herself as a Member of Parliament for a left-wing progressive government. You could have knocked me down with a feather! This from the most right-wing, privatising government we have seen. And her voting track-record? Voted for tube privatisation, for top up fees, for war in Iraq, for cutting benefits for disabled people, for Post Office closures, the list goes on …

Dash back to HQ (just love having an HQ) and grab some canvassing.

A lot of Labour supporters know about Tariq Ali’s call for people to vote Lib Dem in Hornsey and Wood Green to defeat the pro-war MP. It’s put a lot of people on the spot. Do you stay at home or reluctantly vote Labour – or do you take the plunge and cast a vote which will actually make a difference?

Tariq has basically challenged all those in Hornsey & Wood Green who have been so upset by the Labour Government taking us to war illegally and by the MP’s unswerving support for that war – to actually do something about it – because here they can.

Take canvassing back to HQ and dash off to meeting about traffic issues in Bounds Green. As usual – a proposed traffic scheme to stop rat-running from the North Circular is dividing a community that straddles the Haringey / Enfield border. I look at all the maps with the two women who have called me in desperation to stop Enfield just doing what they plan – without Haringey sorting out their side. As ever – one road’s benefit by timed closures means another road’s suffering. I will pursue as it drives me mad – the sticking plaster approach to traffic problems in London.

Home to emails, paperwork etc – and lots of requests for posters! Hurrah!

Saturday on the campaign trail in Hornsey and Wood Green

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Our campaign HQ opens today. I go there at 11 to start canvassing. It is just a fabby HQ, above the Three Compasses pub on Hornsey High Street. Above a pub – bound to be popular with people coming to help! Right in the centre of the constituency and with just the nicest owners and staff – and great, real, food.

The office is already buzzing and there are helpers already doing what helpers do in an election – sticking bits of double-sided tape on posters and folding letters for stuffing. Love it to bits. Valerie is front of house at HQ – President of London Region Liberal Democrats, activist over decades – and who for the last (can’t remember how many) elections has gone to Southwark to do front of house for Simon Hughes. This time she is staying on here to help me win the seat – because basically this time – it’s game on.

I go off with Monica to canvas a new block of flats in Crouch End. It has an entry system that is impenetrable. Needless to say we do penetrate – as the candidate it’s often not too bad trying to get into places as people generally want to offer you the democratic opportunity to knock on doors.

One single mother I spoke too with two very young children said it was a nightmare because they never got any leaflets – the leaflets most of us moan about littering our floors about pizzas etc! As a result – cut off from the businesses in the area and didn’t get local news through free newspapers, political leaflets etc.

Back to the pub for lunch and a drink with the activists. Sarah Ludford, MEP arrives to go out canvassing. I give her the times of the blessing (Camilla and Charles) and the Grand National – so that they can avoid knocking on doors during those and off she goes.

A group sitting at a table in the pub call me over, wish me luck and ask for a poster … It reminds me of the campaign technique my agent and I used in ’97 when we didn’t have a clue about campaigning. We used to finish canvassing (Muswell Hill ward) at about 9pm and then he and I would go to the various eatery or drinkery establishments in the constituency wearing our rosettes as a means of seeing and being seen. I didn’t win! Eight years later, my campaign manager just roars with laughter at what he regards as completely amateur techniques – but I’m not so sure … (And it was a good way to end a hard day’s campaigning).

I have a brief word with my agent who tells me that the local Conservative party chair was loitering downstairs outside our HQ for an hour or so in the morning. Strange! Surely they’ve got better things to do …

Monica and I go to do a couple of hours delivering. She is nervous that I may mention her driving in my blog. But I won’t – it’s really her parking technique that is of interest. People smile at me in the street – which I take as a good sign – it sure beats not smiling or ignoring. Two hours of my exercise program – unfortunately in high heels as I forgot to bring my trainers out – is my Bridget Jones for the day.

I rush home to check messages and finish up some correspondence. About 10pm I finish (well you never finish but I do have two children and am single so occasionally feel it appropriate to appear) and go into the lounge to watch a film with them. Needless to say I fall asleep on the sofa.

Friday on the campaign trail

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This blog is turning into Bridget Jones’s diary for the duration in as much as I have lost 3lb. Again yesterday two hours delivering leaflets. Normal paperwork, email and phone to race through and wrote one speech.

I get a phone message from a colleague that Ken (Livingstone) has been attacking me in the Tribune. I knew he had had a go in the Socialist Worker. It would seem that Tariq Ali’s support has angered Ken. Of course, Ken’s old seat of Brent East fell to the LibDems in a by-election with a 29% swing – so – being Ken – he’s lashing out.

The ironic thing here is that prior to his readmission to the Labour party we were fighting together on many policy issues. It’s not me who’s changed but him (sounds like a line from a song).

Muswell Hill crime meeting

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7am start on emails having done fifty sit ups. Given the amount of exercise I get during and election delivering leaflets and the amount of weight I lose from being on the run – I have decided that I might as well have a flat stomach by May 5!

Inevitably during a campaign the blog content of my daily efforts will be repetitive in terms of 1) delivering leaflets 2) canvassing 3) stuffing envelopes and 4) answering emails, letters and the phone.

The interest I guess will come from the twists and the turns, the media and the national campaign.

So today was unremitting emails and paperwork all morning. Then for light relief three hours of leaflet delivery midst beautiful sunshine – interspersed with hail, lightening and thunder. We (Monica and I) were leafleting a really up-market part of the constituency – with mega houses and tree-lined drives. Only issue with long drives is that it takes twice as long to deliver as normal roads.

