Barwell How to Win a Marginal Seat

My Year Fighting For My Political Life
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78590-064-8
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

During the 2015 general election, the contest in Gavin Barwell's constituency of Croydon Central was by any measure - the amount of money spent, the frequency of visits by ministers, the volume of literature delivered or the number of political activists pounding the streets - one of the most intensive constituency campaigns this country has ever seen. At the end of it, after an experience both physically and psychologically gruelling, Gavin had clung on by the skin of his teeth, and had a story well worth telling. Journalists produce a great deal of commentary on the leaders of our political parties, their campaign strategies and key messages. Elections, however, are won and lost on the pavements of only about 100 so-called marginal constituencies - places like Croydon Central. This book gives an unparalleled insight into what it's like to be an MP defending an ultra-marginal seat. It answers questions such as: Why do activists knock on your door - do they really think a quick conversation is going to change your mind? What is it like to find yourself splashed across the front page of a national newspaper? How do you cope with the very real possibility that you might be out of a job tomorrow? How to Win a Marginal Seat is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how campaigning is conducted at the coalface of British politics.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Barwell, Gavin

Leseproben

Chapter 1

Only myself to blame

Beginnings

LIKE MANY MPs, I got interested in politics when I was quite young.

My parents were Conservative voters, but they weren’t members of the party or politically active in any way. My earliest memory of politics intruding on my life is of having to do homework in candlelight because of power cuts caused by strikes. Then, when I was seven, I was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. The NHS saved my life, but the consultant who was in charge of my treatment ended up emigrating because he was fed up having to cross picket lines to treat his patients. I saw on the news that the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, agreed with me that something needed to be done about all these strikes. She was clearly a very sensible person. I was well on the way to thinking of myself as a Conservative.

My best friends at secondary school shared my interest in politics, but they weren’t Conservatives. Rather than join our respective parties, we figured it would be more fun to join the school debating club (it was where all the cool kids hung out…). Likewise, at university I didn’t get involved in the Conservative Association, but joined the Cambridge Union Society, a historic debating society with many senior politicians among its former presidents.2

The person to thank (or blame, depending on your perspective) for getting me actively involved in politics was my room-mate in my last year at Cambridge, Steve Postlewhite. He was concerned about what I was going to do with my life after I graduated with a degree in theoretical physics. And he was right to be concerned: I knew I didn’t want to be a theoretical physicist and I’m pretty sure theoretical physics wasn’t all that keen on me either; beyond that, I had no idea. So Steve took it upon himself to find me a job. He selected a hundred random job adverts from the careers library and took them and me to the Mitre pub. He was getting nowhere until he came to an advert for a job in the Conservative Research Department, whatever that was. I didn’t immediately reject this one out of hand, which Steve figured was about as positive a reaction as he was going to get, so he dragged me down to the computer room to write a CV and covering letter. They ended up offering me the job and, with nothing else to do and student loans to pay off, I accepted, starting work on 6 September 1993. After three years as a student, a salary of £12,000 a year seemed like riches beyond compare.

Working in politics

The Research Department turned out to be part of Conservative Central Office, as Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) was then called. At the time, it was based at 32 Smith Square in Westminster, a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament (the building is now the UK headquarters of the European Union).

I was hooked from day one. Within days I was attending meetings with Cabinet ministers and I was being paid to do it.

After a year and a half in the Research Department, I was appointed as special adviser to John Gummer, the then Secretary of State for the Environment. Special advisers, known as spads, are civil servants, but unlike most civil servants, who are obliged to be politically neutral, they are party-political appointments. My job was to provide political advice to the ministers in the Department of the Environment and be the link between their offices and the Conservative Party organisation. It was fascinating and it gave me a great insight into how the machinery of government works. Plus the civil service certainly paid better than the Conservative Party – John Gummer’s private secretary was amused to discover that my previous salary was so low that technically I didn’t qualify for the lowest point on the spad salary scale.

In May 1997, however, the great British public fired the Conservative government and me along with it. So back to Conservative Central Office I went.

