Leaflet tactics - are Labour smarter than the rest?

A slightly arcane but, I think, interesting topic this one. Section 91 of the 1983 Representation of the People's Act basically entitles election candidates to each have one piece of election literature delivered by the Royal Mail for free.

In York Central the Conservatives and the Lib Dems both appear to have done the same thing, that is to use their free mailshot to have one leaflet delivered to everyone on the electoral register. So far so straight forward.

The problem arises when you have houses where more than one person is on the electoral register, for instance there are three people registered at my address. The result is that three identical leaflets from the Conservatives turned up at my house on the same day, and then a week later three identical leaflets from the Lib Dems turned up. One of these leaflets get read and the other two get discarded.

What Labour appear to be doing is breaking their mailshot down into stages. So last week we received one leaflet addressed to one of the people at my address. This week we received a different leaflet addressed to another one of the people at my address, and one presumes we will receive a third leaflet to the third person next week.

The impact is that Labour effectively get double or triple value from their free Royal Mail delivery. At the same time they lessen their reliance on local volunteers pounding the streets doing deliveries and potentially make their campaign seem more active than it really is.

Leaflets flooding in

Above is an updated version of my candidates contacts chart showing the recent influx of leaflets from the various candidates in York Central.

On Monday I received a leaflet from the BNP and one from UKIP. Both were waiting for me together when I got home from work and both are the same size and of equally lurid design. This did seem a little suspicious but the BNP leaflet explicitly criticises UKIP so we will put their simultaneous arrival down to a coincidence.

Of the other parties the latest Labour leaflet concentrates on what Labour and Hugh Bayley have done for families while the Lib Dem leaflet contains the word "change" 11 times. The Greens focus on their local work as councillors and campaigners but also include more of their national policies than they have on previous leaflets. Interestingly they are continuing to push the message that the Tory's are not targeting York. Something which can be seen from my own candidates contacts chart above. (Although to be fair Susan Wade-Weeks may have been preoccupied this week what with the assassination attempt on her at the weekend).

Last, but certainly not least, the Monster Raving Loony leaflet puts forward a range of local and national policies. My favourite of which is the elimination of red tape - by making it blue.

York Central Election Hustings

There are a number of hustings events happening in York central over the next few days. The main ones open to the general public are:

Sunday 25th April 8pm at the Salvation Army Citadel - organised by a couple of local church groups

Monday 26th April 7.15pm at Holy Trinity Church Micklegate - all candidates confirmed apart from Hugh Bayley

Wednesday 28th April 6pm at York Race Course - joint York Central and York outer hustings organised by the York Press (you need to email in advance to attend this one)

If you can't make it to any of these events, or if you missed it first time around, you can download a podcast of the Minster FM hustings which took place last week and featured the Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem candidates.

Vote for Change!

Susan Wade- Weeks has sent me a leaflet, in fact she sent me three (all the same leaflet addressed to different people who live or have lived in my house). More on that in a minute.

But first Vote for Change! This is the message from the Conservatives (Vote for change in York Central), Lib Dems (If you want Change you have to vote for it) and the Greens (Vote Green for a real change). Can anyone spot a pattern?

Anyway, back to Susan Wade-Weeks. The bulk of the leaflet is concerned with promoting the work Susan Wade-Weeks has been doing in York over the last three years. This includes campaigning on behalf of local taxi drivers, working with insurers on flood damage and campaigning against barriers at the train station. A lot of the campaigning that Susan Wade-Weeks highlights seems to be her "standing together" with people on existing campaigns. There isn't much evidence of her actually achieving anything on her own.

The new Liberal Democrat leaflet (hand delivered by Christian Vassie) is more focused on national politics. It promotes the Lib Dems as the alternative to the Conservative and Labour parties, and plays on the fallout from the first election debate (although it doesn't actually mention it). The main body of the leaflet gives the Lib Dem solution to a range of problems in the format How to create a fairer nation, How to tackle immigration, How to save British jobs, etc. etc.

The new Green Party leaflet is split pretty equally between Andy Chase's campaigning work in York and national Green party policies. Andy Chase repeats his claims from earlier leaflets that based on the performance of the the Green party in recent local elections, and the fact that York Central is not a priority target seat for the Conservatives or the Lib Dems, the Greens represent the major challenge to the Labour incumbents.

New University of York Politics Blog

The Politics Department at the University of York have started up a new blog to give their expert commentary on the general election. Only 2 posts so far but might be one worth keeping an eye on.

Professor Neil Carter has already had some interesting things to say about the history of the York constituency and the chances of the main candidates in the new York Central seat.

Susan Wade-Weeks - Facebook Crazy?

As I said in my last post I had been getting a bit worried about the Conservative Candidate Susan Wade-Weeks. Getting on for a week and a half into the election and no sign of her anywhere.

Her website hasn't been updated for two weeks and the facebook page linked off her website also seemed pretty dead. Then I found her second facebook page, which looked more promising, but also hadn't been updated very recently. But I kept digging and I have now found her third facebook page and this one was updated yesterday!

Not only does this facebook page suggest that Susan Wade-Weeks is alive but it also gives handy details of all the campaigning she has been doing.

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Hugh and Su

It has been nearly a week since my last post and to be honest not a lot of very much interest seems to have happened. I have had another leaflet through from Hugh Bayley. The content is basically the same as his last leaflet giving lots of facts and figures about the things he has achieved as York's MP.

Hugh Bayley's claimed achievements include saving you £47 on your water bill, better pensions, better schools, more jobs, more doctors, more police and less crime. In this leaflet he does very briefly refer to his expenses saying that he was the first MP in the region to publish his expenses in full and was not found to have over claimed at all by the independent auditors.