At 7.30pm arrive at the British Legion in Muswell Hill Road for the consultation with key stakeholders in Muswell Hill. I am the lead councillor on the roll out of the police’s Safer Neighbourhoods Scheme in Muswell Hill. This is what we have all been waiting for – 6 police personnel, ring-fenced for Muswell Hill on a permanent basis. Hurrah!

This is a real ‘good news’ story – and tonight is about asking the chairs of residents’ associations and neighbourhood watches what they believe are the priorities for the area.

I have raised already one of the key problems for residents of St James’s Lane and Connaught Gardens – which is kids hanging around – and in the case of St James’s Lane acting quite aggressively to passers by.

I have been in email correspondence with Stephen Bloomfield, the local Commander and suggested to him that we try Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs). Yes – we can have patrols (if we are lucky) and that will move them on – temporarily. But I am for long term resolution – not just pushing a problem into someone else’s back yard.

ABCs were pioneered in Lib Dem run Islington with the Met and involve the police, the parents, the children, and other partners from education, social services, housing – whatever the problems need. Parents and children sign up to an agreed way forward for behaviour and have regular meetings to discuss any difficulties etc. These have worked stunningly well – so much so that Labour Ministers Charles Clarks and Hazel Blears are now advocating this as best practise across the land.

Stephen Bloomfield emails back that this seems just the right sort of case to be taken forward with ABCs but he isn’t promising anything until he knows more.

So at the meeting, the team are there and the issue is raised and we will see what path they take.

One of the most positive and optimistic evenings in my memory in terms of policing (outside of the re-opening of Muswell Hill Police front counter).

Come home to find phone message from Andrew Gilligan – so call him back. Piece in Standard will come out on Monday. He asks how I am getting on – and I say well. Lots of emails from Labour supporters telling me not only that they are going switch from Labour for the first time in their lives and vote for me – but why.

Interestingly – the reasons are not just the war. Iraq certainly leads the field – but the disappointments with Labour are many. It’s feeling very good on the doorsteps – especially as former Tory and Green supporters are getting the tactical voting message that to beat Blair’s candidate they need to vote Lib Dem in Hornsey and Wood Green.

Special test from the voters

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Plenary session at City Hall questioning transport supremo Bob Kiley – followed by Mayor’s Question Time with Ken.

As I walk from London Bridge Station (following a journey from hell on the Northern Line) I pass a cafe. Sitting and looking very sad and lonely is Ken having a cup of coffee. I watch him for a while – as it is a really striking picture and wish that I had had a camera.

Anyway – to cut to the chase – my big issue is the £1.6million that Ken spent on external legal costs fighting the PPP (tube privatisation). Now I thought the money was definitely worth spending – we had to try and stop probably the worst contract in the world being foisted on London. We failed. But my beef with Ken is that for him it was clearly ‘gesture politics’ (the most expensive in history) as now he’s back in the Labour fold we don’t hear a peep from him against the PPP – nor do we see action to take control of a failing contract.

So I put this to Kiley and he lets rip against Metronet who are managing to disrupt London almost every time they overrun on engineering works. Clearly from recent media outbursts from Tim O’Toole and now Kiley – frustration at TfL is rampant.

So I helpfully suggest that they sack Metronet – none of this waiting and putting them on notice to improve or else. That should already have been the case. Clearly financial penalty is no barrier to their poor performance – time to cut losses and run. I mean, John Weight, the Chief Exec of Metronet, came before my committee a few weeks ago. I pushed him on his responsibility for the overruns. He admitted publicly it was entirely a management issue in terms of planning and managing access and that he was on the case and it would all be alright.

Clearly not given the tube’s performance! They should be sacked and the Mayor should make the Government suffer the consequences – and then let us fund the Tube by bonds.

I go upstairs as I have to leave a bit early for an appointment – only to find everyone going mad. Did I really say sack Metronet? Yup!

Latter, I get on with delivering our ‘Flying Start’ leaflet in Hornsey. It is pouring with rain one minute then bright sunshine. A woman runs up to me in Harvey Road saying ‘are you Lynne’ etc. She tells me that they have had a problem with dumping and rubbish for years and Haringey Council has done nothing. But the previous night they had formed a Residents’ Association and rung up to complain about their dumped rubbish. And, lo as if by magic – at midnight the waste collection company turned up and removed 42 black bags.

Now – you might think this was a shining example of service – but ‘scuse my cynicism – how many times in Haringey does Accord turn up to pick up rubbish at midnight? Must be an election! People are not fooled. She certainly wasn’t.

Three hours delivering and my body says rest and food required. Go home to discover 200 or so emails which have to be answered.

But in the middle I get a phone-call from a man. He is a Tory ringing because he says that it is obvious that the Tories cannot win in Hornsey & Wood Green and he is thinking of voting LibDem. But he is worried about asylum and immigration and wants reassurance from me that we won’t ‘let them all in’.

He doesn’t wish to give his name.

So I explain to him, that we need strong policies on migration but what this should mean is looking carefully at how many migrants the country needs and can cope with in different areas (of the country and the economy). The real problem at the moment lies with illegal immigration – which is not only bad for us but appalling for the people as well.

He goes on about asylum seekers – too many – send ‘em back etc. I make it clear that unlike the Tories I would not wish to put any quota on asylum. I would not want to come from a country that closed its doors on someone fleeing for their lives.

He came back at me about the quantity coming in – and on – and on. In the end I said to him ‘Look I am not a Tory – I am a Liberal Democrat – I just don’t believe what you believe’ or words to that effect.

At which point he said that I would have his vote (much to my surprise.) Then he said he had done something mean. He wasn’t a Tory supporter. He was a lifelong Labour supporter who wouldn’t vote Labour this time – but who wanted to test me out in private.

Clearly I had passed the test!

So Mr G of Muswell Hill – thank you – because you made me laugh – and at the end of a long day it was definitely the best medicine!