Elected office

Back in the Research Department, my first line manager had been a take-no-prisoners right-winger called Peter Campbell, known as ‘Rambo’ to his friends.3 By coincidence, Peter was also from Croydon and in 1994 he stood for election to Croydon Council. The ward he was standing in was normally a safe Conservative ward, but John Major’s government was so unpopular that nowhere could be regarded as safe. I offered to help out on polling day.

This would be my first experience of grass-roots campaigning and what I assumed would be the well-oiled Conservative Party election machine. After a couple of hours knocking on doors, we went to the home of a party member for something to eat. We were sat down and served a three-course meal, including a roast with all the trimmings and an enormous trifle. There were second, then third portions. It went on for hours. We must have spent half the day trapped at the table, not wanting to offend the catering team who had gone to such lengths to make sure we were well fed. Nevertheless, despite our rather feeble efforts Peter somehow managed to get elected and I developed a taste for local politics (and trifle).

Two and a half years later, I was selected as a council candidate myself in the safe Conservative ward of Woodcote & Coulsdon West. On 7 May 1998 I was elected as a local councillor.

Guinea pig

Although I was now a councillor, I still had my day job. I was back in the Research Department as head of the political section, probably the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had. My predecessor but one in the role was George Osborne and his predecessor but one was David Cameron, which means either I’m destined for great things or I’m not as talented as them – answers on a postcard.

Every week, I would brief whoever was representing the Conservatives on Question Time and Any Questions? on the party’s position on the stories that had been in the news that week. The best part of the job, though, was helping my boss Danny Finkelstein prepare William Hague for Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs).

The Conservative Party had suffered a terrible defeat and was divided and exhausted after eighteen years in government; William’s performances at PMQs were the only thing keeping the show on the road. As well as Danny and I, the prep sessions on Tuesday evenings and Wednesday mornings also involved William’s political secretary, George Osborne; his press secretary, Gregor Mackay (sadly no longer with us); and his parliamentary private secretary, David Lidington. I was very clearly the most junior person in the room.

These were the most intellectually challenging meetings I’ve ever attended – you quickly learnt to open your mouth only if you were sure of your ground and to be prepared to defend your point with both facts and passion. However, they are the closest my experience of politics has yet come to an episode of The West Wing – even if the meetings were always held in an office, rather than while walking through mysteriously endless corridors – and it was incredibly satisfying when the line of questioning we settled on worked in the House of Commons. All in all, everything was going very nicely for me.

And then Archie Norman intervened.

William had appointed Archie to reorganise the Conservative Party – indeed, you could say he was appointed to create the Conservative Party since legally it didn’t exist before his reforms. What people knew as the Conservative Party was a combination of autonomous units: the National Union (a federation of the Conservative associations that existed in each parliamentary constituency), the parliamentary party and Conservative Central Office.

Central Office was divided by a Chinese wall. On one side was the Research Department and the Press Office, both staffed by hungry young graduates learning their trade for a couple of years before moving on. On the other side was the Campaigning Department, which employed people who had trained to become qualified Conservative Party agents and for whom working for the party was therefore a long-term career. Archie wanted to encourage some cross-fertilisation between the two parts of Central Office and I was his guinea pig. He moved me from the Research Department to become head of local government in the Campaigning Department. Suddenly I went from helping to brief William Hague for PMQs to developing a strategy to rebuild the Conservative Party’s strength in local government and advising our councillors and activists on how to win council elections.

I wasn’t very happy about this at first. Nor were most of my new colleagues, who felt that someone who wasn’t a qualified agent shouldn’t be taking one of the most senior positions in their department. I couldn’t really blame them. It turned out to be a good move, however, both for me personally – I proved to be a better campaign strategist than I had been a policy adviser – and, as others followed in my footsteps, for the party as a whole.

Wannabe MP

If you work for a political party for any length of time, you end up either unable to understand why anyone in their right mind would want to be an MP or fed up with being an adviser and keen to stand for election yourself. You can guess which category I fell into.

Having got onto the national list of people eligible to be selected as a Conservative parliamentary candidate, I started applying to seats. After one failed attempt in Guildford, in 2002 I was selected as the Conservative candidate for Sutton & Cheam. Given that I wasn’t going to compete with my friend Andrew Pelling for the vacancy in Croydon Central, Sutton & Cheam...