Best Newcomer?

I am honoured to receive a Conservative Home nomination for the best Conservative newcomer blog of 2006. I'm short-listed alongside a friend of mine who runs the erudite Croydonian blog, so I won't try to influence voting which will be done by internet polling.

Now seems as good a time as any to outline my blogging plans for the coming months. I have always said that the best thing about political blogging has been the network of like-minded friends I have accumulated along the way. Indeed, in a week's time a new collobarative political blog will be launched of which I will be a part. In itself this project may impinge on how many political posts I post here. But to be honest that is an excuse of sorts.

After nine months of fairly prolific blogging, you can expect less frequent posting for a time from me. Call it keeping powder dry/pacing myself or whatever you like, but the big prize is kicking Labour out and I don't expect that fight to heat up for some time yet. That's when I'll be back firing on all cylinders.

Birmingham

Ladywood

In the last couple of days of the campaign I helped Pete Smallbone out in Birmingham Ladywood. As Ladywood is safely Labour, Pete generously diverted some activists towards target wards, but you can't rid of old mates like me so easily and at one point there were six of us campaigning on the eve of the poll. Despite being up against the Labour council leader, Pete managed a small swing against Labour from last year and added exactly 100 votes to his May 2006 result. More here. Nice one, Pete - hope you enjoyed your well-deserved break after the election.

Other Birmingham Seats

I can't claim to have assisted in any way, but the other contests where I was taking a particular interest worked out well. Cllr Tim Huxtable is a friend from my schooldays. When he last contested the Bournville seat in 2004, he achieved a majority 440 over Labour. Last Thursday he managed a majority of 2,175 over the Labour "challenger"! I am sure that Tim will also be delighted about the recent selection decisions in Birmingham Northfield and Birmingham Selly Oak respectively. I was also pleased to see Cllr Adrian Delaney returned in Weoley Castle in a testing contest. But the standout campaign in Birmingham was Gareth Compton's in Erdington. Not only did he deliver an 887 majority in a Labour stronghold, but also garnered some very favourable local press.

Campaigning Bloggers

On the Erdington theme, I found this picture on the internet from the Erdington campaign. That's Gareth in the white shirt with his arm around the England supporter.

To prove that some bloggers can get off their PCs, there are three bloggers from my blogroll in this snap. Let's see if you can identify them.

Solihull

Solihull used to be the sort of Conservative constituency that would lend support to neighbouring constituencies at election time. When we lost the Parliamentary seat to the Lib Dems in May 2005, severe questions needed to be asked. So I decided to help out in Solihull in order to repel the yellow peril. It didn't quite work out like that.

Our small, but committed leafletting team covered a large area in the Shirley wards in the final days before the election, but to no avail - we lost every marginal ward. Full results here. The only silver lining is that the six seats that we won have massive Tory majorities, but even that factoid is a bit irritating in a way.

Would it be unfair for me to mention that with just a few days until polling day the only candidate for council that I came across was Shay Parekh (pictured) in Elmdon? Maggie Throup PPC and Caroline Spelman MP know what needs to be done and I hope they will be supported to make sure we get back on track in Solihull. I know I'm probably preaching to the converted, but activism should be at the heart of what it means to be a Conservative Party member.

Wolverhampton

Just a quick round up of how the Conservatives fared in the locations in which I helped out. More of a memo to self, but feel free to comment.

Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton's three Parliamentary seats are Labour and unlike some other towns in the Midlands the council remains strongly Labour. I detected an appetite for change and a chance to make a small difference so I happily accepted Jonathan Scott's kind invitation to assist in the area. The overall result in Wolverhampton was a real breakthrough as Labour only won 10 of the 20 seats. This result finally raises the prospect of removing Labour's overall control in the foreseeable future.

Across the city, the most impressive result was in Oxley. Happily, this is where we started leafletting and I was delighted to see the local Tory candidate Ian Bisbey win the seat with a 9.5% swing from Labour. His Labour opponent's final leaflet was desperate negative stuff, so it was nice to see those tactics fail.
The other ward that we covered was Park which is part of the marginal Wolverhampton South West constituency. Carl Husted (pictured with David Cameron and Paul Uppal) will be a little disappointed not to come closer, but this ward appeared to be the main focus of the Liberal Democrat campaign so the result itself was not entirely unexpected.