This second leaflet means that Hugh Bayley is now in first place on the candidates contacts chart with Christian Vassie and Andy Chase in equal second place.

I am starting to get a little bit worried about the Conservative Candidate though. We are 9 days into the election campaign and Susan Wade-Weeks, the presumed main challenger to Hugh Bayley, has yet to make contact. I checked her website and that doesn't seem to have been updated for over 2 weeks. I do hope she is OK. If anyone has heard from Susan please can they let me know.

While we wait for her to make contact I suppose we will have to make do with this video of her talking about the campaign

Hugh Bayley Leaflet

I got my first leaflet through from the Labour party yesterday. (Not actually addressed to me but to a previous occupant of my house).

It looks like the local Labour party have beaten me to it and got a copy up on The Straight Choice already.

The leaflet is basically pretty positive. Hugh Bayley does not attack anyone. Instead his leaflet concentrates on what he claims to have done for York since the last election. His claims include an extra 5,800 jobs, halved NHS waiting times, £91 million investment in schools plus £60 million on city college, reducing crime and increasing payments to pensioners.

Obviously a lot of these are, at least partially, down to national Labour party policies rather than just Hugh Bayley's personal influence but it is a positive start from the Labour candidate. It will be interesting to see if the other candidates try and critique Hugh Bayley's claimed achievements or continue, as some of them have been doing so far, banging on the sleaze drum.

Candidate Contacts Chart

I have created the chart above (and in the right hand navigation) to show the number of contacts that I personally receive from each of the York Central Candidates.

As contacts I am counting leaflets, letters, emails, phone calls, knocking on my door or accosting me in the street. I will not be counting any attempts at contact though this blog though. What I am interested in is the amount of contact that an ordinary voter in York Central gets from each candidate.

I am using the beginning of this week as the starting point. So far I have had 1 leaflet each from the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Labour. I will update the chart periodically through the next few weeks up to election day.

Paul Abbott - UKIP

I now have some more details on Paul Abbott the new UKIP candidate. He is the same Paul Abbott who runs the Micklegate Post Office and is involved in various local campaigns through the Micklegate Traders Association.

Paul Abbott now has his own page on the UKIP Candidates website which is rather charmingly rambling and full of spelling mistakes. This page gives some basic biographical information but is rather light on policies and ideas. Giving his reasons for standing in this election Paul Abbott says that

I want to become a Member of Parliament primarily because of what I learn over our post office counter. Bearing in mind it is 2010; it is an absolute disgrace how we treat the elderly, family life, students, self employed, ex armed forces and freedoms.

Paul Abbott doesn't give any indication what he would do to improve things, but it is early on in the campaign so there is time yet.

Interestingly, given that he is the UKIP candidate, there isn't much mention on Paul Abbott's UKIP Candidate page of Europe.

Campaigning gets underway

Like a lot of people in York Central I have been getting sporadic election leaflets from some of the parties for the last couple of months. Most have come from the Lib Dems and Greens. I personally have not seen any leaflets from the other parties. It would be interesting to hear if this is reflected across the constituency.
The latest leaflet from Christian Vassie (above) centres on the fact that Hugh Bayley, who has been elected to represent the interests of the people of York in London, spends most of his time in London. Christian Vassie uses this revelation to accuse Hugh Bayley of lying to the people of York.

Other than revealing that he hadn't quite grasped that being an MP involves spending quite a lot of time in London, Chritian Vassie's latest leaflet has his "Four Steps to a Fairer Britain". These are

1) Tax Cuts
2) More money for education
3) More money for renewable energy
4) Giving you the right to sack corrupt MPs - (is that not what elections are for?)

Christian Vassie does not reveal where the money for steps 1, 2 and 3 of his 4 step plan will come from but I am sure he will let us know in his next leaflet.

Andy Chase (above) meanwhile is using the 2007 local election results to claim that the Green Party are the real challengers to Labour in York Central. He is basing this on two things. First the new York Outer constituency is effectively a three way marginal which means it is where the Lib Dems and Conservatives are concentrating most of their efforts leaving the Greens more room to maneuver in York Central. Secondly Andy Chase claims that if the results of the 2007 local elections were replicated then the Greens would be in second place on about 20% of the vote (with Labour ahead at 33% and both the Lib Dems and Conservatives on about 17%).

I am not entirely convinced by his logic on this one as the Greens only managed 4.5% of the vote in the 2005 general election. Even to replicate their claimed 20% effective vote from 2007 would be a massive step up for them in this election. Let alone getting the extra 10 or 20% on top of that that they would probably need to take the seat.

Andy Chase has a copy of this leaflet on his blog and you can see a copy of Christian Vassie's leaflet on The Straight Choice.

4 weeks to go

We now have 4 weeks until the election on May 6th. The confirmed candidates for the York Central Constituency are

Hugh Bayley MP (Labour)
Susan Wade-Weeks (Conservative)
Christian Vassie (Liberal Democrats)
Andy Chase (Green)
Paul Abbott (UKIP)
Eddy Vee (Monster Raving Loony)
Jeff Kelly (BNP)


There has been a boundary change since the last election. The results from 2005 were

Labour 46.9%
Conservative 24.4%
Liberal Democrat 21.8%
Green Party 4.5%
UKIP 1.8%

The BNP and the Monster Raving Loony's did not put up candidates for the seat in 2005. There were 3 other candidates in that election but none of them got more than 0.5% of the vote.

The BBC have done a projection of what the 2005 vote would have looked like with the new boundaries. This gives

Labour 48.8%
Conservative 22.9%
Liberal Democrat 20.1%
Other 8.2%

Which ever set of results you look at the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are going to have to do something fairly dramatic to unseat Hugh Bayley who has, after all, been MP for York for 18 years.