Bristol North West

On Saturday I was in the constituency of Bristol North West with a few friends helping to deliver a new glossy magazine-style leaflet for the local Conservative candidate, Charlotte Leslie.

Bristol North West is among the most marginal constituencies in the country. It is seventeenth on the Conservatives’ list of target seats, and due to boundary changes the Labour candidate, who is not the incumbent MP, only has a provisional majority of approximately a thousand votes.

During the ‘Blast Day’, a group of sixty or so Conservatives managed to deliver close to thirty thousand of these magazines, which was very impressive. Those in attendance included Chris Skidmore, the Conservative candidate in the nearby constituency of Kingswood, and Nick Webb who was formerly the Chairman of Bristol and Gloucester Conservative Future.

I was also actually rather impressed by was the quality of the ‘Bristol Living’ magazine we were posting through people’s letter boxes. In the past the Conservative party has perhaps been guilty of presentational neglect in its leaflets. Talking down to the electorate is never a good idea, and obvious party political literature tends to go straight in the bin without being read.

Bristol Living is a variation of a similarly-styled magazine which the Conservative party is delivering across the country. The difference between these new magazine leaflets and older-style black and white literature is that they are in a format that people are used to reading. As a result copies are more likely to appear on coffee tables up and down the land rather than in a green recycling box outside the door through which they were posted.

Clearly though, presentation is not the only thing that matters. Substance is very important too – and this is currently where the Conservatives are often extremely lacking. While the magazine was good at introducing the candidate, in this case Charlotte, to the electorate, along with the causes she has been fighting for, including pub and post office closures, the party has not yet developed a detailed plan of what they aim to do in Government.

Campaigning In Bath

On Saturday I attended a Conservative Future campaign day in Bath where we were canvassing for Bath’s prospective Conservative Member of Parliament, Fabian Richter who was selected by the local association about a year ago.

The Conservatives lost Bath at the 1992 General Election when, then Chairman of the Conservative Party, Chris Patten was unseated by the Liberal Democrats. The newly elected MP, Don Foster has been the incumbent ever since.

Having the opportunity to go canvassing in other constituencies is almost always an interesting experience. Talking to a different set of people often gives you a better idea of the national or regional mood than you tend to get from just one constituency.

One thing that I immediately noticed was the willingness with which voters in Bath would freely admit how they were intending to vote, often without even being asked. Another was the common desire among many previous Lib Dem and Conservative voters to get rid of the current Labour Government.

Following the afternoon’s campaigning we all went to have a drink in a pub called Chequers which is very near the Royal Crescent. Conservative Future members from Bristol were there including, Nick Webb and Chris Smith. It was also good to finally be able to meet Zehra Zaidi who is on the South West Conservative MEP list. All in all a successful day.