How Does Today Feel?

I am delighted with the Tory results overall and also the excellence of the predictions I made early in April.

I predicted the Tories would poll 41% nationally - we did.

I predicted we would hold all our seats in Birmingham - we did.

I predicted we would gain three seats in Birmingham namely Kings Norton, Billesley and Erdington - we did.

I need to check the detailed results before concluding that we won the popular vote in Birmingham - I suspect we did. I am going to be in a bullish mood on 18 Doughty Street between 9 and 11 tonight. After that appearance, I'm going to be offline for a few days as Ms PT and I are visiting friends in the countryside.

Benchmarks Of Success

Conservatives get 40%+ national equivalent in local elections.

25+ Conservative gains in municipal seats thus overtaking Lib Dems.

100+ Conservative gains in unitary authorities.

200+ Conservative gains in shire districts.

Should the Tories fail on the above, I attribute 1% to 2% points of the shortfall to Greg Dyke type coverage during April.

May 3rd 2007

Mutley the dog has a solution to gun crime. If you haven't managed it up until now, today's your last chance to vote against Blair. Do it. I'm hoping for the best for Pete, Tim, Adrian, Gareth, Sally, Carl, Ian, Tony, Martine, Andrew, Mike, Allan and Michelle. I'll be keeping an eye on Birmingham, Solihull, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Reading, Stoke, East Riding and of course Leeds. Best of luck to all Conservative candidates.

Weird Last 24 Hours

Last night I showed the Ugandan election observers around Birmingham city centre which they really enjoyed. What I sought and got in return was an in-depth interview. They didn't ask for secrecy, but I feel obliged to edit their stories so as not to place them at risk. It was a splendid night and apparently I will be welcome in 2011 for Uganda's next elections when the opposition is expecting to achieve change.

Today, I was campaigning and the leafleting got off to a bizarre start. I asked a chap lolling by his gate whether he had any particular issues that he would like me to address with the candidate. He fired back "Iraq war" and we set off on a conversation that was necessarily long and frankly utterly disturbing - at one point he headed into the house to try to show me his charge sheet (I understand this means hospital prescription) and was describing how he wished for a state within a state in the UK, the destruction of Iran and the return of all immigrants not born in the UK (although he said he wished his daughter to marry an Arab so he could teach British muslims Islam). I doubt this young Muslim/conspiracy theorist is often challenged on his views, but I also felt sorry for him because I didn't see how he could ever be at ease with the world with the concoction of grievances that he was harbouring. Let's hope he's not a microcosm and has anyone got M15's number?

After this halting start, we made swift progress delivering to the gated communities of "city living" Birmingham. One of the concierges got chatting and painted an idyllic picture of the lovely complex that he manned. He said that in 3 years he'd never had to call the police and that his biggest problem was people parking inappropriately. Ironically, we got back to the car in broad daylight to find a biking policeman on the scene and the car passenger window smashed - despite being hidden, the sat-nav had been nicked. The community policeman was a great bloke and a Conservative and gave us all a few handy insights into the community he policed. I think that crime has just moved up the agenda of the Conservative candidate for Birmingham Ladywood.

So, it's been a weird last 24 hours leading up to the elections. In Birmingham, the feedback I am getting is that people are even angrier about Labour than last year. Postal vote results are looking good for the Tories. Strikingly, Labour leaflets have gone really personal on the Tory candidate in almost all the wards that I am following. Unfortunately, it looks like the weather will be nice which will favour Labour whose supporters are generally less determined to turn out.

Campaigning In The Bull Ring

Yesterday was a bright and breezy day in St Martin's in the Bull Ring.


From left to right, Cllr Mike Flower, Cllr Simon Jevon, Keeley Rogers PPC, Paul Uppal PPC, Maggie Throup PPC and the shadow chancellor George Osborne MP. Cllr Deirdre Alden PPC was out of shot and I met the man behind the increasingly unmissable West Midlands Conservative website.

Yes Minister

I love Yes Minister and have all the early series on dvd at home in Prague. The guys at Tory Radio have put some really cracking posts together of late. This on is my favourite. Had me laughing anyway. So my challenge to the readership is to answer the question what blogs do you read and what does that say about you?